Ok, so we've thrown around a bunch of ideas here this week about players and I've settled on the team for the Roosters. I'm sure you'll all rest easy tonight knowing that. Clearly against the Roosters, we need Sandow's attack - so dropping or benching him is not an option - but SBW running at him all night, is a bit of a scary thought, so it poses the question as to what are we going to do? I of course have the answer, and it's one I've trotted out to some derision in the past. But given that Kenny was the King has come around to my Sandow defending at fullback idea, I feel I have the green light to move forward with this plan. Thanks Kenny. The Eels will be grateful.
This is the perfect game to give this theory a try. We're not going to have to move Jarryd, and so the downgrade as a fullback is not as big a deal as it would normally be. What's more, we take on a Roosters outfit, who will be missing their two halves and so one would expect their kicking game is going to be significantly inferior to what it otherwise would have been. Less big bombs and pressure kicks for Sandow to worry about. I'm guessing Morts will be one of the the halves. Not so scary.
Moving Sandow to defend at the back does complicate the fullback selection, because it means you have to bring someone into the side who represents an upgrade in defensive capabilities. That rules out Jake Mullaney as he's certainly not an upgrade defensively. You could possibly bring in Jarome Mackenzie, have him defend on the wing and move Vai Toutai in to defend in the centres but Mackenzie is only returning from injury and it would be a tough match for Vai to get a taste of defending in the centres.
The solution is for Brayden Wiliame to get the nod as fullback and then defend in the centres. Wiliame played fullback for the Storm at NYC level for all of the 2010 season I believe, and given that he was named on an extended bench, Ricky obviously feels he is up to NRL standard.
I don't feel like we've got anything to lose by trying this. If it works, and Sandow does a decent job, it provides us with an option for helping Sandow avoid being targetted going forward. Hayne can obviously defend in the centres, given he has done it at SOO level, and you could even have the two swap defensive positions during the match depending on where you are in the field, and just to mix things up somewhat and again make it harder for the attack to carry out a gamplan.
And if Ricky does what I believe he should do, following SOO and finally pair Sandow and Hayne together, then this could be an audition for our defensive structure for the rest of the year.
Super armchair coach strikes again. Boom.
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Plus. My son's name is Brayden, so he'll be super excited to have a bloke with that name in the side, so there's even more upside.
you do know we have the bye this week and all players will be available for the Roosters match?
Doh. I'm dumb.
I would expect most of the Origin players to back up for this game 1Eyed, since they're all backs...
But again, love the creativity. Personally not a fan of Sandow at fullback though, I feel like whenever the opposition made a break, without fail, they would score a try.
Have sandow defend on the wing but then again we can't trust out wingers or centers to help him
So every time a team makes a break they score, those 6 breaks or whatever we concede a game even before we got Sandow all turn into tries. The only real solution is for Sandow to learn how to tackle or leave.
no no no no no.. Can you imagine Chrissy cleaning up? I don't think so.
Phil I know as hard as it is to accept Sandows defence, but hes our halfback for the next two and a half years, we have to put up with it. It's not going to happen and it just wouldn't work effectively.
I honestly can't accept it. I've been saying since the early rounds of last year, we can't be a competitive team, with such a glaring problem in our defence. Yes, we have other problems, but for frack's sake, we're on our way to back-to-back wooden spoons - do we really need more evidence?
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