Watching the Cowboy's v Dragons on the weekend & one thing I noticed was Jason Taumalolo seemed to be nowhere in defence. He was a monster in attack so after the game I had a look at his stats for the game & he only made 15 tackles. That is below half the tackle count of most good forwards so I wonder if teams might start running more at him early on to wear him down a bit. I have no doubt he is a great runner of the ball but I would like to see how good he goes if he has to defend as much as most forwards do in a game. I hope BA takes note when we have to play the cowboys because he is definatly the Cowboys go to man. Stop him & we stop them.
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The Cowboys dominated the match and the Dragons lacked go forward. So if your team isn't going anywhere you become easy pickings for the defence. His tackling numbers are usually around 30 which is about average for a middle forward.
No doupt he is a beast & I don't have any doupt he is an attacking machine, I just found it strange seeing such a low tackle count for a forward. Yes I understand the Dragons wern't great so that could have something to do with his low numbers. I do hope we keep him a bit busier when we play them because we really don't want him running for over 300 metres when we play them.
Green has moved Lolo to the edge this year whereas most of his career has been spent in the middle. That would explain the drop off in tackles. What an absolute beast he was on the weekend.
Looks like Bronco's agree.
When it comes to stopping Jason Taumalolo, forcing him to make 51 tackles rather than 15 would be a start. In a nutshell, Brisbane's simple aim in the Queensland derby clash with the Cowboys on Friday night is to reduce the impact the North Queensland wrecking ball has on the match.
Coach Anthony Seibold revealed a big clue to Brisbane's modus operandi against Taumalolo when referring to the 15 tackles he made against the Dragons on Saturday night, a minimal defensive workload which freed the Tongan international to make 286m with the ball and leave a trail of devastation in his wake.
"He's a dangerous player that is for sure," Seibold said.
"You are never going to take away his weapons. What we have got to try and do is minimise his weapons.
"The big thing is that we want to make him make some tackles. Jason only made 15 tackles last week. You want to make sure he has to get into the tackles a little bit more and it is the same with all of their forwards. They are real weapons and if we don't stand strong in the middle they are going to come through us."
Seibold said Taumalolo was just as much of a handful on the edge as in the middle and has challenged his starting props Tevita Pangai jnr and Joe Ofahengaue against a pack that also contains Origin and international stars Jordan McLean, Matt Scott, Coen Hess, Gavin Cooper and former Bronco Josh McGuire.
"I thought Tevita was really good off the bench [against Melbourne]. He played almost 50 minutes so he is going to start, and it's a big challenge for Joe," Seibold said.
"I thought he has been really consistent in our pre-season and he does a lot of things that go unnoticed but it is a big challenge for those guys.
"One thing we have seen with Jason when he plays on the edge is that he does a lot of their set-up plays and gets a quick play the ball … and we've got to make sure we get our bodies in front and do the job on Jason when he goes through the middle."
I won't divulge too much but we need to make sure we move them around a little bit and make them feel fatigue.
"We had a look at arm wrestles across the competition last week and ball-in-play times and one thing we did see was that their weren't a whole heap of arm wrestles in their game against the Dragons. We need to make sure we keep the ball in play and put some fatigue into those guys but it is easier said than done."
Spot on Jim, he is a beast, if you leave his tank full, he will destroy you. A player of Taumalolo's talent can never be totally nullified, but the damage he can create can be kept to a manageable level by running his tank low.
Id like to see the forwards faces when they get told the game plan.