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 5 of the 2021 NRL season:
- Structure: What is it good for?
- Lose-Lose: The Bunker
- A round to remember for…Sam Walker
- A round to forget for…Wests Tigers
- Play of the Round: North Queensland Cowboys
- Graham Annesley’s Briefing Summary
Structure: What is it good for?
The New Zealand Warriors attack is poor. Flattered after being afforded the privilege of piling up 34 points on a bruised and battered Canberra Raiders side in Round 3, the Warriors attack was well and truly exposed against the Sydney Roosters and Manly Warringah Sea Eagles over the last fortnight.
Injuries to key forwards, or even halfback Chanel Harris-Tavita for that matter, don’t excuse the lack of intent the Warriors have shown with the ball this season. They offered almost nothing inside the Sea Eagles 20-metre line as a lack of structure resulted in a lack of points.
With the ball we were just horrible. We didn’t get anywhere near where we needed to get to. Roger is obviously doing some good stuff for us … it didn’t help Rog get in the right positions because we just got all our attack wrong. – Warriors coach Nathan Brown
The Warriors structure – if we can call it that – resembled more of an Under 10’s side. Give it to the good guy, in this case Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, and hope he does something with it.
It got me thinking about how much the term ‘structure’ has been adopted and turned into a negative.
Somewhere along the lines, the term “structure” started to be considered a bad thing in rugby league. We hear that “[Team A] just plays with too much structure” in post-game analysis all too regularly. Perhaps the term can be used like that for the North Queensland Cowboys who maintained an outdated structure under Paul Green, but even then, they’re not ‘too structured’. More, they played with an ineffective attacking structure too often.
The two best teams over the last decade in the Sydney Roosters and Melbourne Storm are well-drilled and undoubtedly structured in the way they attack. There is no such thing as “too structured” when you’re talking about the Roosters and Storm in recent years.
Structure is to have a plan in attack. It’s players understanding the principals of the attack and to be able to anticipate the next movement. It’s knowing the areas of the field the team wants to work towards before firing a shot. This try here in Round 5 is a prime example of players knowing exactly where to be and when – just watch Angus Crichton.
This Storm try last season might look like a result of Cameron Smith playing eyes up around the ruck. In reality, it’s a perfectly crafted set in which the Storm hooker manipulated the defensive line early to open up the space for Tino Fa’asuamaleaui to score by the end of it.
We caught another example – to go along with countless others over the years – of a structured Roosters set resulting in points in Round 5.
I’m going to talk more about Sam Walker shortly, but his pass to Daniel Tupou to score isn’t a fluke. It’s a result of a full set moulding the opposition defensive line like silly putty. ‘Eyes up footy’ didn’t provide the Roosters with a five on three overlap as the Sharks defence scrambled to defend half of the field with three players.
It starts with Brett Morris hitting the Sharks lock (Jack Williams) and right-edge backrower (Teig Wilton) off the scrum before Sio Siua Taukeiaho takes a carry down the right edge.
Victor Radley sends Jared Waerea-Hargreaves into the middle of the field, again directed towards Williams. The threat of James Tedesco out the back keeps Wilton creeping into the middle of the field too. With Toby Rudolf playing out of position on the left edge, the Roosters use this middle setup to throw shape down the right edge. The Sharks do well to shut down what is a four on three attacking opportunity for the Roosters, but they were scrambling.
Taukeiaho and Radley quickly get into position. Walker, who just threw the last pass on the right edge is on the move again knowing the direction of the Roosters attack is changing. Taukeiaho is where he needs to be and holds the ball up before feeding it to Radley. When Waerea-Hargreaves runs a great line to force Wilton in, the Sharks now have just three players defending half of the field to the Roosters five.
Once Walker gets on the outside of Wilton, Jesse Ramien is forced to make a decision and attempts to shut down the play. It’s a numbers game and Walker wins it with a long pass out to Tupou who finishes a try-scoring set that started four tackles earlier.
Sure, Walker’s pass can be talked about as an eyes up play. But that opportunity stems from an excellent set that rolled up the field without a hitch. Once the raid down the right side didn’t work, Taukeaho, Radley and Walker were already in position to shift the ball. That’s the sort of structure and understanding in attack the teams towards the bottom of the ladder lack.
A structured attack isn’t bad.
A bad attack is bad and can be for a variety of reasons. Structure, in isolation, isn’t one of them.
Lose-Lose: The Bunker
It’s not something I usually want to get into when writing this column. It could occupy a segment every week if I let it. However, this needs to be called out for what it is: The driving force behind referee abuse.
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