The Wests Tigers are sending out a new-look team in the hopes of ending what is the NRL’s longest finals drought in 2021.
2020 Wrap
The Wests Tigers played two seasons throughout 2020. They scored 24.5 points per game to sit inside the NRL Top 8 after 10 rounds. A three-game losing streak followed with five losses across the final six rounds seeing Wests drop out of the Top 8. Their attack couldn’t keep them afloat scoring just 19.5 points per game throughout the second half of the season.
A turnover in players in key positions didn’t help cohesion even with Harry Grant displaying State of Origin calibre form. Both Benji Marshall and Luke Brooks were dropped from Michael Maguire’s side at one point or another as the premiership-winning tinkerman searched for his first-choice 17.
It never came in 2020, although Luciano Leilua ensured he became one of the first names written on the team sheet for Round 1 in 2021. The 24-year-old played out a career year while featuring in all 20 matches. The same can be said for David Nofoaluma who found the consistency in his performances the Tigers faithful have desperately yearned for over the years.
The rest of the club needs to capture Leilua and Nofoaluam’s new-found consistency if they’re to end the finals drought in 2021.
Predicted Profile
What will the Wests Tigers look like and how will they play? We take a stab at profiling their playing style ahead of Round 1.
As mentioned earlier in the preseason, “lucky” came up too often on the notepad as the Wests Tigers flew out of the gates to score 24.5 points per game to start the season. A couple of intercept tries and opposition errors with the goal line in sight propped up an attack that lacked creativity despite the final number displayed on the scoreboard.
If it wasn’t coming from Harry Grant or Benji Marshall, the Tigers weren’t asking many tough questions of the defence.
This sequence here highlights their overall struggles while also capturing a moment Grant and Marshall link up to create points.
The Rabbitohs defence has no problems shutting down the first shift. Garner is never part of their consideration and the defence can simply slide and force Adam Doueihi back into the middle. But with a beautiful ball that puts Brooks outside the B defender, Grant has the Tigers moving across the field. Marshall already knows the defence is stretched and releases the ball to Tommy Talau as quickly as he can.
Wests’ struggles in creativity aren’t helped by a lack of variation in the forwards. Luke Garner, Alex Twal, James Tamou, Shawn Blore and the Tigers pack in general have similar skill sets. They’re either willing ball-carriers, run good lines on the edges, or both. But they’re not going to offer a lot as ball-players. Luciano Leilua has the skills. Whether or not he has the license to move the ball remains to be seen.
The game is moving towards forwards being asked to do more than truck the ball up and hit gaps. Ball-playing locks are becoming the norm. While some names popping up in the position have come as a surprise (think: Peachey and Watson), none would come as more of a shock than Moses Mbye. However, with Daine Laurie vying for the fullback spot while the halves and hooker positions are otherwise covered, Mbye in the middle, be it to start or off the bench, isn’t out of the realms of possibility.
Whether or not the Tigers find new ways to create points with the ball in-hand throughout 2021, their short kicking game poses as a potent strike weapon. Brooks and James Roberts showed us what that will look like during the preseason trials.
Wests have an attacking flare in them as a club, but do they have the personnel in 2021? A resurgent Brooks in the halves would go a long way to finding out.
2021 NRL Notepad
Jason Oliver cracks open his notepad to find a key player, style or stat to keep an eye on this season.
Luciano Leilua
The Luciano Leilua Experience was a roller coaster in 2020.
Flicking through the notepad during the early rounds, it’s all “Leilua out of position at marker”, “Pearce straight past Luciano” and “Leulia shoots out.”
Joey moving to the other side after Round 2 helped, but by the end of the season, Luciano had 20 games to his name. Few would argue against the 24-year-old being Wests best forward.
Leilua ran for 102 metres per game last season. While he’s at his most dangerous with the Tigers attacking the goal line, his willingness to come in field for a carry and use his footwork on tiring middle forwards was an underappreciated aspect of his game.
That footwork displayed up the field later comes in handy closer to the line. He ran a perfect line to crash over here.
At his very best, Luciano has the feet, the strength and the ball-skills to create something out of nothing in attack.
