The Rugby League Writers NRL Round 4 Preview Newsletter gets you ready for the upcoming round of action with tips, previews, our Saturday watchlist and best bets.
Round 4 NRL Tips
Oscar and Jason are going head-to-head in a tipping competition with a twist this season. To make things interesting, a winning bet on Thursday night can set up a huge week with the total number of correct tips in the round multiplied by the odds of the winning punt.
| Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oscar | Tigers | Sharks/Rabbitohs | Warriors/Sea Eagles/Roosters | Storm/Eels |
| Jason | Titans | Sharks/Panthers | Broncos/Sea Eagles/Roosters | Storm/Eels |
2022 Results
| Oscar | Jason | |
|---|---|---|
| Correct Tips | 14 | 14 |
| Bet boosted score | 20 | 23.8 |
Oscar: The Titans have scored nine of their 13 tries so far this year down the left edge. AJ Brimson and Jayden Campbell are finding Brian Kelly and Philip Sami on the edges and those guys are finding points. I’m looking a little closer in-field this week, though. Beau Fermor is continuing to fly under the radar as a classy, line running backrower. He’ll have an 82kg Jock Madden marking up on him in Round 4 and that’s worth a look for me at $3.20. Beau Fermor anytime try scorer @ $3.20.
Jason: One of the biggest reasons for the Wests Tigers’ poor start to the season has come down to a lack of effort in defence. They switch off very quickly and have a tendency to stop once the ball moves past them. With the defensive line in pieces and only lazy arms in his way, David Fifita is a special to score this week. David Fifita anytime try scorer @ $2.50.
“Heads In” – Round 4 NRL Preview
We’re adding Oscar’s feature segment to the Newsletter to preview every round. In his feature this week, he breaks down the dominant dummy halves of 2022.
Sign up for a Premium membership to unlock the full piece including his head-noise talking points and Super Coach Game Theory for the week.
Centre-Field Scrum – What’s centre frame in the Rugby League lens this week?
After enjoying a love-affair with ballplaying locks over the past two seasons I’ve settled on a shiny new toy for 2022; the subtleties, the scheming and the skills of a playmaking dummy half.
With ruck speeds decreasing and relieving penalties closing the divide between top and bottom this year, we’re not seeing the wipe out score lines of ‘21. Lesser teams aren’t being forced to make eight or nine consecutive tackles in a set until they’re blown through the middle by a rolling ruck attack, touch footy style. And when they finally get the pill, they’ve now got the gas to work up-field or the chance to kick for touch when awarded a penalty in their own half.
So what does this have to do with the dummy half?
When the six-again rule was introduced all the talk was around the Damien Cook-type hookers and how they were going to run riot through the middle. As we now know, that wasn’t the case. Defensive lines compressed when ruck speeds increased and there became less room for running hookers to move, not more.
Instead, it was the ballplaying locks – Isaah Yeo, Cameron Murray, Victor Radley – who dominated. By digging into the line from first receiver, these guys could tighten an already compressed defensive line before quickly shifting to the edge where the spaces were.
We’re going to see these actions work effectively again in 2022 but how teams build towards them is what’s changing.
You can’t rely on a few six-again calls to generate ruck speed anymore. The good teams have had last year’s habits coached out of them and the bad teams will concede relieving penalties to let you up field. Once you get there though, you still need to be able to cave the middle and compress the defence to create scoring opportunities out wide.
Enter your creative dummy halves.
Hookers who can manipulate middle defenders, engage markers and pass their teammates into spaces around the ruck are going to be hugely important in 2022. Harry Grant, Apisai Koroisau and Reed Mahoney are three guys who do this better than most and their club’s ladder position reflects this (I’m getting closer to throwing Cronulla’s Blayke Brailey in there somewhere, too). Highlight reel moments aside, the value of these hookers is measured in the tiny influences they have on a game across 80 minutes. The way they position their body at dummy-half, where their eyes are looking, whether they pass it off the ground or take a step first – these little things are going to separate the good from the bad now more than ever.
For this reason Grant is my pick for best hooker in the game right now. He has wonderful control of the ruck and is blessed with equally effective running and passing games which he uses with perfect variety. He doesn’t just run when there’s a quick play-the-ball; he identifies where the space is and constructs an action best suited to capitalise on it.
Take this action in Round 2 against South Sydney.
Grant uses his speed to beat the ruck defenders and engage Damien Cook and Davvy Moale in the line. He runs just far enough to get them interested without cutting down Jahrome Hughes’ space and the way he holds the ball conceals the pass until the exact moment he releases it. Both Rabbitohs are glued to the ground by Grant’s actions and both make poor contact when he passes Hughes in between them.
