Recap the latest round of NRL action with the Repeat Set: Talking points, highlights, lowlights and the Play of the Round.
Here’s your Repeat Set for Round 25 of the 2021 NRL season:
- South Sydney’s fullback search
- Is this a turning point for the Tigers?
- A round to remember for…Ryan Papenhuyzen
- A round to forget for…New Zealand Warriors
- Play of the Round: Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles
- Early Week 1 NRL Finals thoughts
South Sydney’s fullback search
Wayne Bennett isn’t giving too much away about who will play fullback in Week 1 of the finals. While Blake Taaffe put in a solid effort on Saturday night, he didn’t blow the socks off the super coach.
“Lots of things I liked tonight and a couple of things I didn’t like.” – Wayne Bennett
Nobody can replace Latrell Mitchell because nobody else is like Latrell Mitchell. The best the Rabbitohs can do is fill the gap as well they can and try to squeeze more out of other areas of the field to make up the difference.
Cody Walker will be tasked with adding another level to his game. He leads the NRL in try assists and line break assists but is in the best position to fill some of the Latrell-like movements the Rabbitohs use with the ball. Not only has he filled in for Mitchell at fullback already this season, he slots into a dual-fullback type role when the two are on the field together.
He’s no Walker or Mitchell, but Taaffe had a handful of nice moments with the ball as Souths explored down the edges in Round 25.
His timing was a little bit off at times but that isn’t unexpected. As Bennett mentioned post-match, the biggest challenge for these young players stepping into first grade is doing so with very little football under their belt over the last two years. We did see a fine example of how Souths and Taaffe can link up when they get the timing right, though.
He is behind the play on this first shift which gives Talatau Amone time to catch up in defence and put some inside pressure on Taaffe. Jack Bird sees his man coming inside him and confidently moves across to cover Braydon Burns.
Taaffe and the Bunnies nail it one play later though.
Again looking left in attack, Taaffe is up with the ball and a lot tighter to his lead runner. That forces Bird in onto Burns and Taaffe now has the space to sum up the situation and make the right pass.
It looks simple, and it is, really. But to see Taaffe execute this shift under pressure and at speed will undoubtedly be one of the things Bennett liked out of the youngster in this one. That subtle hold of the ball when shaping to pass is what keeps Mikaele Ravalawa from sliding and pushing Taane Milne into touch. Taaffe creates half a second of doubt in the winger’s mind to stall his movement and put him on his heels. There is no guarantee Milne makes it through the contact and over in the corner if Ravalawa isn’t that half-second behind.
That one play became part of Ravalawa’s thinking in defence for the rest of the night. He consistently jammed in on Taaffe much like opposition wingers do to Mitchell. Souths weren’t able to capitalise on Ravalawa’s change in approach to defending on the right edge, but they went close and will look a lot different with Walker, Dane Gagai and Alex Johnston on the edge next week.
Taaffe has the skills to execute on these shifts in the same way Mitchell slots in as a ball player. It’s as a ball carrier that he falls behind.
The 22-year-old isn’t the same threat when carrying the ball. Again, nobody is. It shows in how the Rabbitohs move the ball in attack and how they start their sets.
Taaffe isn’t the same threat on kick returns as Mitchell but he is smart in how he goes about his work. Understanding the limitations of his small stature, Taaffe consistently picked out the smallest man in the kick chase and targeted him in his kick return – often Tyrell Sloan. From there, he floats around the ruck like a more traditional fullback – available for offloads or to snipe a run from dummy half when the defence allows it. While Taaffe is active around the ball, Souths do lose out in yardage sets without Mitchell. He is key to Souths targeting the edges in exit sets and setting Johnston, in particular, streaking down the sideline.
A couple of hairy moments for Taaffe under the highball are a slight cause for concern. Nathan Cleary terrorised Souths in Round 23 and the young fullback is sure to be a target in Week 1 of the finals.
