Match Discussion: Finals Week 1 vs Rabbitohs @ ANZ Stadium

[NoSchitSherlock]

Our forwards can hit it up straight and made metres early on but I question it when it wasn't as effective. I would have liked a bit more angle on the runs. Ese Ese did so at times.
Same goes with our line passes against Souths. We were deep but there was little running onto the ball or sliding and turning the ball back in. Those teams that performed over the weekend did that and opened up gaps. We just tried to mostly get the ball across.

 

[Frederick]

Team is shit. I’m not wasting another year on these guys, it’s just not worth it. I have been a fan since day 1 but am sick and tired of these inept, heartless performances whilst teams like Penrith are cruising.

Maybe it would have been better if they did go broke and were relocated...

I won’t be putting another cent into this joke of a club...

 

[Yosh]

I think the middles were fine. We needed to spread the ball early in half more often. I would love to see some more wrap around plays using our back rowers next year. We did two against the Rabbits and we scored twice.

 

[Spot On]

Am I saying we have the best pack in the league? No. But would I prefer our pack (not including hooker obviously) over 12 other NRL sides. Yes.

Our forwards literally hit it up one out 99% of the time. I would argue our middle forwards have the most difficult job in the league. They know they are going to get smashed as teams know we don't spread the ball. The service from dummy half is nothing special either. We never kick early so opposition players just aim up and hit hard.

I guarantee that once we get some attacking flair in the side (especially coming out from our own end), our middle forwards will be killing it week in week out.

Where's this attacking flair going to come from Yosh? And why would it begin coming out of our own end?

My original question was whether you have seen our pack physically dominate their opposition?

 

[Yosh]

Where's this attacking flair going to come from Yosh? And why would it begin coming out of our own end?

My original question was whether you have seen our pack physically dominate their opposition?

Dominate? We are 2nd most for run metres made and 2nd worst for conceded. Clearly we are doing something wrong. Is this what you mean dominate? Concede less metres?

If we vary our attack, put the opposition in two minds, give our forwards a little more room, boom we will 100% dominate. Get faster play the balls, make more line breaks and get off more offloads.

In defense, we need to have better line speed. What's with us always waiting and backing off? That's not how the Storm or Roosters defend.

 

[Knight Vision]

Dominate? We are 2nd most for run metres made and 2nd worst for conceded. Clearly we are doing something wrong. Is this what you mean dominate? Concede less metres?

If we vary our attack, put the opposition in two minds, give our forwards a little more room, boom we will 100% dominate. Get faster play the balls, make more line breaks and get off more offloads.

In defense, we need to have better line speed. What's with us always waiting and backing off? That's not how the Storm or Roosters defend.

Teams with more offloads and line breaks tend to have a lower completion rate ( Panthers being the exception ) we play a VERY conservative style of footy - 1st in the competition in 1 pass hit-ups

High completions, low offloads leading to low amount of line breaks and 2nd last in line engagements.

 

[Jono078]

Dominate? We are 2nd most for run metres made and 2nd worst for conceded. Clearly we are doing something wrong. Is this what you mean dominate? Concede less metres?

Wow that's really interesting actually..

I just looked at the Fox Sports team stats and it shows we were 3rd for run metres and 4th for conceded.

I think a big majority for this could be put down to the shit kicking game, we seem to concede a lot on kick returns and also put ourselves on the back foot with those kicks that go dead and award 7 tackle sets.

We were 4th in tackles inside the opponents 20 (only behind Panthers, Storm and Eels). That indicates we had some poor finishing or attacking skills since we were many tries behind these teams. We were also 12th for forced dropouts.

Other interesting stats are we led the comp with 1-out hit-ups by a fair margin. Average was around 78% and we were 91.5%

We had the second least line engagements, only Broncos were worse. Not entirely sure how they measure this but this would tell me we didn't concern the defense all that often. Also to go along with this, we were 3rd lowest for general pass plays, I suppose this ties in with the 1-out hit-up stat.

 

[Knight Vision]

Wow that's really interesting actually..

I just looked at the Fox Sports team stats and it shows we were 3rd for run metres and 4th for conceded.

I think a big majority for this could be put down to the shit kicking game, we seem to concede a lot on kick returns and also put ourselves on the back foot with those kicks that go dead and award 7 tackle sets.

We were 4th in tackles inside the opponents 20 (only behind Panthers, Storm and Eels). That indicates we had some poor finishing or attacking skills since we were many tries behind these teams. We were also 12th for forced dropouts.

Other interesting stats are we led the comp with 1-out hit-ups by a fair margin. Average was around 78% and we were 91.5%

We had the second least line engagements, only Broncos were worse. Not entirely sure how they measure this but this would tell me we didn't concern the defense all that often. Also to go along with this, we were 3rd lowest for general pass plays, I suppose this ties in with the 1-out hit-up stat.

