It's why I find calls for a more expansive game plan baffling.
They can't run five one-out hit ups and get a kick away without f**king something up.
I was one of the people calling for a “more expansive game plan” but allow me to clarify because I think it has been misinterpreted.
I’m not expecting the coaching staff to come up with complex set plays or moves involving our whole backline or anything like that but I want to see us play a more up-tempo brand of footy. Meaning we have bodies in motion and whenever a player takes the ball to the defensive line there are at least a couple of guys running alongside him to at least give us the option of passing or offloading the ball.
Sometimes you see our forwards looking for an offload yet the rest of our team is cooling their heels about 5 metres back just waiting for the next play, Watson is probably the only exception to that. So I’m not surprised when we go through a whole game with about 3 offloads from our whole team because no one is there giving these guys the option to pass.
We’ve seen the Saifitis, Klem, Barney and Frizell all offload before but it looks like it’s either being coached out of them or they must look at their teammates and think that no one is in position to create an opportunity with it.
I assume that we’ll have Crossland or Hoy (or both) in the halves over the next little while which isn’t ideal and I can’t see either of them standing up and dominating a game but this is where we have a bit of an opportunity to come up with a game style that utilises the skills of other players rather than just relying on Pearce/Ponga which has been the main focal point of our attack for a few years now.
Back in round 3 against the tigers DSaf threw a great short ball to Watson who cut right through a gap and set Pearce up under the posts. It was a really simple play but it was based on having multiple guys running at the defensive line together. We have barely seen anything like that since then which makes no sense to me. Surely this simple and very basic concept should be apparent to our coaching staff.
I can’t see us winning many more games (or any more games at all) by playing the predictable game style that we have been so why not mix it up a bit and play a bit more off the cuff? We have a team with Ponga, Watson and Mann who are all excellent broken field runners so why we don’t at least try and create more opportunities around the ruck is a complete mystery to me.
Anyway I’m not saying this fixes everything but we can’t keep turning up and playing the same way every week because teams have us worked out already.
