I originally was going to include this as a comment on another blog but it was far too long to put inside another discussion.
Bar a strong opening 20 minutes against Penrith where we ran hard, tackled hard, forced mistakes and our ball movement was quick, our side has looked sluggish with ball in hand.
The team looks disorganised at times while at others, our halves aren’t playing eyes up football.
There are three changes I’d like to see made.
Ball-play amongst the forwards.
We do far too much one-out running. It’s okay in the first 10 minutes to just tuck the ball under the arm so we can get a foothold in the game and minimise the mistakes. Even then we should have our forwards running in pairs so they can’t be gang tackled.
When the game opens up a little we should definitely be looking to our forwards to be able to tip the ball on to each other, or use someone like Nathan Brown or Kenny Edwards to promote the ball in the middle of the field with Bevan French or Will Smith given permission to sniff around the ruck and look for the offload.
Eyes up football.
Andrew Johns and Peter Sterling talk about this quite often. It’s the halves looking at the defensive line when going through their set plays and taking advantage of anything that opens up. You watch Johnathan Thurston and he’s constantly looking at his opponents before making a decision.
On multiple occasions against Cronulla, Manu had isolated Townsend on our left edge yet we kept going out the back where Cronulla’s defenders read the play and shut it down. A hallmark of our attack last year was the ability of both Norman and Moses to play what they saw in front of them.
Just on our sweeping block plays. It seems we’re concentrating way too much on just getting through the play rather than looking to try and score. Hitting the back-rower and the ball player occasionally taking on the line means it keeps defenders honest. They can’t rush up on the outside and they can’t just slide.
Case in point was Tony Williams barging down the right edge against the Tigers. As soon as our halves started hitting Williams as the short man it compressed the defence and put doubt in their minds. This doubt led to a try and easy metres.
We had this problem when Jarryd was our fullback in the past as it seemed the default action was to get him the ball and let him do the rest.
Keep in mind we used the same attacking formations against Penrith as we did Cronulla. The key difference being the speed we ran at. When we crossed on our right edge it was because we moved at speed and our passing was crisp meaning we forced the defenders into a panicked and incorrect decision.
Spread the ball
Greg Alexander actually pointed this out on Easter Monday. Manly and the Tigers looked to spread the ball early against us and it’s also become a hallmark of Penrith.
Regardless what we think of our forward pack, they do have a reputation for hitting hard if you run straight at them. To get around this, sides are going two passes off the ruck and looking to target our back-rowers and halves.
It forces our props to move a lot more and stretches our defensive structures.
With the mobile pack that we have I don’t understand why we don’t start going a couple of passes wide of the ruck.
Clearly this only works if you’re not going backwards as you need time to move the ball. This also stems from clever work from the dummy-half who will have to be able to jump from the ruck and engage the markers.
Replies
King they're all good points. The two passes is something i have been missing to be honest; let along the short ball when in other teams half; we seem to be getting easily dominated which means slow play the balls etc. That is why 2-3 runners in motion helps to limit gang tackles.
Nice blog Supe - it's really not that long :)
Agree with all of this.
All of this is easily achieved and hopefully we will see a lot of it this weekend. They showed glimpses in the last 20 against a clocked-off Tigers as well.
I personally reckon moving Will Smith to hooker would help facilitate alot of what we are looking at here..
I was hoping Will would've been the option on the bench this season. Obviously with all of our fullbacks injured Will's the only player available to fill that position.
That last 20 minutes against the Tigers demonstrated what happens when we hold the ball and play football. We scored our points off the back of playing what we saw.
T-Rex for mine was a real surprise and he was a big handful on the right edge. Hopefully he gets more game time in the coming weeks. He's got good hands for a big man and his presence demands attention.
It'll be interesting to see what they produce this weekend.
Dunno why but I feel cautiously optimistic.
Hopefully Will will find his way to the bench (and some hooking duties) when we get some troops back. He was fantastic there last year and a big part of our form reversal.
We always seem to play better when no one expects anything from us. Pretty much everyone's tipped Penrith even with Cleary out.
Agree, the lads have to stand up sooner or later, theyve been humiliated and called out, we are a chance this weekend.
When you take a chance on a player like T Rex on base money you have nothing to lose really. His best is representative honours. Further he does have a great offload which is daunting for defenders when facing a man of his size. The downside of T rex is at his worst he is ordinary and a long way from his best. It will be interesting to see how the season pans out for him.
Will Smith I think has been at his best for us as a utility where there is not so much pressure on him to perform. It must be remembered that he is our fourth string FB behind Gutho, French and Hayne. I do like his work with Moses when he runs against the grain to Moses left side to take the short pass. They scored two tries off that move in 2017.
Recently there was talk of Farah moving on from Souths soon although this has been shut down. I think he would be a good option for 2018 and possibly 2019. Could be used to mentor Mahoney
Good blog Super
Will also seems stronger than he looks. He may not be as quick off the mark as Bevan but he's got a good top speed and one-on-one he's shown that he's hard to stop.
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next