We are 2nd in RMC sandwiched between the Bulldogs and Broncos and 5 thousand mtrs away from 1st place
https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nr...defenceAndDiscipline&sortBy=runMetresConceded

 

[Knight Vision]

We were also 12th for forced dropouts

this is a huge one. We fail to stay down their end and build any kind of pressure.

 

[mozza91]

I can’t believe 4 teams forced less dropouts than us.

 

[Jono078]

We are 2nd in RMC sandwiched between the Bulldogs and Broncos and 5 thousand mtrs away from 1st place
https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nr...defenceAndDiscipline&sortBy=runMetresConceded

That's if you look at the total, it looks like it counts the finals games. Average we are a bit better than second most!

Either way, still an area of improvement to focus on over the off season.

 

[Knight Vision]

That's if you look at the total, it looks like it counts the finals games. Average we are a bit better than second most!

Either way, still an area of improvement to focus on over the off season.

I was wondering that also. I think they are including the finals in those stats. In any case we fair quite poorly. We have a habit of not wrapping the legs up and a lot of post contact mtrs gained.

I'd love to see a team come out and start to tackle in the traditional way- straight around the legs. The game has gone in such a direction that opposition teams would find it hard to adapt the that kind of defense.

 

[Knight76]

Other interesting stats are we led the comp with 1-out hit-ups by a fair margin. Average was around 78% and we were 91.5%

Yet after the Titans game, AOB sat in the press conference and made a comment about the one out hit ups. Was he seriously trolling the press? If he sits up there and actually watches the games, he would see we have been one out hit up team all year, and when he took over and did his research, he would have seen the one out hitups were a thing here for a long time.

His comment was "We didn't look like doing much with the ball when we had it, it was sort of like under 8's there for a little bit, running one out and trying to solve it on our own and didn't look connected".

Seriously he does watch our games yeah? I'm thinking he is too close to it to see it to be honest.

But, it's concerning they have been playing this way right in front of him, looking like they just came together for this one game with no training in attack, passing one off the ruck all the way through sets, and he doesn't pick up on it.

We could round up 17 random players from all different NRL teams, get them all to catch a different bus to the ground and give them all a pep talk on the game plan, and they would look much like we do.

 

[AusKnightRKO]

We need a proper 6 and Hooker if we want to move away from the one out style.

We have half of that with Brailey, if Either Tex becoming the 6, or getting one from the market, also hopefully this off season we push for a decent attack coach.

 

[Old dog]

We don’t have a 6 due mainly to our 7, our 6 needs to be an experienced 6 who has a few years left in him. Pearce will dominate while he has a young/inexperienced 6, so suck it up, we have 1/maybe 2 plus to go. Crossland and Hoy will not be 6 or 7 while Pearce is here, may not be ever be.

 

[Knight Vision]

We don’t have a 6 due mainly to our 7, our 6 needs to be an experienced 6 who has a few years left in him. Pearce will dominate while he has a young/inexperienced 6, so suck it up, we have 1/maybe 2 plus to go. Crossland and Hoy will not be 6 or 7 while Pearce is here, may not be ever be.

Totally agree, my heart sinks when people mention Hoy alongside Pearce.

With only his past to go by Pearce has always had a fairly seasoned pro alongside him certainly not a rookie.

Edit- I'd almost go as far to say if a rookie is put alongside Pearce it could destroy the kid. He'd be the scapegoat and hung out to dry

 

[Yosh]

I can’t believe 4 teams forced less dropouts than us.

We were in the opposition 20m a lot more than they were.

Not a stats guy but if we could compare the amount of forced dropouts relative to the amount of tackles we had in the opposition 20m, we would be last.

 

[Jono078]

We were in the opposition 20m a lot more than they were.

Not a stats guy but if we could compare the amount of forced dropouts relative to the amount of tackles we had in the opposition 20m, we would be last.

I worked it out tackles insides opposition 20 vs forced drop outs and we are second worst behind Manly. Basically takes us 5 sets of 6 in the 20 before we get a repeat set.. To compare it to Panthers, they only need 14 tackles or approx. 3 sets.

 

[Spot On]

We are 2nd in RMC sandwiched between the Bulldogs and Broncos and 5 thousand mtrs away from 1st place
https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nr...defenceAndDiscipline&sortBy=runMetresConceded

Yep, because we don't defend aggressively enough. Definite lack of physicality in our game and it has been obvious for most of the year.

 

[Knight Vision]

I worked it out tackles insides opposition 20 vs forced drop outs and we are second worst behind Manly. Basically takes us 5 sets of 6 in the 20 before we get a repeat set.. To compare it to Panthers, they only need 14 tackles or approx. 3 sets.

Wow, that's a damning stat right there

Yep, because we don't defend aggressively enough. Definite lack of physicality in our game and it has been obvious for most of the year.

and it showed on a number of occasions.

A few times there was a dog shot on one our players that barely raised an eyebrow from our pack......juxtaposed to the hit JWH put on Ponga last year and the whole teams reaction to it.

We are way too passive.