So we played a more expansive style with early set backline movements. This didn’t work so well in the first half, Luciano’s pass out wide gifting the Roosters their first try. But it was a little more effective in the second half. Anyway, we haven’t played this way this year and I was wondering why we suddenly decided to change tactics? Cleary had us playing this way a couple of years ago to start the season. Has Madge given up on his style of play? Is he trying to keep his players placated by letting them play? Or was it a deliberate tactic against the roosters? It’s all just starting to look quite messy at the moment.

Tackling is the bigger issue. We’re really sloppy in our tackles. We seem to hold them up okay, but the way we role out of the tackle seems to leave our markers out of position, creating a compounding effect as that then gives space for darts out of dummy half. The roosters didn’t really even need to get out of first gear as just taking runs from dummy half was absolutely destroying us. Do we not practise tackling? how come we can’t do it? I know some teams have big forward packs, but our pack is big enough to do better, surely? The Roosters, with their 2nd string forward pack, managed to lie all over us all game. they still had a quality pack out there, but it seems like they have defensive systems and tackling techniques that work, no matter who is out there.

I don’t know much about the technicalities of defence but what ever system the Roosters use, we should shamelessly copy. No matter what we did in attack, they seemed to have more players than us on both sides of the ruck.

It’s so blatant, we so often see the opposition play the ball and we have two or three still getting up… It kills me

Maybe it was the guy running up and down on the hill sideline coaching the roosters all game?

@Sart0ri said in Change of tactics versus Roosters and tackling:

I don’t know much about the technicalities of defence but what ever system the Roosters use, we should shamelessly copy. No matter what we did in attack, they seemed to have more players than us on both sides of the ruck.

I go on about it, but if the half/5-8 doesn’t run straight at the line, it doesn’t draw any defenders in.
The opposition watch the tapes, they know that brooks isn’t going to dummy and run. (he does run, but its premeditated)

So when he gets the ball they can just slide, that way you always have equal numbers.

If he took it too the line it brings in other defenders to slow it down, or run the risk of the 1 on 1 getting beat.

They just slide across and it’s easy numbers.

Benji takes it on a bit more but is more crabbing across the field, so he is limiting the space for the outside men to work with.

The Roosters made us pay for every mistake

If we play that style for 80 minutes your going to turn the ball over

If you are good enough and can defend your mistakes you can play that footy

We can’t defend our errors so we aim for a 90 percent completion rate

Good post. Our marker defence has been shocking ever since the Parramatta game. I estimate that in 30-40% of our tackles there is at least one player not in the defensive line. Opposing teams should not be able to run out of dummy half as often as they have been doing.

@the_third said in Change of tactics versus Roosters and tackling:

Maybe it was the guy running up and down on the hill sideline coaching the roosters all game?

Yeah I noticed that ball boy coaching as well

We played expansive because other teams had success doing it against roosters lately. Titans did it and scored a few tries off it and dragons did it too I think

We have to attack like we did against the Roosters. You can’t win consistently unless you play footy when you have the ball.

I thought we played expansive in the second half because we were chasing points

I suspect it was a deliberate tactic. The Roosters compress their defensive line on the first tackle more than any other team. It looked like we were trying to spread it early to force them into spacing their line a bit more.

@Chicken_Faced_Killa said in Change of tactics versus Roosters and tackling:

@the_third said in Change of tactics versus Roosters and tackling:

Maybe it was the guy running up and down on the hill sideline coaching the roosters all game?

Yeah I noticed that ball boy coaching as well

Calling plays in attack “arrow” being one and calling sides and players out in defence.

Maybe we should go back to our DNA, if they score 40 points we’ll score 41 points.

@bathursttiger1 said in Change of tactics versus Roosters and tackling:

Maybe we should go back to our DNA, if they score 40 points we’ll score 41 points.

It would be wonderful to do but we lack the cattle to do it