SJ retires, and we bring Brown in
6 Brown
7 TMM
Yes please.
No brainner with Martin playing so well at Seven.
Brown would bring a half way decent kicking game to add to Te Maire's developing kicking game.
Both are halves that play direct, so they would radically change the Warriors game play style to a more assertive reactive game play that reads what the defence is doing.
This is critical when you consider the freak talent the Warriors are sitting on in their reserves and Junior power running forwards.
At the moment with our uber structured SJ ball, the NSW cup hard running Juniors are not going to shine under a game plan that is played wrote by numbers where only a select few targets get hit with ball into gaps....I am talking short balls to AFB and Niukore, whereby any Junior like Laban or Ale, or Maiúu, or Sifakula, are only going to be used to run decoys.
If you paired TMM with Brown, every runner is live, there is no scripted set up plays that ignore looking left for options.
I just think with the depth we have in running forwards coming through, the Warriors need to lean into their dna, Daniel Anderson ball, I mean how else do you get the best out of young fast impact forwards that have footwork? or tackle busting Centers like Moala and Ali who will be our future Center pairing.
SJ ball is contigent on him laying on the set up with his skill set.
TMM and Brown play a style where they do not do anything special apart from run at the line and pick a target with crisp ball that is in a better position than them....making their method of play harder to read than Johnsons game.
And TMM counts numbers where SJ does not so much, SJ has a brain wired from being better than anyone at attack, where he will create and then lay on a Try. Martin and Brown are card counters, they look outside their own bubble and send the ball to the weak side for someone else to create the try (which is where this club is heading when Dimitric Sifakula, Leka Halasima, and the Moala Graham Taufas of the world....those kids need a half that takes it to the line creating a half gap which they will destroy off a flat ball.
That attacking at the line play fits in well with Walkers game, where he plays fast flat balls at the line, and it fits in well with Egans new style where he does the same, plays those soft passes, the no look balls he does at the line which AFB feeds off....now imagine that game style being driven by the halves pairing of the Warriors, that would make us one of the best attacking sides in the NRL without losing much if anything in defence.
And it would be a natural playing style rather than needing template coaching, the type of game Webster talks about with his penchant for plans that suit the players rather than the other way around (and after three games in a row where Webster coached new line ups to beat the Panthers, Dolphins and then thrashed the Cowboys .
Often times our coaches mantras are nonsense, like process and all that crap. But no one can dismiss Websters mantra of using players strengths after he took three different line ups to three wins over top four and top eight sides.
Most of all that is New Zealand style Rugby league, a way of playing that our Junior stars understand, run, catch, tear through the half gap, offload.