Grant didn’t just run here because the markers were retreating late. He also didn’t run just because he saw some space and wanted a crack himself. Grant ran here because he identified an opportunity to get an even quicker play-the-ball on the following play:
Souths are already struggling to keep pace when Grant scoots from half on tackle four. The pressure and disruption he creates in the defensive line is multiplied tenfold when Hughes finds his front and plays the ball quickly on the last. The Rabbitohs compress on reaction and have no chance to position themselves effectively on the line which buys Grant more time to drop a kick in behind and earn another attacking set for his team. The last hooker who played the game this many tackles ahead looked pretty good in a purple #9 jumper, too.
So where does that leave the Damien Cook’s and Tom Starling’s?
We don’t need to look any further than Round 3. Starling couldn’t get himself into the game while the Raiders were getting beaten through the middle. He isn’t a guy who will turn a four metre carry into an eight metre one with the timing of his pass or the positioning of his body. He is somewhat reliant on his forward pack earning some momentum first, but as soon as they do – and it doesn’t even have to be much at all – Starling can add to it.
Both markers are in reasonable position here but neither are a chance of catching Starling off the mark. He’s quick enough to burn them and engage the A-defender from a standing start and it’s exactly what he does here. The key to all this is Starling taking the ball into contact. He doesn’t throw a panic pass at the line to an unsuspecting teammate (g’day, Damien Cook) and kill momentum. Instead, he takes the tackle himself – well, he almost does.
Whether he gets that offload away or just plays it quickly, Starling had the Titans shot and it’s exactly how running hookers can be effective in 2022. They mightn’t be helping their forwards generate ruck speed like a Grant or a Koroisau but they can generate that ruck speed themselves with a well timed run.
Round 3 also showed us what happens if you aren’t doing either of these things.
The Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles had 28 tackles inside Canterbury’s 20-metre line in the second half but could only find a single rugby league point. We’ll give some credit to a much-improved Bulldogs defence and we can blame the rain for stunting some of Manly’s attack too, but the truth is the Sea Eagles were very underwhelming in attack.
Without threatening around the ruck first, Manly weren’t creating any of the spaces out wide that Tom Trbojevic danced through for fun in 2021. And on the rare occasion that they did disrupt Canterbury’s defensive line, they failed to capitalise on it.
Martin Taupau takes a very pedestrian route to the defensive line here before sparking to life and darting across field. It’s all a little messy but he does engage four Bulldogs defenders and he does find his front quickly. Karl Lawton identifies the quick play-the-ball and scoots from dummy-half but it’s the wrong option with Canterbury players still getting into position on the edges.
By the time Manly do get the ball that way, it’s on the back of a very slow carry from Sean Keppie and the Bulldogs have all the time in the world to defend accordingly.
Manly’s lack of creativity around the ruck is hurting them in 2022. They swept around teams in exit sets last year by winning a quick play-the-ball on one edge and using their speed to go down the far touchline. Without Josh Schuster, in particular, right now the Sea Eagles are looking for other wins to generate some momentum and we witnessed that first-hand in Round 3.
Regular readers will know I’ve been a Lachlan Croker fan for a while now but you need more from your hooker than good service and a truckload of tackles in 2022. Dummy halves who aren’t reliant on their pack eating metres are a cut above the rest at the moment and it will be interesting to see how teams adjust to this in the coming weeks.
Saturday Notepad
The Notepad identifies one key player, stat, trend or talking point for every team, every round of the 2022 NRL season.
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Warriors
Honestly…
That 80 minutes last week was one of the worst I’ve ever seen the Warriors play and I’ve been supporting the club for as long as I can remember.
Surely, SURELY, they come out fired up on Saturday afternoon.
I’ll be looking for a few little things around Chanel Harris-Tavita, Rocco Berry and how the Warriors get up the field through the middle, but any positives we manage to catch will be for nothing if we don’t see a huge response out of this group.
Sidenote: Berry looks every bit like a right-side centre. The way he moves and holds the ball looks like it would be a lot more effective on the right.
He’s not looked comfortable on the left all year. If we see that response from the Warriors early, my focus will turn to Berry and how he looks on the left.
Broncos
Plenty has already been said about Kotoni Staggs. He was in this segment last week and, well, he wasn’t very good. Staggs touched the ball ten times making four errors with his six runs for 74 metres significantly less than what he is capable of producing at his best.
I do want to highlight his defence, though.
Staggs missed four tackles in Round 3 but not all missed tackles are created equal. Importantly, he’s making better reads than he has done in the past and doesn’t look as lost when the ball swings his way.
Per Stats Insider’s Try Scoring Analysis, the Broncos have only conceded four tries through their right edge so far this season.
It’s nothing spectacular and the numbers could turn in an instant if the Warriors find success down that side of the field on Saturday. Still, it’s something to follow closely after the Broncos allowed 42 of the 77 tries conceded in 2021 (55%) to come through their right edge.
