Souths and Melbourne-------- daylight-------- chooks, manly (at times)------- daylight-------- the rest of the comp.
I think this has been pretty ordinary year, even last year was pretty shit as well (and my team was actually alright in 2012). I have said it before and I'll say it again, the lads that play now are more athlete than footballer. What players lack in football ability they make up for in spades these days is in the gym/fitness department.
A player like Cameron Smith can be built like a lesbian librarian but still carve up and run rings around the other players who are obviously a lot stronger and faster, is because he has a footballing brain and knows how to play 'the game'. I think the problem is they spend too much time eating weights and not enough learning how to hit holes and create over laps and how to pass to players in a better position than themselves.
That's the key I think. Talent scouts go out and watch junior teams and see the bigger, stronger, faster 12 year old brushing past the little blokes. And so we end up with the players that were big and strong in junior leagues being developed through the NRL system. A reason why there's so many islanders in the NRL system is because they mature faster and at a certain age are so much bigger than the other kids it's not funny.
And so we have players whose soul purpose is to run hard in attack and hit hard in defence, yet don't know what to do in certain situations.
Tony Williams for example, a hopeless winger yet a good backrower. Runs hard and hits hard, yet when it comes to defensive reads or attacking moves, is caught standing still more often than not.
And then we have plays like Vai Toutai batting the ball back in when it was about to go dead in round 3. Only someone who didn't know the rules would have done that.
max. of two can tackle the man with the ball.
that would speed up the game and you would see way more tackle busts
We can't implement a max amount of tacklers rule. It would be softer than the shoulder charge rule and half the players in the defensive line would be second-guessing themselves as to whether they will give away a penalty or not. We could make a rule about coming into tackles. The big plan now is to have two players hold the runner up until they stop moving and a 3rd player take the legs to bring them to ground and have the tacklers get off one by one, thereby making the play-the-ball as long as it can possibly be, leading to boring footy.
I don't mind watching low-scoring, slow games when it's tough footy. But at the moment it's either been slow because of the amount of wrestle (Storm) or slow because of errors (most teams below 5th).
