I don't have any issues with us playing flat, but i do wish that T-Rex in particular was not playing as wide as he does. He moccasionally opens things up around him by running at the centre or winger but i think that he restricts the room our outside backs have to work in on that side. I didn't have the chance to re-watch the game from friday but i think when he came off our forwards played in the middle of the field where they're supposed to and our backs looked more dangerous because they could use footwork.
I'm happier with how much more sting Williams has in attack these days but he seems to want to play on the wing like Dave Taylor. This is my last issue with Williams who i think is coming closer to some big games but i hope he learns to play closer in field. I only really watched our game on friday and probably the opening 20-30 minutes of the Sharks vs Broncos game and i would say that the weakest run any of our forwards made on friday would have shown more gusto than 90% of the hit-ups from either the Sharks or Broncos.
I dont know, why all the hate on playing flat ? Why? because we dont look as pretty as the roosters ?
Who gives a shit ? whatever works.
Playing flat, on the advantage line, is a perfectly legitimate tactic, and one that we're best suited to as well.
If you have forwards that can throw a pass, playing flat commits defenders, giving them no time to adjust.
I truly think that the criticism of our playing style comes from some peoples dissatisfaction with our halves and they point to our style as faux evidence.
The fact is we play the style that Des trains us to play and im assuming hes identified where our strengths lie.
Completely agree. At times last year we looked great with the short balls to forwards that came through playing flat and i think that as the year progresses we are going to see Brett Morris carve up so many teams when he follows through and takes some of these short passes at pace. Greg Eastwood made so many line breaks off this tactic last year and we never had anyone following him through the gaps. I'm salivating about seeing him make his next big line break because i think that Morris is going to score a hat full of tries whenever Eastwood or any of our forwards make a small break. We've already seen him being fed some nice offloads by Kasiano and Graham and i think he will only get better as the rest of our forwards work out that he's going to be running quick enough in support to finish off their good work.
We seem flat because our forwards run in pairs and 3's which confuses the hell out of the defence, hence why none of our forwards ever really get hit with big defence. Only last week, King James got smashed a couple times but I am pretty sure Kite was about 6 metres off side. We pass at the line too - King James has set up 3 tries so far this year by passing at the line.
My only qualm is that we don't use our backs more but I think as the season progresses we will.
I agree with this too. When Barba was at his attacking best in 2012, i would say that at least half of his journeys through gaps came about because the defense was waiting back to see if the ball was going to spread to another forward or if ratboy was going to slip through at pace. Reynolds was also very threatening in 2012 with his ability to hit the offloads at pace and it was the same with Keating on the other side of the ruck. I like to think that when our forwards get the defense on the back foot this year our backline is going to chime in well with support play. I know that Hodkinson doesn't have the running game that Keating had (which i think was pretty much Keatings only asset) but our halves now seem to have developed some ability to build pressure through repeat sets via grubbers, where as in 2012 both our halves were just doing the low cross field bombs 9/10 times.
I think we'll get a lot better and see more from the backs as the team work out our new strengths and weaknesses.
