Round 12 - Sea Eagles vs Storm

[TC]

Are we all generally agreed that the Nick Meaney Centre experiment has failed and is now over ?

Footnote…Nick is clearly a very good footballer and no doubt a very good team mate and I like him in our 17. He’s just not got the skill set, strength or tactical positioning to make Centre his position. He really should be wing with a decent Centre inside him.

Based on last night, we have way bigger problems than Meaney at centre.

10 runs each out of Tui, Christian and NAS and I can't think of a single one that bent the line. 9 out of Eli and 8 each for Shawn and Josh. Our top forward was Trent and he made a grand total of 107 metres.
Dumb offloads, poor passing. Harry seems to be looking for cheap penalties rather than playing his dashing scheming best. 'Rome looked like he felt he had to carry the team by himself.
Warbrick and Meaney get plenty of stick for their defence - a fair percentage of it justified. But they are left exposed too often by poor inside play. The days when Melbourne had the best slide defence are many years ago. We also lost a lot of impact when Wil went off. Anderson totally failed to impress tonight.

And a special shout out to Remis. I expected to see him showing off the jersey his cousin designed but he was hardly to be seen in attack. 36 metres is just not enough when your forwards are struggling.

[The Black Dot]

Are we all generally agreed that the Nick Meaney Centre experiment has failed and is now over ?

Footnote…Nick is clearly a very good footballer and no doubt a very good team mate and I like him in our 17. He’s just not got the skill set, strength or tactical positioning to make Centre his position. He really should be wing with a decent Centre inside him.

Based on last night, we have way bigger problems than Meaney at centre.

10 runs each out of Tui, Christian and NAS and I can't think of a single one that bent the line. 9 out of Eli and 8 each for Shawn and Josh. Our top forward was Trent and he made a grand total of 107 metres.
Dumb offloads, poor passing. Harry seems to be looking for cheap penalties rather than playing his dashing scheming best. 'Rome looked like he felt he had to carry the team by himself.
Warbrick and Meaney get plenty of stick for their defence - a fair percentage of it justified. But they are left exposed too often by poor inside play. The days when Melbourne had the best slide defence are many years ago. We also lost a lot of impact when Wil went off. Anderson totally failed to impress tonight.

And a special shout out to Remis. I expected to see him showing off the jersey his cousin designed but he was hardly to be seen in attack. 36 metres is just not enough when your forwards are struggling.

These are extremely wise words. As far as I can tell, the pack has been a major issue for at least 12 months, but what's a realistic solution? Welch has improved from the start of the year, King has been handy but Tui has at best been at best a conrtibutor and NAS will give you rocks or diamonds but this year the rocks outweigh the diamonds considerably. Do we actually have anu alternatives? Warbrick has been underfire for the amout of dropped ball and defence ( frrom me included) but in hindsight has the Meaney/ Warbrick really been effective? How much of the issue is Warbrick and how much is his teamates around him not working together to lock down that wing?

[Bullucked]

How (Meaney and Warbrick) much is his teamates around him not working together to lock down that wing?

Yes

I look at this and i look at the position of the inside men and always (or nearly always) we get over lapped. The question is, Is this a problem of the inside men not sliding out or Meaney and Warbrick not calling them out.

Warbrick brings great enthusiasm to the side, much more than many others.

[Papenhuyzen23]

Take Warbrick, who seems like a fine fella and a good club guy, and remove the defensive deficiencies we seem to experience on that edge regardless of who is defending out there, still remaining is the issue of the fundamentals, you can tell he just isn’t used to Rugby League, his Union background shows constantly. I will admit he does get left hung out to dry sometimes by his inside men as all wingers do but it’s so much more than that.

I’ll give you a few examples I’ve spotted just last night as I feel like I need to explain why I keep targeting him.

In the first half there was a (poor) pass out to the right edge from Harry which hit the deck but went in the direction of where Will should have been standing in attacking preparedness, for whatever reason he was not only about 20 metres deeper than he should have been but he wasn’t even out on the edge, he was squeezed in almost behind the fullback, positioning is woeful, I wouldn’t expect such poor play from the local under 12’s.

As mentored earlier his attempt to tackle Talau also had nothing to do with anything other than total lack of effort, he stood and watched, wasn’t wrong footed, had a chance to drill his shoulder in and affect a tackle capable of saving a try and he just threw a weak arm out and pulled it away after making minimal contact, again a very poor play.

Worst of all is the misconception that he gets our sets rolling, are you guys serious? I’ll give him this, he puts his hand up for the hard run more than a lot of the other guys do, but they are so ineffective most the time it is almost pointless, with a body his size and how athletic he can be when he gets it right, he just doesn’t go into contact well and usually gets stopped dead or driven back, I’m not sure why people harp on about him getting us rolling like he is To’o or Mulitalo, he is the complete opposite.

Handling, it’s probably his worst/most apparent deficiency, he seriously drops the pill 2/3 times a game, and rarely does it go unpunished, he has a habit of coughing it up in dangerous positions which tend to throw away leads and put us under huge amounts of pressure.

I know it’s seems like I’m a bit over the top with my criticism of him this year, but it is because I can’t believe others don’t see what I see every single week, a very average first grader.

The writing was on the wall in the trial against the Roosters when he played the worst game I’ve ever seen a first grader produce, and it hasn’t really improved since then, just my opinion of course and he obviously brings something to the team to be selected every week, it just bothers me seeing a good winger (Meaney) playing so badly out of a position to accomodate him.

