Poupou Escobar
Post Whore
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It's a sign of a middle defence that doesn't work hard enough. Those 'mentally strong' teams always get numbers in the tackle, so they rarely get to that point where they're buggered from backpedaling.
It's two very different variations on working hard, with very different outcomes. You can either front load your defensive effort, stifling the opposition attack, or you can conserve your effort and let the opposition force you to work hard on their terms. The latter option leads to the floggings.
As to the cause, it seems to be a lack of trust between the defenders. Can the player trust his mate to push into the gap he would leave by being aggressive and getting another body into the tackle? If they can stick solid and all work hard together they can hopefully force the opposition to blink first and make a poor decision, turning the ball over. Otherwise they find themselves defending reactively and being dictated to by the opposition.
Likewise, the other cause of big floggings is when the attack lacks patience and turns the ball over under defensive pressure, especially when they're behind on the scoreboard. We are great at this. The opposition gets two tries in front and their tails go up and they start getting off their line hard, and we respond by trying to score on every set. Teams like the Storm and even the Sharks can be 12 points down and they're still grinding through their sets, kicking long and trying to force a mistake. It always makes me nervous.
So trust and patience. These are things the mentally weak teams lack. They are both improved from quality leadership, which you generally get from your veterans. The captain isn't the only leader in the team, or even the best leader, but I think this is telling:
2019 NRL captains (number of games), ordered by ladder position
1. Smith (411)
2. Cordner (168)
3. Sutton (336)
4. Croker (257)
5. Gutherson (92)
6. Cherry-Evans (216)
7. Gallen (348)
8. Boyd (317)
9. Mbye (120)
10. Tamou (245)
11. Pearce (276)
12. Jackson (181)
13. Tuivasa-Sheck (160)
14. Morgan (160)
15. Widdop (195)
16. Roberts (153)
Obviously we have more experienced veterans than Gutherson (as do the Tigers with Mbye) but it surely means something that he's more suitable than our 200 game players. Is he such a great leader? I certainly f**king hope so.
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