Oscar has pinched Jason’s pen and paper to bring you the NRL Preview Notepad each week in 2024. Here’s everything you need to know heading into NRL Round 13.
Thursday Night Members Preview
There’s a bit of a lull in NRL clubland this week as most punters look ahead to State of Origin next Wednesday night. For Parramatta – and to a relatively lesser extent Cronulla – though, there’s an invaluable two competition points on offer up against weakened opposition.
Mitchell Moses and Clint Gutherson are enormous ins for the Eels and it’s enough to see them start favourites against the NRL leaders on Thursday night.
Bulldogs without Kikau
Injuries are an inevitable in the NRL but Viliame Kikau’s latest setback really hurts the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs.
I’ve spoken at length this season about how Kikau is being used as the catalyst for points in this improving Bulldogs attack. The disruption and panic he puts in the defensive line on that left edge is opening up spaces on the right and Canterbury employ plenty of ballplayers through the middle to move the ball where it needs to go.
I looked at Bailey Hayward in the lead up last week and Jase touched on him again in the review:
The luxury of fielding genuine ballplayers in different positions has given this Bulldogs attack a fluid look to start the season. A lot of the positive involvements these ballplayers are enjoying though have been triggered by a Kikau involvement in the lead up.
I’m interested to see what changes Canterbury make to their attack – how they set up their attack, more specifically – on Friday night.
St George’s defensive systems
The St George-Illawarra Dragons edge defence was woeful last week.
They had excuses with Jack Bird going down and Tom Eisenhuth filling up in the centres but still… for the Bulldogs middling attack to score seven tries (and very nearly a few more) inside 30 minutes is a concern.
Luciano Leilua wasn’t the problem but he was part of it. With Eisenhuth defending out of position to his outside and Tyrell Sloan offering a target around the ruck, Leilua made some poor decisions under pressure in response to the disruption around him.
He hangs far too long around the ruck here as Sloan fails to contribute to the Josh Curran tackle:
Dragged within inches of the play-the-ball as Curran almost falls over the line here, Leilua holds tight to support Sloan while the Bulldogs attack swings to his outside.
Suddenly caught out of position, Leilua overchases while Sloan clocks off for just a second to leave a space back on the inside for Jaeman Salmon to score his first.
It was more of the same for Salmon’s double:
When Mikaele Ravalawa jams but fails to shut down the attack, Leilua breaks from the system and drops out of the line. He’s trying to cover the space left by Ravalawa and offer support in behind Kyle Flanagan, but that overcorrection leaves a familiar hole back on the inside for a fleet-footed Jacob Kiraz.
I’m not highlighting these actions just to knock on Leilua. As a mid-season signing, he hasn’t spent a summer learning the systems Shane Flanagan is trying to introduce at the club.
We saw glimpses of those systems at work as the game went on, however.
Similar to the previous actions, Leilua turns and chases hard here when the ball gets to his outside. This time though, he stays in the system and holds his position in the line:
That effort to pressure Connor Tracey’s inside shoulder buys Eisenhuth time to slide out on the Jacob Preston (17) decoy while Flanagan and Ravalawa number up on the edge… only they don’t. A poor decision to jam by Ravalawa gives Canterbury the numbers advantage and a big man beats a little man as Kiraz goes over in the corner.
With a new face on the wing this week and Moses Suli back at left centre, I’ll be watching the movements of Leilua in the line closely on Saturday night. Without further in-game disruption (touch wood) we should get a better idea of how Flanagan wants this left edge to defend.
Cowboys staying high
In this week’s NRL Video Analysis breakdown I had a look at some of the different ways teams defend on their edges.
As is the case with most elements of the game, defensive movements are contextual.
Defenders are constantly reacting to what’s happening further infield and don’t always get to stay within the systems they’ve practised during the week.
The North Queensland Cowboys appear to be trying something right now that Penrith have had success with in recent years. They’re getting up quickly off their line and staying high as long as possible on the edges:
Chad Townsend, Viliami Vailea and Kyle Feldt stand like statues here and wait for Wests to make a decision. Their presence out wide dissuades Lachlan Galvin from throwing long but leaves Townsend isolated while Jeremiah Nanai (12) slowly tracks from the inside.
Galvin clearly spotted Vailea’s indecision here because it wasn’t long before he went back to the well:
Presenting that familiar high, flat line and without a lot of inside support, the Cowboys can’t get a body in front here. Townsend is stuck on his heels with two Tigers coming at him while Vailea is too high and too wide to make a good stop on Sam Fainu.
Galvin got them again last week, this time around the outside for Solomon Alaimalo to score:
Rolling the dice and throwing across the face of two Cowboys, Galvin takes his chances with a pass we’ve seen intercepted by Penrith’s outside backs in recent years. Their high edge defenders are in good positions to jam and make the one-on-one tackles North Queensland missed in these examples, but they are also typically in good positions to make a play at the ball.
Here though, Feldt and Vailea are a fraction too slow to react and credit must go to Galvin for producing the low-percentage pass.
This is a relatively new look (or I’ve only just recently noticed it) for North Queensland’s defensive systems and I’m curious to see how they attempt to contain Easts attack on Sunday afternoon.