This is how I see it working:
Earlier this year, Smith wanted to play with two loose forwards - one at lock, one at 5/8 and interchangeable hooker and half. I think Smith believes the 5/8 role is redundant and that if you need to have your attack go wider you simply move the half to 5/8 and stick a prop forward in as first receiver who distributes the ball to your playmaker.
I think he may have recognised the glaring weaknesses in this strategy. Firstly, interchanging hooker and half doesn't give you much variety as Dykes and Morris relatively similiar players and two loose forwards means your attacking options are limited. So here's the tweak.
Smith still sees the five-eighth role as redundant. We continue to use prop forwards as an additional link player
You instead play an interchangeable hooker, five-eighth between Riddell and Morris. That gives you either:
a) an extra player in the forwards if Morris goes into dummy half. If Riddell is on the field in this instance he is availabel to take a hit-up.
b) an extra playmaker to use on the otherside of the ruck if Riddell is in at dummy half.
When working the ball out of your own half, Morris goes into dummy half more often, when attacking the opposition line Riddell goes to dummy half, increasing the chance of him barging over as well as increasing the attacking options. It also means when one of the dummy halfs makes a dart, the other is there to continue the flow.
The question then is what happens when Riddell comes off. Do you switch back to one playmaker. Probably its at this point that Smith brings on a nippy hooker to take advantage of tiring defence. If I was Smith, I'd actually be using Burt in this role. A couple of people on here have said that think he would make a good half back but I think this would be a brilliant position for him. Start on the wing and then late in the half move into dummy half. He has explosive speed and the ability to kick when necessary or even do something creative like chip over the top.
At this point you might, as the Colonel has noted, bring on Feleti Mateo off the bench who plays as an attacking lock forward. That's perhaps been the real problem with Smith's strategy this year is Wagon just doesn't provide that additional attacking potency we needed. Mateo will.
What I would also really like to see when Riddell comes off, is Hindmarsh come in and do a bit of dummy half work as well. He routinely creates tries whenever he decides to run from dummy half and you saw he was used in that capacity a number of times during state of origin. Especially dangerous late in the half and would certainly keep the marker defence alert.
What else this would mean....
Regardless of whether this is exactly how it plays, we only need one half and a backup option.
Right now, we have four in Dykes, Witt, Smith, Thorman. I think its safe to say that Thorman is heading back to England but that still leaves you three. Really, you still need your dominant halfback. If we can get Orford on short term basis, beautiful. Dykes is released. That still leaves Witt and Smith, though.
Simply, we don't need them both especially with Blake Green also coming up behind them. If we resign Smith, I think the only place at Parramatta next year would be for Witt to act as Morris' understudy and I don't know how keen he would be for that.
Sorry for the length, as you can see I have a tendency to overanalyse things to death...
