5th tackle options diabolical

[Goose]

I guess it is the product of having a couple of young guys in the halves who love to take the game on, but geez our last tackle options were poor on the weekend.

I reckon we were tackled on the last tackle about 7 or 8 times, without really threatening too much, a couple of other times we ran it before putting in a rushed nothing kick.

We struggled to get repeat sets or ask to many questions with attacking kicks at all.

A few too many went dead, which I guess always happens to most teams, but when the rest of the kicks were poor it added to the frustration.

One option was real momentum turner, after we scored the 2 tries, the next 2 sets we flew up the field, rolling straight through them and really kept them in their deep in their half. That changed with one poor option.
Austin put a nothing waist high kick across the line, the defenders lined up the other way, which was never going to be a threat, and was always going to be very hard to defend, it lead to a break and us being under the pump and changed the flow of the game.
Little things matter in footy and things like this cost us.

I reckon we finish our sets better and it is a completely different game.

The young halves need to take this as a learning experience, but it was frustrating,

I spose rookie players make rookie mistakes…..and we have plenty of rookies!

 

[TigersBra]

It's wierd how one week our 5th tackle options were superb and we destroyed one of the best teams, yet the next week we play poor against a worst team? I guess it's tough, but Brooksy and Austin are trying hard Execution was poor and we had virtually no set plays.

 

[alex]

Frustrating things:

- Getting caught with the ball on the last … Numerous times. Has been happening for a while now
- 5th tackle kicks that don't build pressure
- Continuous short side plays where there is no overlap
- Having a scrum 10m out and going for the killer play on tackle 2 resulting in either dropping the ball or throwing it into touch

All of those things will not build pressure and will never get us on top of an opposition. Everyone is being really defensive of Brooks and Austin, but if they want to be NRL halves they need to do simple things like this.

 

[happy_tiger]

Again a lot of the issues seemed to be that Brooks didn't get the ball on the 5th a great deal

 

[tig_prmz]

Brooks stands too close to the scrum IMO. He never gets the space to work with. He needs to start organising his forwards to block defenders- go a few metres behind them, take his time then kick.

Farah and Austin had way too many selfish options between them probably coz of lack of options. Brooks needs to command the ball more. He could learn from Moses in that regard- at the defensive line he was screaming at everyone from Blair to Robbie about where to go.

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[Chainlink]

In a way i think it might be we have TOO many options at the moment. Between brooks, moses, austin and farah, it looks like they are always surprised to have it. Not enough structure but we,ll get there!

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[jirskyr]

I get the impression we struggle the less our opposition has to backpedal. In other words, as they start hitting their own line, we don't cope well with a team that can meet us from a fixed position (the try line) and where we aren't advancing.

If you watched tackles 1-4 most sets we advanced well and looked constantly threatening, probing around the ruck as Dragons retreated. But as soon as we came within 20 m, we lost all our forward momentum and everything was executed from a standing start. We instead resorted to limp hitups and across-field plays where we ran out of space and failed to straighten the attack.

I remember the attack patterns 2010-11, and though the game changes each year, we used to be so dangerous when Benji had two proper options every attack - out-ball to centre/fullback or short ball to backrower, forcing defences to account for both. We seem to have lost this capacity, especially with the hard-running backrower, and with our ordinary execution this year, defensive structures are not tested as often as I would like to see.