While inexperienced and likely to have a target on his back for the remainder of the season, Taaffe looks to be Bennett’s best option moving forward. Walker at the back and Benji Marshall into five-eighth is a handy alternative to call upon should things not go to plan, but keeping the left edge intact must be a top priority for the Rabbitohs. They have scored 72 tries down that side of the field this season. No team has scored more than 52 tries in any area of the field. It’s the most fruitful avenue in the competition and South Sydney’s best chance at making it through to the Grand Final.
Mitchell’s suspension is season-defining but his prior spells on the sideline have provided Souths with enough experience without him to be confident in their ability to cause an upset or two in September.
Is this a turning point for the Tigers?
Wests Tigers – 0
Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs – 38
The concerns for the Tigers heading into Round 25 were real. They’ve not been a team interested in defending all season and a meaningless game against a side that consistently plays for pride if not two competition points was a recipe for disaster.
Still, not many tipped a disaster quite this catastrophic.
And so the post-mortem begins and Michael Maguire’s job, in particular, comes under question.
The disconnect between players and the coach is clear. Whatever Maguire is saying to this group during the week isn’t getting through and it shows in their effort on Sunday. His name has been in the papers all week but the players weren’t prepared to put in one more time this season for their man. The decision for the club now is whether or not they continue on the coaching carousel and rotate through another, or the changes come elsewhere and Maguire is given the time to develop what is a young team.
This isn’t another case of Trent Barrett and the Bulldogs. Barrett inherited a dumpster fire of a roster, and while the argument is certainly there to say he has made it worse, little was expected of them this season. The Tigers, on the other hand, came into 2021 with hopes of cracking the Top 8. In reality, they were never close. Maguire needs to shoulder a lot of the blame for how the season has played out.
His decision to move Adam Doueihi to the centres is one that defines his performance this season with it highlighting the inconsistency and desperation we have seen in his team lists at times throughout 2021.
Maguire is a fiery character and clearly passionate. For better or worse, Fox Sports’ Wild Wests: Tales from Tiger Town documentary has made that clear. However, as Michael Chammas from the Sydney Morning Herald reports, the constant berating has “dulled them to Maguire’s message.” Most good coaches know they have one or two sprays in them a season before it becomes background noise. Maguire’s appear to have been constant throughout the year.
But is replacing Maguire the right answer?
The Tigers have a promising roster.
Adam Doueihi is one of the best five-eighths in the game already. That’s all while being shuffled around and playing in a poor team. The 23-year-old ticks all of the boxes for becoming a top tier player: size, subtle ball-playing, smarts and speed.
It was only last week that I talked about Stefano Utoikamanu being one of the best young forwards in the NRL. Impressive again at times on Sunday, he is the player Wests can build their forward pack around.
Daine Laurie announced himself as a legitimate first-grade fullback this year and Luciano Leilua can be one of the better second rowers in the NRL if his skill set is used effectively. Tommy Talau, Shawn Blore and Thomas Mikaele are promising young players that can feature in a Top 8 team sooner rather than later.
The next few weeks are hugely important for the Tigers. Either way, it can act as a turning point for their now decade-long finals drought. Will they persist with Maguire and trust his credentials as a premiership-winning coach to take this playing group to where it should be?
He started to make a case for himself in the post-match press conference on Sunday evening:
“I know exactly where the team is going, and the organisation knows where the team is going, and we’ve got to make sure that we continually be disciplined about what we’re trying to build here. Changing teams and changing pathways of clubs takes a little bit of time. It doesn’t mean you can’t get better performances on the park – I’ll acknowledge that. But it’s about continually sticking to the path of where we’re going with this group.”
Or, will the Tigers look for their fifth head coach and hope that this one is different and produces instant results in 2022?
A round to remember for…
There isn’t an NRL chat group that didn’t feature “he’s back!” when Ryan Papenhuyzen started to display some old Paps form on Friday night.
Debates have raged about whether or not Craig Bellamy should keep persisting with him over the in-form and consistent Nicho Hynes at fullback. Papenhuyzen provided everybody with the answer as he popped up to finish tries, swept to the edges on shifts and used his speed and unorthodox tackle-breaking ability to create chances out of nothing.
Everybody had their own “he’s back” moment. For me, it was his try in the second half:
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