All of last year the majority of our attack was through Jamie Lyon and Glenn Stewart working together to get our wingers in the clear down the right hand edge, coupled with Daly Cherry Evans tuning into the mix.
Foran worked the left edge with T-Rex and Matai as his go to men and Brett Stewart chiming in either side.
With Stewart out, we lose a massive part of our right hand attack, but we still have Lyon there to cause problems.
Losing Lyon means we are left with just the halves doing doing all the steering, with very few strike weapons left, in fact it makes us very one dimensional with Brett Stewart being the only target.
Add to that the loss of T-Rex we have lost the ability to strike close to the line and work on tired and soft defenders with him busting over the top and Matai has been missing to eat up the valuable metres he is so good at chewing up.
Not to mention the defense that goes missing with these players too.
In my opinion we have done well to put as many points on the board as we have been doing, and it bodes well, for when the players come back, but with our defense the way it is, we are in desperate danger of being one of those teams that just worries about trying to score more points than the other team, and not worrying about defense.
Whilst Toovey was a tough defender and a tough bloke all in all, he wasn't the same sort of thinking player that Hasler was, and did a lot more purely out of gut reaction. I wonder if this is translating to our defensive structures and how lazy we have looked, and worse still, how soft we have looked. Last year, I was rarely worried when we were defending on our line, now I am starting to worry when they start a set anywhere in our territory.
For mine, although Rose can get a little frustrated in Defense sometimes, we probably need him back in our pack. We need a big bloke who puts on the hits, as none of our players have that ability at the moment.
He also works well hitting holes hard and fast on the line.
I never thought I would be thinking along these lines, but for mine, I think it seems an obvious choice to bring him back and get as close to a defensive and team structure that we know works, as possible.
Otherwise, if we lose this week, I can't see us going into a game as favourites again for a long while
Foran worked the left edge with T-Rex and Matai as his go to men and Brett Stewart chiming in either side.
With Stewart out, we lose a massive part of our right hand attack, but we still have Lyon there to cause problems.
Losing Lyon means we are left with just the halves doing doing all the steering, with very few strike weapons left, in fact it makes us very one dimensional with Brett Stewart being the only target.
Add to that the loss of T-Rex we have lost the ability to strike close to the line and work on tired and soft defenders with him busting over the top and Matai has been missing to eat up the valuable metres he is so good at chewing up.
Not to mention the defense that goes missing with these players too.
In my opinion we have done well to put as many points on the board as we have been doing, and it bodes well, for when the players come back, but with our defense the way it is, we are in desperate danger of being one of those teams that just worries about trying to score more points than the other team, and not worrying about defense.
Whilst Toovey was a tough defender and a tough bloke all in all, he wasn't the same sort of thinking player that Hasler was, and did a lot more purely out of gut reaction. I wonder if this is translating to our defensive structures and how lazy we have looked, and worse still, how soft we have looked. Last year, I was rarely worried when we were defending on our line, now I am starting to worry when they start a set anywhere in our territory.
For mine, although Rose can get a little frustrated in Defense sometimes, we probably need him back in our pack. We need a big bloke who puts on the hits, as none of our players have that ability at the moment.
He also works well hitting holes hard and fast on the line.
I never thought I would be thinking along these lines, but for mine, I think it seems an obvious choice to bring him back and get as close to a defensive and team structure that we know works, as possible.
Otherwise, if we lose this week, I can't see us going into a game as favourites again for a long while