I wish we could run the ball back from our line as well as Manly do. Gee we struggled at times. Funny the only time that I noted good gains from our goal line was when the backs took it up from dummy half - something that Brian Smith does and Ando doesn't.
I went to a Brian Smith coaching clinic in the late 90's. I remember he was highly critical of the commentators for bum-steering the public about how rugby league is played. He said that after a team fields a long kick, the commentators are always saying the forwards need to hurry back so they can make hit-ups, oblivious to the fact that the most consistent yardage in the game was made by "fullbacks and wingers and some centres" - his exact words - out of dummy half.
Of course this was over a decade ago and the game has certainly changed since then, what with minor changes to rules and interpretations having massive effects on the way rugby league is played.
Who could forget the reinterpretation of the 10m rule at the end of 2001 that basically nullified our dummy-half momentum game. The Roosters under Ricky Stuart figured out how to exploit the new rule interpretation before anyone else and they had the massive pack capable of doing it.
Meanwhile we had to go back to the drawing board with the smallest, most mobile pack in the game (great by 2001 rules, woeful by 2002 rules).
This led to our policy of 'buying big' for 2004 where we got all those useless big units - Pearson, Stapleton, Cannings, etc - who just weren't good enough. Lucky for us, Paul Stringer and Fui appeared about this time.
