I like to say a few things about the way we are playing this year to date. So here goes.
In my opinion the reason we nearly lost against the Dogs is we played very slow. From the opening set I said to my girlfriend we are just so slow. Why are we so slow? We were playing safe and well enough, but without an up beat tempo.
So once the Dogs stopped making errors and moving the ball around we didn't go up a gear to break them down again. They sensed it and they said as much in the post match interviews.
So that isn't a sign of just physical weakness in our team, but more a sign of metal fatigue setting in at this point in the season. Sure it manifests itself with a physical lack lustre approach, but it comes down to mental fatigue more then just physical or at least its equal. But more so my greater concern is that we don't have a great attacking structure overall which is a significant contributor to our spasmodic performances. Even when we are playing well we don't have enough variation in our bag of tricks. I find this very concerning this late in the season. We should have started to dismantle teams with intelligent attacking raids by now.
Instead, we are basically slogging it out with Junior our main attacking weapon due to his ability for a late offload, being our go to option when we get bogged down and devoid of ideas. Our lead half is not managing the game well enough at this point and like I have said before in another post, we don't have enough runners in motion for most of our plays.
Sterlo's point that we do to much one out running is spot on and what I have said before. It is just to predictable and yeah sure we can and have gotten away with it during the earlier part of the season, but now the players are getting worn down and mentally tired of having to bash their bodies at almost every play to make good yardage.
Sure we have the best power game in the NRL in my opinion, but that only works when you are fresh mentally and physically. You can't sustain that for an entire season and not come out at the pointy end of the season broken. If we didn't have the brains trust to play smarter fancier footy, I would say fair enough, play to your strengths and hope for the best but we do. We have two back rowers that have shown in the past that they can run great lines and have enviable ball skills with size and power. Why are they being ignored and used so poorly? We have a lock that besides loving to run like a run away train has footwork and ball skills too, why is his game so one dimensional?
We have a pair of halves that are the envy of the NRL and yet they rarely combine with any real plan in mind. Moses has actually gotten quieter in quality playmaking and his kicking game seems a little off from last season. He is not demanding enough from his forwards. He is not setting up two and three plays in advance for a set outcome where he has spotted a weakness in the opposition.
He has been around now long enough to have studied and practiced plays from the greats of our past. He should have pet plays by now, you know, like Thurston had with Gavin Cooper. Thurston would identify a weak defensive combination between the backrower and centre and work toward exposing them and voila bang Cooper comes in at the right speed and angle to feed off Thurston's perfect short pass. This is just one very simple play, that should be easily part of our arsenal in attack.
We are not using our centres well enough also. I've said it before, D. Brown is a very dumb player right now. He loves to run, which is a wonderful trait in a half, but not at every opportunity when there are much better ones around him if he gives earlier ball to his outside men. I know I am harping on this but I really want us to use our backrowers much better. Shoot, they are massive units with big motors and built to run and the ability to deliver a brilliant pass. Why are we not seeing them in more space? They should be tearing it up.
Also, one of our wingers has caught a cold out there this season. If our coaching staff don't see an issue in this then maybe that is why our attack is so cumbersome if we aren't on top with our awesome power game. But like I said that will be much harder to sustain during the finals against the best teams. The lack of successful attacking options down Fergo's flank is a symptom of our failure as a team to work teams over with smarts.
I will only say two things about our dummy half and that is to say he is burning out and how can you go into a season with only one young recognised dummy half?
Notice that I haven't said anything about our fullback or front rowers? Well that is because they are the only two positions that we have gotten right this season and a massive reason besides our much improved defense that we are travelling as well as we are. But even they could be doing it easier and have greater impact and opportunities if we addressed all the other things and used our gifted players better. We have to get this right at least somewhat to have any real chance of winning back to back games in the finals series this year. Defensively strong, but also smart attacking teams generally win Grand Finals. At this point in time we are only half there.
