To the uneducated NRL viewers it is easy to put the blame on Blake. But after rewatching the highlights, Arthur defence was so bad, that it has honeslty resulted in Waqa Blake defensive reads looking horrible. Blake couldn't do much more and really just hope for the best. Any player would expose the edge. As I said last week with a lot of examples, Arthur doesn't slide. I am not saying Blake is a great defender, but fuck me some of you don't understand that Blake can't do much with such shit defense on his inside. The sprays he has copped is so BS that I had to stand up for him. Without trying to hate Arthur, it was the worst defensive peformances I have seen by an individual player this season. I really expected Super to have better knowledge of the game rather than his harsh criticism of Blake's defensive reads tonight.
First Try
As you can see, Matterson has slid to mark Shuster which means that Arthur should be sliding so Blake can slide and mark his outside. However, Arthur doesn't slide and decides to play at Schuster. Therefore, Blake has to hold on the decoy (Keppie) causing a massive overlapp. It's not fair to blame Blake. He just followed the principals of marking his inside first. Can you really blame Blake for this try and for why he didn't trust Arthur at all, leading him to compress in? If Blake slided to tackle Turbo and Shuster played short there would still be a line break. So Blake could do nothing. After the poor defense, ideally, Fergo should of just slided in hope Blake would take Turbo, Fergo take Parker and Gutho take Garrick.
Second Try
As you can see Matterson slides again to tackle Shuster. However, Arthur is standing in the middle of no where. He does not slide and is not marking his outside. Because Manly are so close to the eels goal line, Blake cannot compress a lot because he doesn't have enough space between Manly and the try line to cover defend any wide spread. He needs to keep his width. Really Blake us sliding because he should of expected Arthut to slide to mark Lawton. However, Arthur is oblivious and misreads it. Blake tries to react but is too late as he has to mark his outside. If Blake is close on Lawton, Shuster would play out the back to Turbo and every fan would blaming Blake for isolated Fergo on a 3 v 1. Again, nothing Blake could really do. Schuster is just manipulates that right edge so brilliantly.
Fourth Try
Again Matterson slides an actually tackles Schuster. Arthur is too interested and commits to the tackle of Schuster for no reason instead of sliding. As a result, Blake has to mark the short pass, but Schuster plays out the back to Turbo who than passes to Garrick to score. WTF can Blake do. He can't do shit. He has been left in a vulnerable position in all three tries because of Arthur. All Blake can do is hope and pray Schuster fucks up and passes to the wrong player.
Other Notes:
The third try Blake made the ineffective tackle for the offload, but he tackled from the back so the other player should of done better. The last try, Blake was in the sin bin. I heard someone say he will get picked up for a shoulder charge on Turbo. The tackle was fine. He wrapped his arms and it was not late. However, Blake needs to fix his tackling technique. His aggression means he swings his arms so because it is "forceful" most his high tackles will lead to a sin bin.
Replies
I hope that I have opened some of your eyes. Please, I am not saying Blake is a great defender, but fml Arthur was horrible which lead to Blake looking like a toad.
Good analysis EA. Jake was definitely poor last night.
Manly came in with a very simple plan which was to target an edge with a rookie (lightweight) half, a known poor defender who is probably lacking some fitness, and Fergo who is hardly a defensive beast.
We had piled all our weaknesses into one small area and had no Plan B. Combine that with a slick attacking outfit with a lot of confidence and we get last nights result.
When we think of the players we lost - Marata has been a defensive workhorse, and Dylan is the best defensive half in the competition in terms of workrate at the moment. The rest of our team did mainly as they always do, we had better posession and better go-forward, we more or less stuck to the plan. We just couldn't grind them down because we had a glaring hole in our defense thanks to a mix of JA, Waqa and Fergo.
I don't think it's fair to single out any one of them, but JA obviously gets a bit of a pass since it's his second first grade game. This is why Waqa is copping so much criticism.
To be fair I think it was a team composition mistake more than anything. This was obviously going to be the target area and we simply weren't up to snuff - we got a taste of it against the Warriors and we KNEW Manly were going to be better at exploiting it. Had we had either Dylan Brown or Marata in place for that game I honestly believe we would have won.
After saying all that, I still think Waqa isn't our best player in that spot and has to now be behind Marata in the pecking order.
Blake is rubbish
yep! there were more example of Jakobs 'defence' as well. As i said in another blog he is miles off being ready for first grade and it's hard to be harsh on the kid. BA has made it clear to everyone that the players came to him and asked him to play young Jake, maybe as a reward for his training and preseason efforts but it's now past time for Brad to actually be a coach and pull him back. He's a long long way off being a first grader. I hope he gets there but sending him out there to get abused again next week will be bad for himself and the team. Was an atrocious defensive performance yesterday and a complete inability to know what's required of him in defence. There's been plenty of example of it in Cup too. He's basically a just graduated schoolboy player that should be playing another 50 games of Cup minimum before he gets another shot in NRL..no other club, including the Dogs, would be putting him out there. He was directly involved in every point we leaked yesterday and a complete non factor in attack. Manly were throwing shape at him he had no idea how to handle and setting him up for the next one. The last try wasnt helped from his physical limitations (ie his complete lack of speed) which is more forgivable. Again, this isn't his fault, it's the coach's inability to recognise his son not being physically or developmentally ready for first grade . There was no hurry to get him in there now.
Also the Waqa / Fergo combo needs to be split up immediately. It's done nothing but leak points for 2 years and there's no trust or communication between the 2. Some of Fergos play yesterday was horrendous. That edge is again a massive problem.
Blake has sabotaged 20+ games. JA may be underdone. But no excuses can be made for Blake. It's way past that. And it's way past mockery.
Blake isn't helped by Fergo and Arthur .I'd swapBlake and Opacic and keep the 6 and 7 where they were last year
What about the other 300 games hes cost us . Have you considered JA was out of sorts as he knew he had an imposter in the line ?
Blake has only lost 11 games at the Eels, from 34 starts. All of them defending outside Moses (9 games), Jai Field (1 game) and Jake Arthur (1 game).
Its def not just Blake. Its unbelievable that combo hasn't been fixed but I think Dylan's return will ease some pressure.
Ok Pou , ya got me . I kinda exaggerated the 300 for dramatic purposes .
truth is , he sat beside me once whilst my Queen of The Nile was going off , but once he put his bum down it never paid another cent . So I have ulterior motive in jumping on the Waqa hate train .
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