Why is the tigers defence so bad?

C

colmcd

New member
I imagine this has been asked here. But I have to ask it anyway.

Why is the tigers defence so bad?

There seems to be a few issues:
Pack size, we seem to be smaller then the top teams. But Melbourne and other teams can defend better then us and it's not just a size thing.

coordination, Our coordination sucks. When I see Manly, St George and others their coordination is far better. Melbourne are often spot on. We just leave a lot of overlaps. Jamie Lyon and SKD seem to be able to read the plays pretty well and their winger knows whom to cover.

I remember Liam Fulton just being a tackling gun. It was like we worked hard and tackled the other team through brute force. I can only remember Beau Ryan working out how to be a try saver. Other then an early game in 201X where we beat Melbourne 6-4 on defence. We never seemed to get defence as a side.

What are we doing wrong?
 
It starts in the middle. If your props, hooker and lock can't hold the hit ups close in, that drags your back rowers in, which in turn gets your halves targeted and leaves your centres dealing with too many bodies in motion, which snowballs into a 2 on 1 overlap and only Jordan Rankin to stop them.
 
@colmcd said:
I imagine this has been asked here. But I have to ask it anyway.

Why is the tigers defence so bad?

There seems to be a few issues:
Pack size, we seem to be smaller then the top teams. But Melbourne and other teams can defend better then us and it's not just a size thing.

coordination, Our coordination sucks. When I see Manly, St George and others their coordination is far better. Melbourne are often spot on. We just leave a lot of overlaps. Jamie Lyon and SKD seem to be able to read the plays pretty well and their winger knows whom to cover.

I remember Liam Fulton just being a tackling gun. It was like we worked hard and tackled the other team through brute force. I can only remember Beau Ryan working out how to be a try saver. Other then an early game in 201X where we beat Melbourne 6-4 on defence. We never seemed to get defence as a side.

What are we doing wrong?
Click to expand...

There are many problems for our team defensively,
Firstly, we get dominated in the ruck. Throughout the game we very rarely win the the ruck, meaning we do not finish our tackles off by putting players onto their backs to facilitate a slow play the ball. This puts our defensive onto the backfoot and quite often out of position for the following play, This compounds all the other weaknesses in our defensive that follow in this post.

We allow players to stand in the tackle for too long without wrapping up the ball, this allows the other teams to offload creating chance for other teams to attack a retreating and broken defensive line.

We miss too many tackles again pulling players out of position and causing more problem later in the set.

Our centres and wingers make really poor defensive reads and decisions, they do not know when to slide in defense or when to come in to shut down a play. They usually slide when they should come in and come in when they should slide. In these situations they also do not defend as a unit, we will often have the centre rush in to close down a play but the winger stay back, this does not work and at times it seems as if they have no idea what the other player is doing.

Our goal line defense is the worst in the competition, we are just unable to stop a try when the opposition gets inside our 20\. Many of the reasons for that are due to the defensive issues outlined in this post.

We do not protect our smaller players in the defensive line, many other teams have smaller players that fall off tackles. The difference is they then have strong defenders working with them who support them in the defensive line. Moses and Brooks et isolated too easily and put into the position of making solo tackles that just shouldn't have to make.

Ultimately we have players who lack the skills and knowledge to defend at an NRL level and we have lacked the coaches who lacked the skills to coach up the players to the required level. Our structures are poor, we should not have a centre coming up and in when the winger stays back on his heals.

We do scramble in defense reasonably well, but we do get an awful lot of match practice at that.

I hope that clarifies a few things and if you have any questions about what I meant I am happy to clarify.
 
Well said cochise.
I hope the improvement we saw in goal line scramble (and the attitude that goes with that) continues this year onto the ruck area and working as a unit.
We have a great talker at the back in Teddy… We aren't far away imo but the proof is in the pudding
It's the most important aspect for our team this year
 
Said it before, Will say it again
- Hardest part to defend of the field is centre/2nd row…
Our strength in this position the last few years hasn't been the best.
A while back we had the best 2nd rower in the comp and it was better... But he's been gone for a while now - And we've never recovered.
 
One word: power. We lack power so most of our tackles are competent without being dominant or hurting. We don't hurt oppositions when they run at us, so they have no fear to take strong runs. Power teams like Canberra just line up to rip in, and we lack that enforcer-type to put a few of them on their bums.

Size-wise we are fine, we have huge bodies in the pack, but they are not overly dynamic. Guys like Woods, Ava, Rowdy, Grant, Taylor - are all capable tacklers, but they are all legs or ball-wrappers, they don't lean into tackles hard with their shoulders. Well maybe Rowdy does sometimes.

For mine, that is precisely why JT has been persisting with Edwards last year off the bench, because Edwards is the main guy in the team to make high-impact tackles.

TigerTorch made some interesting comments last year about, I think he called them Type A defenders, players who could hit and drop consistently in a 1:1 situation without needing support. We had 3 of them if I recall: Edwards, MCK and Tim Simona, so most of our dominant tacklers were either on the bench or in NSW Cup.

