Pun intended on the title :lol:
Will they? They receive the most penalties in the NRL (By a Mile)... Have a plus 44 penalty count (Best in NRL)...
They?ve lost 4 penalty counts the whole year (Bulldogs have lost 15).
The question has to be asked... Will the Referee's gift this premiership too South Sydney?
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Dumb OP is just dumb.
We have one of the largest forward packs in the comp and our starting hooker has probably the best running game of any hooker in the comp. Our entire game plan is based on getting a role up the middle followed by a quick play the ball and Isaac jumping out of dummy half.
As Wayne Bennett himself said earlier in the year when we trounced Newcastle, "Souths are a very predictable team, everyone knows what they are going to do. The problem is stopping them."
How do you stop a team who plays to our game plan? By laying all over the ruck and slowing the play the ball down. Everyone knows it. Every team tries it when they play us and that is the sole reason that we receive more penalties in that area than any other team... Because every other team is coached to slow the ruck against us.
Now, I'm not going to deny that we use similar tactics because we certainly do. Most of the good teams do use these ruck spoiling tactics from time to time. Certainly most if not all are trained in the theory around it. Not against every team, because some of the other teams have small forwards or terrible hookers and their ruck speed is naturally slow enough on its own. Fact is, when we do employ these spoiling tactics, we are better at it than most of the other teams in the competition.
It's a proven fact in the NRL of the past 10 years, that wrestling and slowing the ruck is a match winning tactic. It's also widely acknowledged by everyone who knows the game that wrestling is now a huge part of it and is coached at the top level.
Basically, the op is just having a sook because South's are better at a certain key element of the game than the dogs are and he / she / whatever it is, knows it.