Spitty
Juniors
- Messages
- 1,113
I hate to be a dooms dayer but I think this needs to be discussed.
Last night we all saw for the first time the Johns/Smith combination.
Let me start by saying Canberra were brilliant and Knights were woeful full stop.
But I noticed early on in the game Joey was playing two or three passes wide of the ruck in attack. Mullen was doing the organising and Joey was pretty much running the ball and doing some new off the ball plays.
After the score got to 16-6 though Joey moved into first receiver and started to control the game. As a result Mullo went missing for the rest of the game. Joey started to combine with his usual runners (Simpson and Thiaday both dropped the ball off inside passes and Thiaday scored off a cut out pass) but when neither of those players were around there no one was running off him. A couple of times Joey took on the line and sucked the defence across and set up the inside pass, but no one was there. Then later he spread the ball right and a cut out pass that sailed past Patto, Tighe and Macdougall and over the side line.
It looked like there was no understanding between Joey and the rest of the team. The team were still playing to Smith's game plan but Joey had moved to his ad-lib style game plan. So our attack was going no where and noone knew what was going on.
To add to that there was the post match press conference where Smith referred to the "Leadership group" (a carefully planned answer if I've ever heard one) then said that Dougs was "Man enough" to attend the press conference.
Have we seen the first clash between the Joey style and the Smith style? and if so can it be corrected?
Last night we all saw for the first time the Johns/Smith combination.
Let me start by saying Canberra were brilliant and Knights were woeful full stop.
But I noticed early on in the game Joey was playing two or three passes wide of the ruck in attack. Mullen was doing the organising and Joey was pretty much running the ball and doing some new off the ball plays.
After the score got to 16-6 though Joey moved into first receiver and started to control the game. As a result Mullo went missing for the rest of the game. Joey started to combine with his usual runners (Simpson and Thiaday both dropped the ball off inside passes and Thiaday scored off a cut out pass) but when neither of those players were around there no one was running off him. A couple of times Joey took on the line and sucked the defence across and set up the inside pass, but no one was there. Then later he spread the ball right and a cut out pass that sailed past Patto, Tighe and Macdougall and over the side line.
It looked like there was no understanding between Joey and the rest of the team. The team were still playing to Smith's game plan but Joey had moved to his ad-lib style game plan. So our attack was going no where and noone knew what was going on.
To add to that there was the post match press conference where Smith referred to the "Leadership group" (a carefully planned answer if I've ever heard one) then said that Dougs was "Man enough" to attend the press conference.
Have we seen the first clash between the Joey style and the Smith style? and if so can it be corrected?