Sea Eagles
Tom Trbojevic touched the ball 36 times in Round 3. It’s the most times he has touched the ball in a game this season and slightly above his 2021 average of 35.1 touches per game.
Now, the Sea Eagles no doubt explored ways to score points without Trbojevic over the summer. They had to add some variation to their attack if they want to catch up to the elite teams in the NRL. In Round 3, however, it was all very 2021 right down to the one-out crash balls on the line.
The Sea Eagles have just been awarded six-again and Trbojevic has gone looking for a carry in a spot he found success last season. He then ran straight at Paul Vaughan and Luke Thompson and they handled him with relative ease. Where he may have broken through a couple of tired defenders last season, he’s unlikely to get through the line quite so easily in 2022.
Des Hasler’s side were desperate for a win last week so it wasn’t too surprising to see them force the ball to Trbojevic a little more often. I’m curious to see how they approach their time with the ball on Saturday and whether or not they continue to look like the 2021 version.
Raiders
Tom Starling has been named at hooker and Matt Frawley in the #14 jersey. It’s fairly safe to assume Ricky Stuart will do as he did last week and swap the two of them around before kickoff. It makes sense given what Starling can do against a tired and slow defensive line.
What doesn’t make quite as much sense is Adrian Trevilyan being left out of the side.
“Adrian Trevilyan is in my view is good enough to play first grade now. While he’s only played twenty minutes of top line footy he offers more at nine than Frawley did on the weekend. He has width to his passing game, and an ability to manipulate markers around the ruck that is more akin to what Josh Hodgson would have offered this attack” – Dan, The Sportress
Trevilyan is a genuine hooker that displayed enough throughout the preseason to suggest he’s more than capable of filling those first 25 minutes of a match Frawley is being tasked with at the moment.
I don’t buy Stuart’s explanation of protecting Trevilyan so Frawley’s utility value might be what attracts him. Personally, I’ve never been a fan of making selection decisions based purely around possible injuries. Even if I did, Trevilyan makes just as much sense given the potential injury Starling could suffer.
Oscar has circled Starling’s time on the field in his preview so I’ll take Frawley’s and look out for any obvious reasons he is being crow-barred into the side ahead of the up-and-coming Trevilyan.
Cowboys
The Cowboys are one of the most intriguing teams in the NRL right now.
I’m not sure anybody is entirely settled on what they think about the side and the decisions Todd Payten has made to start the season. However, Round 3 suggests Payten has had a plan all along and that we’re starting to see it play out now.
Tom Dearden has been excellent. There is no doubt that he deserves to be the starting five-eighth until he plays himself out of the #6 jersey.
And then there is Taumalolo. He played 51 minutes in Round 3 but I think we can assume that he would have played at least another ten if the Cowboys weren’t playing with such a big lead. And the pass…
…how about the pass?
It’s not the first time Taumalolo passing the ball has been on the list, but it’s the first time it’s been on the list after throwing one like that. It doesn’t need to end up with a teammate crossing the line to tick the box this week either.
Roosters
Ritchie on Twitter asked if I “have anything around the roosters faltering attack?” during the week. I don’t right now, no. I’ve put a lot of the Roosters’ struggles in attack down to a lack of match fitness, cohesion and a fairly Roosters-like slow start to the NRL season. Still, it’s on the list for this week if the Roosters struggle to create point-scoring opportunities on Saturday.
More specifically for the Roosters is Jared Waerea-Hargreaves.
Tell me it’s roughly three or four weeks into an NRL season without telling me it’s roughly three or four weeks into an NRL season:
He’s 33-years old so I’m not expecting huge numbers from Waerea-Hargreaves every week. His 110 running metres in 29 minutes off the bench in Round 3 is more than enough, though. In a big game the Roosters are desperate to win and up against a strong yardage team in the Cowboys, I think this might be one of those weeks Waerea-Hargreaves flicks a switch.
Sandwich Stakes
We’re putting a tenner down on a couple of games each round to pay for a few sandwiches during the working week.
Oscar: I’m looking out for one specific play featuring Kenny Bromwich on Sunay afternoon. Harry Grant put in three grubbers in Round 2 against the Rabbitohs; he forced a drop-out with one and very nearly set up a try with the others. I’m looking for Grant to use a few forward settlers to compress Wests’ defence around the ruck before dropping a grubber into the in-goal just wide of the posts for Kenny to fall on. Kenny Bromwich anytime try scorer @ $5.
Jason: It’s been all about hooker play at RLW this week and it comes after Junior Paulo and Reed Mahoney threatened to link up close to the line over the last fortnight. The Dragons have already displayed some frailties in middle defence (see the Sharks segment of the Notepad) and I like Mahoney to make the most of that via Paulo on Sunday. Junior Paulo anytime try scorer @ $7.