I am interested in opinions on how we are going in attack. We seem to be developing fluency and looking dangerous on the fringes and out wide. People like Hicks, Matai Bell and Stewart are looking very dangerous and Beaver is running wider and straighter than he has for a while. Looking good.
We look a lot more solid going forward than we did earlier in the year and there are more dimensions to our attack whereas before we just basically went forward and put one or two balls across the line waiting for an impact player like Bell to bust the line. We now have inside balls and 2nd man plays going on!
Burns is starting to blossom, made 4 or 5 half breaks yesterday, once he gets support there will be plenty of points out of him. We need to stack the oppositions defence to the left and leave bell with some room to move, yesterday he beat his marker but go caught by the cover - if we can have an angle runner to stop the slide before bell he will be devastating. Beaver played as an extra centre yesterday and looked dangerous, however he didnt do much forward work, leaving the second row stuff for watmough only (with willo there). I would have liked to see him run off dunners once or twice to help out the middle but with 5 props i guess he has the luxury of living out wide.
Well, there certainly seems to be more bodies in motion in the opposition half with the backline seeing more room. All built from our strong defence im sure. One thing id like to see is a better & more flowing supply out to the wings once we have the opposition rattled in the latter stages of each half. I feel we have more try's in us if we can master the quick ball out there.
I agree, Bell needs more room. There's still the lateral movement thing happenning, especially with Dunley running wide which crowds Bell and forces him inside where he's easily tackled. Dunley, when he runs straight from dummy half, is good. Why he doesn't do more is a coaching problem. I was disappointed in our effort yesterday. I thought we played conservatively when we were ahead and we should have been hungry for more points to help our for and against. To his credit, King played well imo. Maybe the guys had their minds on Friday nights game.
It would appear that way, with kite, king, bryant and rose all getting about 80m they werent exactly pushing it. I really hope to see them fire up like last time against the dirty dogs
We have had a flat pass attack all year. That was one of the first games this year where we had a deeper set attack and Ox was passing behind runners to players running wide. A good sign. Also Ox slicing through the defensive line has been an exciting addition since the Newcastle game. Considering how many players were only having their second game back from injury I think our attack is looking much improved and will get better.
Burns and Dunley have to pass the ball more. Burns dummies and runs more than any other player in the competition.
The number of times that players were half through a gap with support was fantastic, though on a number of occasions they chose not to give. If they could have given it we would have scored another few tries.
Whilst our attack yesterday was a signifigant improvement, particulary within the 20m zone I am tempered by the fact the we were playing Souths. Whilst Burns made many half breaks he didn't actually make a "full" break. For whatever reason whenever Steve Bell got the ball he seemed very crowded for space. Bell is our most potent attacker and he just needs more space than what he got yesterday. Orford played great and made a number of clean breaks, but the kick ahead for Stewart was a very bad read, he had players in support on either side and the pass he gave to Dunley to score would have given Des a coronary. You do those sort of things when you lead by 40 with 2 minutes to go, not when you are behind by 8 leading into half time. For me our attack at times still looked somewhat disorganised within the 20m zone. My pessism is sobered by the fact that despite our attack being less than free flowing and highly structured we are running 3rd, something that I doubt anyone would have predicted 24 weeks ago.
Pete agree a bit. I think it showed awesome confidence by Orford to pass the ball to Dunley. That kind of confidence will help us win the comp!
Our number one attacking play in the opponent's 20 is Monaghan jumping out of dummy-half, dummying to Orford who is running the way and then passing the ball out to Stewart who either scores himself or gets the ball out to the centre or wing who then scores. This play has been really effective this year and I can't actually remember if it's ever been shut-down. As soon as Monaghan dummied to Orford in the lead-up for our first try, I said "We'll score here". That being said, that's one of the only set-plays we seem to have.