Luciano took a leap in 2020, but he can do more in 2021. Perhaps by design, he doesn’t appear to be using his skills with the ball in hand anywhere near what he’s capable of at the moment. He only touched the ball 13.9 times per game last season. Just 2.55 of those touches ended with a pass. While a stronger runner of the ball, Leilua can fill a Kenny Bromwich-like role (4.3 passes per game) on the edge. Especially with Joey outside him.
I mentioned in my ‘21 things for 2021‘ piece earlier in the preseason that Wests have a lot of good players but none carrying elite status. Leilua can be that elite player if he can add another dimension to his game.
Preseason NRL Notepad: Leilua Brothers Linking Up
“Heads In” 2021
Oscar Pannifex unpacks a scrum of three key questions ahead of the 2021 NRL season.
Centre-Field Scrum – What’s centre-frame in the Rugby League lens this season?
It wouldn’t be an NRL pre-season without an article announcing ‘the time is now’ for halfback Luke Brooks, so here we are.
Some very bold, very early and very unfair comparisons with the great Andrew Johns had us all watching and waiting on with interest six years ago when Brooks arrived on the NRL scene, and for the most part we are still waiting.
Brooks has both fairly and unfairly been blamed for the performances of his team since establishing himself as the Tigers’ long term number seven back in 2014. The presence of club legends and dominant playmakers Benji Marshall and Robbie Farah were significant and fair excuses for Brooks in seasons past as he struggled to take ownership of the team – despite often being labelled as responsible for their failures.
But as all great halfbacks will tell you, that’s part-and-parcel of wearing the #7 jumper.
With Marshall now gone and a relatively inexperienced spine forming around him, it feels like 2021 might be the year it all comes together for Luke Brooks.
Daine Laurie (3 NRL games) is expected to line up at fullback to begin the season, with Jacob Liddle (43 NRL games) at hooker and Adam Doueihi (50 NRL games) joining Brooks in the halves from Round 2. That leaves Brooks (148 NRL games) as comfortably the most experienced playmaker in the spine and subsequently their likely on-field general for 2021.
Brooks has always been a great runner of the footy.
Per Fox Sports Lab, he ran for the fourth most total metres in 2020 among halfbacks, despite playing only 17 games – sometimes as a utility off the bench – and notching 100 fewer receipts than any other half ranked inside the top ten for run metres. Indeed, Brooks’ average 57 run metres from 45 receipts in 2020 was the highest of all halfbacks, and ranks him alongside established international halves like Jahrome Hughes and George Williams.
Where Brooks needs to improve is his ball playing.
Five try assists from 17 games in 2020 is decidedly poor for an NRL halfback, no matter the calibre of players around him. Wests now boast two dynamic attacking centres on the edges, and Michael Maguire will want to get the most out of Joey Leilua and James Roberts in attack. With a fairly one-dimensional forward pack unlikely to move the ball around much, it’s imperative that Brooks gets his hands on the ball more often and distributes well across the park.
We know Brooks can do it… but does he?
Right Scrum-Line – Who is feeling the pressure this season?
Not enough has been made of Harry Grant’s influence at the Wests Tigers last season. There is no way they finish as high as 11th without him.
From making his club debut in Round 3 to finishing the year as a winning State of Origin hooker, Grant’s rise to superstardom is yet another example of the Melbourne Storm’s professionalism and ability to identify and develop talent. While we all got caught up in the hype of Grant’s breakout NRL season, those in the know at Melbourne were patting each other on the backs, having known what was coming for many years now.
The bittersweet side to it all is that Wests Tigers facilitated his emergence, knowing full well that his future was unlikely to be in the orange-and-black. Instead, the Tigers will enter the 2021 season with Jacob Liddle as their first choice hooker, and there will be plenty of pressure on the 24-year-old to get the job done following a few injury disrupted years at the club.
With just 43 games across five years at Wests, Liddle feels like a bit of an unknown at NRL level. He had plenty of hype around him coming through the junior grades, while his 94% tackle efficiency in first-grade is promising. He won’t be able to emulate the creative attacking flair and control of Grant from dummy-half this year, but he can still play a role directing Wests’ forward pack around the park.
If Liddle can hold up markers from half and bring his big, running forwards onto the ball at pace, there’s no reason a likely starting middle rotation of Alex Twal, James Tamou and Joe Ofahengaue can’t cause havoc through the middle of the field. But if he can’t, Wests’ lack of a ball-playing threat around the ruck could make the yardage battle a difficult one for a Tigers pack lacking creativity and variation in the way they work up-field.