And just having a handful of dominant defenders is not enough.

Otherwise exactly as cochise said, coordination out wide is poor. What I will add there is we have known defensive liabilities in Moses and Brooks, we used to have Benji like that too, so Tigers have always had a weak defensive channel that players need to cover for. Once you start having to cover for positions other than your own, things are more likely to break down. It hurts the Broncos in just the same way - they are a much more consistent defensive unit than us, and in 2015 their scramble / goal defence was amazing, but it's starting to hurt them in 2016 and I expect this year having to deal with the level of traffic directed at Hunt and Milford who are just small frames in the line.

Brooks should do much better, he's a big lad and wide in the hips where it counts for defenders, but he makes really poor reads. He just really struggles in picking his target and usually seems to fall for the dummy runner that is covered by his inside man.

Moses being so skinny, he's often in the right place but can't make dominant tackles. He has historically tried to compensate by rushing out of the line, but as with Frozone, that tactic is easily exploited in the modern game, players hands are too good.

So we need more power in the pack to hurt oppositions, not just wrap them up. Power also helps stop offloads. We need our halves to dramatically improve their missed tackle rate and be less reliant on support to stop the traffic that inevitably comes their way. Lastly we need better coordination out wide, because if there is a known weakness on the edges, it's extremely hard to cover (it is the edge after all) and teams will pound away with sweep and second-man plays all game.
 
Our defense has been terrible over the years mainly due to our playing style..flair and razzle dazzle..the two most important things that is needed to be a good defensive side in my opinion is..
Technique..
Courage..
This year with the new defensive coaches and the structures being practiced in pre season will show us if the team has been concentrating on stopping the opposition in their tracks and ridding us of the arm grabbing so commonly seen last year..thats where the technique is practised.
As for courage…well you have to have the heart to go in and tackle the man with the ball,its within the individual,at this level of competition,if you want to make it in the NRL then tackling is one of the main basics of the game,it should be practised the same as passing,kicking and running..

The game today is far quicker and tougher than in the olden days,however the old saying still applies ..." they cant run without legs"...its up to the defensive coaches to get the teams defense to a level required for todays game...and the players have to do the job once their on the field...
 
What a load of palava…to chanel the long lost steve..the best defense is a great offense..the Wests Tigers WAY...
 
@jirskyr said:
Brooks should do much better, he's a big lad and wide in the hips where it counts for defenders, but he makes really poor reads. He just really struggles in picking his target and usually seems to fall for the dummy runner that is covered by his inside man.
Click to expand...

Brooks does the occasional Joey Johns-style tackle where he puts someone on his arse. Side on, however, can be the worst arm-grabbing you'll ever see.
 
Like a lot of teams with better than fifty percent of the pill we defend okay against most teams. Poor completions,poor yardage game coming out of our end, poor discipline, poor options and a poor kicking game all put enormous pressure on our defensive game. The good sides like the Sharks and Melbourne cherish possession and play the grind and stick to their structures. We are all over the place, lets face it how many 80 minute efforts have we put in over the past 10 years…you could count them on one hand.

I thought they made some progress last year and maybe they can build on it this year, but defence is as much about limiting the tackles you have to make as making your tackles, and it also comes down to the quality of your tackles, okay you need blokes like ET who make 60 tackles a game but you also need players who will smash players and stop them crossing the advantage line. Also the question remains how basically the same group of players are going to stop the big power teams that they have failed to contain for years!!!

Anyway you can't sit back and do nothing and think things will improve and it seems they are putting in plenty of effort to turn things around, will it work ????got my doubts
 
well I think I have read it all, defence comes on to what u practice and how u want to defend, it is clear JT and his useless defensive coaches don't put much into this area. we have no mongrel in the pack and the backs defend like they have never met each other before, and that's why we suck in defence.
 
@bp tiger said:
well I think I have read it all, defence comes on to what u practice and how u want to defend, it is clear JT and his useless defensive coaches don't put much into this area. we have no mongrel in the pack and the backs defend like they have never met each other before, and that's why we suck in defence.
Click to expand...

It's you, not u. Don't be lazy.
I really try to find points that I agree with in all your posts and its impossible.
We have two small halves that were (still possibly are) bad at tackling. Brooks is the worst offender.
That's up to them to work with the defensive coaches to fix. We can't keep putting players next to them for protection. They gotta stand up and defend properly.
Players need to take some responsibility for their game. Coach can only do so much. Some players are just scared to tackle.
 
@matchball said:
@bp tiger said:
well I think I have read it all, defence comes on to what u practice and how u want to defend, it is clear JT and his useless defensive coaches don't put much into this area. we have no mongrel in the pack and the backs defend like they have never met each other before, and that's why we suck in defence.