I noticed Howarth was playing in the centres for the Falcons tonight, maybe it’s finally happening.

[Stormhunter]

Are we all generally agreed that the Nick Meaney Centre experiment has failed and is now over ?

Footnote…Nick is clearly a very good footballer and no doubt a very good team mate and I like him in our 17. He’s just not got the skill set, strength or tactical positioning to make Centre his position. He really should be wing with a decent Centre inside him.

Yeah, nah.

Nick's clearly not the finished product yet but he's improved a lot, and continues to improve. Teams send a lot of traffic at him because he's barely played a dozen games there. Same as Warbrick, gotta stick with these guys because they will have such a high ceiling.

Not so long ago the usual suspects were giving X a flogging.

As for the game, we had 11 penalties, errors etc. in the first 26 minutes. Hard for any pack to gain ascendency in the face of that. Combined with a lot of travel and a short turn around, I thought Bellamy was right in that they showed a lot of resilience to not let the game get away from them and still be in a position to win near the end. I think this resilience they've been showing all year gives me more confidence in this team come finals time than the last couple of years.

[riders of the storm]

Are we all generally agreed that the Nick Meaney Centre experiment has failed and is now over ?

Footnote…Nick is clearly a very good footballer and no doubt a very good team mate and I like him in our 17. He’s just not got the skill set, strength or tactical positioning to make Centre his position. He really should be wing with a decent Centre inside him.

Based on last night, we have way bigger problems than Meaney at centre.

10 runs each out of Tui, Christian and NAS and I can't think of a single one that bent the line. 9 out of Eli and 8 each for Shawn and Josh. Our top forward was Trent and he made a grand total of 107 metres.
Dumb offloads, poor passing. Harry seems to be looking for cheap penalties rather than playing his dashing scheming best. 'Rome looked like he felt he had to carry the team by himself.
Warbrick and Meaney get plenty of stick for their defence - a fair percentage of it justified. But they are left exposed too often by poor inside play. The days when Melbourne had the best slide defence are many years ago. We also lost a lot of impact when Wil went off. Anderson totally failed to impress tonight.

And a special shout out to Remis. I expected to see him showing off the jersey his cousin designed but he was hardly to be seen in attack. 36 metres is just not enough when your forwards are struggling.

These are extremely wise words. As far as I can tell, the pack has been a major issue for at least 12 months, but what's a realistic solution? Welch has improved from the start of the year, King has been handy but Tui has at best been at best a conrtibutor and NAS will give you rocks or diamonds but this year the rocks outweigh the diamonds considerably. Do we actually have anu alternatives? Warbrick has been underfire for the amout of dropped ball and defence ( frrom me included) but in hindsight has the Meaney/ Warbrick really been effective? How much of the issue is Warbrick and how much is his teamates around him not working together to lock down that wing?

I think this might also come down to the execution of the game plan. Statistically speaking - the Storm run from dummy-half more than most other teams do. This season alone only the Raiders have more runs out of dummy-half. I’m not an expert but I’d say most of those runs are basically from the 10 to the 40 by the backs with a couple from Grant.

So - that brings a few questions: Is this a directive? Or are the forwards too gassed to get back on-side behind the play-the-ball? (I’m thinking from the perspective of when a team boots the ball deep and someone from the back collects it).

The most concerning thing is a lack of post-contact metres which means slower play-the-balls. The team in my mind isn’t a forward-orientated unit like it was when Cameron Smith was playing. They’re an up-tempo unit who like to play fast and beat teams in the way a touch football team would: taking advantage of a retreating defensive line before either turning the ball inside for the halves or Grant to combine with the fullback or sweeping it wide for Blore, Katoa, Warbrick or Coates.

[sheet_ed]

There are a lot of "growing pains" in the Storm - my observations, and I can't wait for your letters
1. Sua - Great in attack but his organisation of defence is partial to blame. That is where Paps is really good. He has been caught out of position and look when a player gets past him he doesn't follow through to prevent the player improving the goal kicking position. This is what seperates him from Paps.
2. Meaney and Warbrick have the side which statistically is the most attacked side in the comp for ANY team. Warbrick is down on confidence and timing with Meaney - that will come.
3. We need to be creative with Sua - he is trying to do what Paps does but in the past 3 weeks the opposition has read him like a book. He needs to be behind NAS and Welch when they run, ready for an offload.

We have to realise that we have the origin period to tighten up or we will be slaughtered at the pointing end of the year.

[The Black Dot]

There are a lot of "growing pains" in the Storm - my observations, and I can't wait for your letters
1. Sua - Great in attack but his organisation of defence is partial to blame. That is where Paps is really good. He has been caught out of position and look when a player gets past him he doesn't follow through to prevent the player improving the goal kicking position. This is what seperates him from Paps.
3. We need to be creative with Sua - he is trying to do what Paps does but in the past 3 weeks the opposition has read him like a book. He needs to be behind NAS and Welch when they run, ready for an offload.

It's difficult to critique Sua due to his inexperience . I agree he's great in attack but I feel (and I could be wrong) that often he gets white line fever and forgets pass the ball to someone in a better position. His inexperience in defense will see him out of position especially on the left side. With more games under his belt, you would hope these issues will be resolved