It wasn’t his best game, but he wasn’t shite.
He had two errors as I recall; one was a bad play the ball, attention-to -detail thing where he got tangled up. That was poor, but happens in a game due to sheer physics of the shape of the ball, weight of the players and angles bodies end up at. Yes he could have reduced those factors by holding the ball closer to his body. The other was a short pass that he put down before contact; hard ball to take but he probably should have. So that is two errors. In terms of missed tackles I can’t remember any major missed tackles (not like the rights miss of Manu that led to the ball being spread to the other side, or Crotter on Momo). I thought his first contact was excellent last night (same with Kiks on the other side); constantly hitting hard and turning the play back inside.
Thr SuperCoach point is that his worth to the team isn’t based on stats; he has a role to play that means he gets the ball significantly less frequently than the middle forwards. Martin’s role is to straighten up the right hand attack and create room for his outside men, and he does this really well by a) running his lines well (if you watch closely he almost always hits the outside shoulder or the edge back row defender that is protecting the defensive left half or the half, or a metre or so either side) and b) always being an option (he is always there and always runs with purpose). It would be great if he developed a pass after contact/offload, but that generally means more errors (see Kiks overall error count across the past few years and physics point above). In defence Martin hits hard; again his role and the reality is players bounce off him. This is bad from a tackle effectiveness perspective but doesn’t lead to momentum being created by the opposition.
So, did he have a good game? He did his job as described above in attack without being spectacular, and his defending was very good; so an average game for a SOO back rower. But he plays an integral role in a side that just beat the team coming 4th without really hitting any heights. But that stat doesn’t show up in SuperCoach and requires a greater understanding of the game plan to assess value.