It's you, not u. Don't be lazy.
I really try to find points that I agree with in all your posts and its impossible.
We have two small halves that were (still possibly are) bad at tackling. Brooks is the worst offender.
That's up to them to work with the defensive coaches to fix. We can't keep putting players next to them for protection. They gotta stand up and defend properly.
Players need to take some responsibility for their game. Coach can only do so much. Some players are just scared to tackle.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

As I said in my earlier post….TECHNIQUE and COURAGE....go along way in making a player a good defender....
 
Defence is won off the field way before a ball has been kicked. It all revolves around a good STRUCTURE and PREPARATION.

The best Structures are designed and practised over and over at this time of the year. If the club doesnt get it right in the off-season, it is little to no chance of executing it week to week. There are alot of variables that contribute to poor defensive structures, but the main problem is continuance. Throughout a season, players get injured and this has a huge bearing how your team defends on the paddock.

From a week to week perspective, a good defensive structure starts Monday. I will use the Cowboys of 2015/16 as a good example. Week to week they had the same structure on the paddock. They were pretty hard to role when this occurred. As the season wore on, things came undone and you will see it coincided with injuries. The player inside player X wasnt moving with player Y as communication was different, as too was the week to week behaviors player Y was familiar with.

On the paddock, Speed of the Ruck and Field Possession play a major part. Melbourne are well known for there 'line speed' in defence. This is nothing more than a illusion. Line speed isnt a factor of how fast the defensive line moves up, its a factor of how fast a defensive line can get reset. Less players in tackles. The Wrestle to slow the PTB down all contribute to a good defensive team getting back and being reset to move forward as a unit. Further to this, poor field possession is something which can quickly place alot of pressure on players. They might get it right 2-3 times, but there is a reason the Goal Line Reset is a great asset in the game. Getting teams back to back is the quickest way to force errors.

Concentration comes with experience and talk. You will quickly realise a team which is going backwards in defence is a team which is not communicating and talking to each other. Talking is a vital role in the mind of a RL player, as it not only ensures the players around you are where they need to be, it also keeps your head in the game. Continual yapping keeps your head in the game and leads to greater concentration.

There are many other factors why a team has poor defence, but if we can continually work on all these aspects of the game in the off season and from the first day of the training week, we will be a much better outfit.

[sorry to rable on to long]
 
@cochise said:
@colmcd said:
I imagine this has been asked here. But I have to ask it anyway.

Why is the tigers defence so bad?

There seems to be a few issues:
Pack size, we seem to be smaller then the top teams. But Melbourne and other teams can defend better then us and it's not just a size thing.

coordination, Our coordination sucks. When I see Manly, St George and others their coordination is far better. Melbourne are often spot on. We just leave a lot of overlaps. Jamie Lyon and SKD seem to be able to read the plays pretty well and their winger knows whom to cover.

I remember Liam Fulton just being a tackling gun. It was like we worked hard and tackled the other team through brute force. I can only remember Beau Ryan working out how to be a try saver. Other then an early game in 201X where we beat Melbourne 6-4 on defence. We never seemed to get defence as a side.

What are we doing wrong?

There are many problems for our team defensively,
Firstly, we get dominated in the ruck. Throughout the game we very rarely win the the ruck, meaning we do not finish our tackles off by putting players onto their backs to facilitate a slow play the ball. This puts our defensive onto the backfoot and quite often out of position for the following play, This compounds all the other weaknesses in our defensive that follow in this post.

We allow players to stand in the tackle for too long without wrapping up the ball, this allows the other teams to offload creating chance for other teams to attack a retreating and broken defensive line.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

this post was very detailed, but just wanted to add to this part in particular.
We don't compete at all in the wrestle - it was notable when ET came over that he did things differently. He's able to turn players around, put them on their backs and do so whilst positioning himself for a quick release.
Woods competes to an extent, but none of the others really make an effort.

There are lots of other issues - communication, structure etc - but most of it starts in the middle third.
 
Some good points made in this thread, but there are also some external factors to consider.

For starters, I think other teams' players run too hard.
 
I think cochise summed it up pretty well. The other thing I would add to this is that we never show the same sort of energy or urgency in defence as we do in attack. The team always looks keen to attack and throw the ball around, but apart from the rare game (Cows at Leichhardt, Broncos in Brisbane come to mind) we just don't have the same energy in defence, and that's where we get put on the backfoot. I think if we had a few players who don't mind bashing other blokes, this could quite easily turn around as others would feed off it IMO.
 
Cochise has covered it pretty well

Our kicking game doesn't help either , neither does our kick / chase

We are back foot from the get go

Must admit the "complicated defensive set up " scares me that Ballin spoke about , you make it too complicated and when you are under pressure more often than not it will fall apart
 
Part of the blame has to go to our recruiting department.
They have always scouted talent with the ball over old school hardheads who like to make their presence felt in defence.
Wests Tigers has always been an entertainers club. I love that as most of you do but they have to get the balance right and sadly they never do.
 
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