Deathspell
Kennel Established
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2017
- Messages
- 521
- Reaction score
- 315
Sorry I wasn't ignoring you, but this is the second time I've logged on after a lengthy spell in Europe. My bad, I should have replied to the older posts (yours included) first.Respectful discourse! I asked you twice for your theory re Pay changing R to L etc JJ, RFM, Holland, Foran etc
I think the problem Pay has is to try and balance attacking and defensive combinations and skills of his players. Except for Smith, the other three-quarters are not complete players. Pay could have used Meaney at fullback and played Hoppa at center, to inject much needed speed. But as we experienced last year, fielding Foran, Hoppa and Smith on right edge was a disaster. Foran advances solo whilst Hoppa back paddles, this puts Smith in two minds, thus dropping off his man and/or leaving himself open to deep kicks. This drags the fullback towards the right and out of position for a left cross kick. A lot of work needs to be employed for any of these edge combinations to be defensively sound.
As for the left edge, I believe with better communication between the half and his inside-outside men and as long as Holland takes seniority over his winger, we should see better defensive performances, but Crichton's diffusion of high kicks when defending the line needs addressing. Unfortunately we are very limited in experienced first grade three-quarters and I don't have enough knowledge on the fitness and current performance levels of Olive, Okunbor, Harper, Anderson and Katoa to recommend different edge combinations.
The attack is still a huge problem. Foran needs to direct the attack to both sides of the ruck. He's predictable and stifles the attack, as he keeps running whilst shifting consistently towards the right. This tends to limit JJ's options but is more suited to RFM direct running style of a short pass and executing decoys. Unfortunately we do not have a modern fullback that links as a 2nd five-eight, so Pay used Lewis as a roving shifting half, similar to how Holland was used last year when coming off the bench. The problems with this style of attack is that you lose a penetrating half and if the hooker is not up with the play and cannot shift the ball fast to the half, you'll end up with a very poor rushed kicking game.
It was obvious that after the 20 minute arm wrestle, our forwards were getting outmatched in defense and gaining attacking meters was only going to further their fatigue. In my opinion whilst in attack only, Pay should have moved JJ to hooker, replaced Lichaa with JMK as a roving half and moved Lewis a bit deeper. This would have allowed for a better kicking game with more options. Once our kicks turned the Warriors around, it should have been imperative that the two markers moved fast onto the dummy half and first receiver, with the inside defensive line coming up fast as a group to stop second phase play whilst the outside defense position themselves for an quick outside sweep or kick.