There are a few stand out individuals that on a weekly basis make terrible reads or efforts in defence, and the calls on here for their dropping / positional change etc have been well represented in other threads.
But as a team, even with good defenders among them, they are being easily exposed every single week. They seem to have no trust in their team mates and the defensive structures and intensity are near non existent from a coached perspective. In the periods of games where they have been good, I put it more down to individual talent standing up, rather than any coached defensive plan.
So I genuinely ask not only 'who' is our defensive coach, but do we have one at all. Because wether they are being told something by a coach or there's no coach to tell them, the boys aren't hearing anything.
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The structures and intensity are certainly not great, however they unravel so quickly beacuse of how atrocious our missed tackles / drop offs are. Our structures cannot hold nor can team mates have any trust with those around them when players are dropping off tackles so easily. It must be a mental thing surely. I ve posted this elsewhere but its apt in this blog as well.
Missed tackles.
Yes for sure, and it's so front and centre every game, clear for everyone watching to see, the scrambling has kept us in games sure, but there hasn't been a single game where the front line has held for that first contact consistently. There always seems to be at least one and quite often more than one player jersey grabbing or clutching at air.
It's supposed to be BA and someone else.
Explains a lot then...
I believe it is BA and Steve Antonelli. Antonelli was the ruck coach at Souths for two years.
Okay, without research, just jumping here to ask the question, I did have my suspicions that BA was taking this on himself, not because of the poor results , but because of his 'chase the collision' bread and butter.
I would like to see them take on a former player known for their intensity and preferably, their borderline legal technique. With the idea that, the medium ground between their ruthlessness and the players 'I don't want to get charged'mindset, could produce the defence we are looking for.
The old, "the coach isn't missing the tackles", quote. Dude the coach isn't making the takles or scoring the tries either so why do they get credit when their team is performing well but to a few on here BA shouldn't get any criticism when the team is performing badly. The bottom line is the coach is responsible for how the players perform on a week to week basis, you can hold the players to account if it's a one off every now and then but if it's an ongoing problem, which it has been since BA has been coach, then the coach is accountable.
X a billion
so sick of this line too
He just doesn't inspire - he doesn't
whether it's cos he doesn't hold players accountable and drop them
or
whether his coaching is batshit boring and predictable so everyone just goes through the motions - never learning , never growing 🤷♀️
A bit of all of the above. The players obviously like him, that's not such a good thing, a little bit of fear wouldn't go astray. The bosses I have respected the most in my work life have been the ones I also feared to disappoint.
Me too
mainly because I aspired to be as good as them 🤔......, nuff said
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