The trend in modern day Rugby League for a good number of years in relation to halves has been to move away from the traditional first receiver, second receiver and for the halves to instead play either side of the ruck.
That has resulted in the fullback playing a more important role as a link between the inside half and the side's finishers.
It's true that Jarryd Hayne, right now, is probably not well suited to playing the more typical five-eighth position that a lot of other teams play right now. He is best when running at the attack wider than most five-eighths in the NRL currently do, and he would lose effectiveness if forced to play in to close to action.
However, two important points to consider:
1) If your dummy half takes more responsibility for the direction of the play than it helps enormously, because if there is a blind-side play that your dummy half can read and is good enough to execute that can actually work really well.
2) If you have a ball-playing lock than once again, you're less reliant on having a half on either side. Lots of good examples of this, but I think Andrew Ryan for the Dogs was great in providing the extra link man, whether it be down the short side or out wide. Interestingly, the combination of Ryan and Ennis really allowed Ben Roberts to play with the kind of width we'd need for Hayne.
So you throw Reni Maitua into the lock forward position and suddenly you give yourself another option and the balance and structure of your side is looking much better. You can now run plays around McGuire, your half back, Hayne, Burt and Maitua. That's going to help a lot in keeping Hayne out to do his stuff on the fringes, rather than working in traffic where it's still possible to man up on him. Maitua can float down the short side, or else work as an extra man on a deep backline movement which frees up Burt to have more of a floating role.
It's worth noting that structuring your side primarily around a five-eighth who plays with a lot of width is quite different to how Melbourne played, and so Hayne's shift really does require kearney to have a re-think about the structures he probably wanted to put in place when he arrived at the club. But I think what all successful coaches do is get their best players in the position they can be most effective and then structure the rest of the side around that. That's Kearney's challenge and I think Maitua is going to give him a lot more options than he probably thinks he has right now.
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Awesome read as usual. I agree entirely with everything you've said here.
Also with Matua used as the attacking loose forward you can almost get away with having hindmarsh and smith as your defensive second rowers to help defend morts and hayne in the front line.
Great blog phil
Wow you've really put some thought into this.How would you think Humble would go as opposed to Burty.Dont get me wrong I love Burty to death but believe Humble is better attacking from the back.
I just love your way of thinking Phil.
I'd like burt at the back. Hes prob only got a year or so left in him and he'd be keeping it warm for marmin barba to develop a little more. Don't get me wrong on humble either, but i think humble would be more suited to a dynamic hooker interchange position. Maybe next year will be mcguires last, thats if he even gets another contract (which i hope he does).
So i'd have
1. Burt (teaching Barba)
6. Hayne
7. Sandow
9. Mcguire (morts when we lose mcguire)
14. Morts ( humble when we lose mcguire)
Totally agree Phil. we have the team to do it know 1.Humble 6.Hayne 7.Morts 13.Maitua 9.McGuire. If Humble is not available Burt or Reddy to fullback. Walker wing or centre.
SK has to make changes before the season is well and truely gone.
I love reading your blogs. (sidenote: interchanging then/than and to/too is a little jarring)
I'm still a bit bi-polar when it comes to Hayne at #6. I believe he will be phenomenal wherever he plays. He's unfortunate in that he doesn't fit the stereotyped skillsets defined for each position. If he plays at #1, he's going to be a ball-playing full-back. If he plays at #6, he's going to be a ball-running half-back.
If we had high-quality halves, would we be having the conversation about moving him? Next season, if we have Hayne and Sandow in the halves, and Murray is absolutely killing it in the lower grades, but our #1 is playing really poorly.. are we all going to be harping on about moving Hayne back to #1? Saying how Hayne doesn't quite fit the mold of a standard #6?
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