Originally Posted by
NZFan
Like everywhere here I think I’m really starting to lose faith in this club. The most frustrating thing for me is we have some really good players on our roster but we don’t utilise a game plan that plays to their strengths. It started with Holbrook, but Des doesn’t seem to have changed much and it’s frustrating to see the opportunity slip away.
I’ll start with the spine and in particular the hooker/fullback positions. At the Roosters Verrills was a very creative dummy halve. His strengths are his pass, but also getting in behind the ruck and feeding Tedesco and Manu. He’s coping a bit of slack on here recently but we are predominately using him as tackle bot and feeder the our halves. At times he’ll scoot and get in behind the ruck but no one is pushing with him. The reason for that is because JC (and now AJ because we have thrown him in the centres) are playing shape so are no where near the ruck. The strength of both AJ and JC at fullback is broken play. They are wasted out the back of shape as there is not enough room.
What is compiling this problem is Boyd standing far too wide and not straightening the attack. We also don’t turn any players under to straighten the defence line. We just go side to side and wonder why we run out of room on the field. DFafita running an inside line back back against the grain would cause the defensive line to hold more and space would open outside of him. It’s also a good opportunity to get him one on one with sliding defenders. Every time the ball goes out the line it just looks like a team who are waiting around for their time to run the ball.
Our forwards also get the ball far too much in good attacking territory. Too often do we play short on the 4th tackle. We’re not a big enough side to do this as much as we do. The game has changed now so there is no real benefits of a six-again, but we need to find more variety in our attack than forwards hitting it up to the forth tackle then a bomb. Especially as our outside backs aren’t especially good under the high ball and our halves do not have good short kicking games. We have the talent, we just need to execute a game plan that plays to players strengths.