Left Scrum-Line – My left-field thought for the season
http://gty.im/1253026798The arrival of Daine Laurie in Concord late in the off-season scrambles up what was originally quite a settled spine for Wests Tigers this year. Luke Brooks, Adam Doueihi and Jacob Liddle look set to complete the attacking quartet for coach Michael Maguire this season, but there is a forgotten man in this playmaking puzzle that simply has to be in the Tigers’ top 17 in 2021.
Moses Mbye – by far and away the most experienced playmaker in Maguire’s squad – looks set to be a victim of his own versatility in 2021.
With Doueihi suspended in Round 1, Mbye will start the season at five-eighth but is expected to vacate the role after one match. A move out to the centres seemed the next option for Mbye, who is capable of filling any position in the backline. But with recent signings Leilua and Roberts both specialist centres, Mbye might be in for an entirely new role this season.
While the logical solution is to move him to the bench and play a super-sub role in the #14 jersey, it isn’t totally out of the question for Mbye to find himself playing in the middle this season as a ball-playing lock. Just as Michael Morgan and Cooper Cronk before him came on late in the game for Queensland as representative rookies in State of Origin, so too could we see Mbye join Wests’ pack in the back half of games to target tiring middles and help move the ball across-field.
There’s pros and cons to this idea.
Mbye is not going to offer much impact as a running forward. At 180cm and 89kgs, he is hardly a tackle-busting hit-up merchant that will drag his team up the field.
But with running back-rowers Luciano Leilua and Luke Garner on the edges and speed to burn out wide in Roberts and Nofoaluma, Mbye could be the extra pair of hands Wests need to shift the ball quickly to their strike players. Especially against a tiring defensive line.
We’ll be watching for where Mbye lines up and how he is used from Round 2 when Doueihi returns from suspension.
Peak, Pass, Pit
Oscar and Jason give their predicted peak for the Tigers in 2021 along with a pass mark and worst-case scenario.
Peak
9th: I hate to say it, but that haunted 9th rung on the ladder looms as the peak for the Wests Tigers this season. They have plenty of strike out wide, but the word potential comes to mind far too often when talking about this Tigers squad. Even with Brooks in career-best form, I can’t see Wests playing finals footy in 2021. ~OP
Late mathematical chance: The Tigers have enough good players to be competitive most weeks. If they can win a few close ones and beat the teams the should, Wests could be within a sniff of finals footy late in the season. But as we’ve seen recently, their late-season struggles would likely see them fall just short. ~JO
Pass
10th-12th: Wests Tigers are undoubtedly in a rebuilding phase. Maguire is a quality NRL coach and he has this squad heading in the right direction. He certainly has the ability to bring the best out of his players – Nofoaluma’s 2020 season is a prime example. But there are still significant holes in this roster, and at this point in time a few rungs below the eight would mark an acceptable year for Maguire and the Tigers in 2021. ~OP
11th-13th: I’ve covered how I will measure Wests season already here. To summarise: “This is the year Maguire needs to find a happy medium between attack and defence while having his side produce in both facets consistently. If he can achieve that – even without an improvement in the W column – this season can still be a success.” ~JO
Pit
Wooden Spoon: So much depends on Luke Brooks capturing and maintaining form like never before if the Tigers are to be successful in 2021. Their depth is comparatively poor when measured up against the other clubs expected to fall outside the top eight, particularly in the forward pack. If Tamou or Twal miss any more than a few games – or if Brooks fails to fire – this Tigers squad will struggle to make an impression in 2021 and could get dangerously close to collecting that dreaded Wooden Spoon. ~OP
Wooden spoon: A lot of the optimism around the Tigers assumes young players (Blore, Laurie, Simpkin, Utoikamanu) and out of form players (Brooks, Roberts, Joey Leilua, Ofahengaue) all improve and play to their potential. It’s unlikely that they all do so in 2021. If only one or two show a significant improvement – and if one of them isn’t Brooks – then the Tigers will struggle. It doesn’t feel right putting a Michael Maguire team in the spoon conversation, but I can’t rule it out. ~JO
*All stats and video from NRL.com unless stated otherwise