The Notepad identifies one key player, stat, trend or talking point for every team, every round of the 2022 NRL season.
Thursday & Friday
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Saturday
Warriors
“The opportunity for him to leave now allows us to move forward with our future planning and to develop our younger players.” – Warriors CEO Cameron George
That’s the word from the Warriors after they released Matthew Lodge last week.
“Younger players.”
The Warriors have since signed 32-year-old Dunamis Lui who is by no means dominating Queensland Cup and has never been a prolific metre-eater throughout his NRL career. Lui has never averaged over 100 metres per game and managed only 58 metres per game in 11 appearances for the Raiders last season.
Nathan Brown’s side is last in yardage. Lui is neither young, nor the answer to their current problems.
In Lui’s same team is 25-year-old Lachlan Timm. He’s punching out 145 running metres per game and wouldn’t look out of place at NRL level. He gets up the field and has a good motor to have played 80 minutes in two of the last three weeks for the Redcliffe Dolphins.
In the same team again is already-contracted Warriors player Pride Petterson-Robati. At 26-years old, he’s been waiting years for his NRL debut. If not now, when?
Instead, the Warriors have named Jazz Tevaga and Ben Murdoch-Masila at prop for this one. That is likely to change on the day, and it’s quite likely that Lui is the one to step in. Add Addin Fonua-Blake’s injury to the mix and the worst yardage team in the NRL is now a lot worse. I’m trying to measure by how much on Saturday afternoon.
Knights
This is it, Knights fans.
This is how they get the best out of Kalyn Ponga in this new-look on-ball role.
Work towards short sides. Here, they run Daniel Saifiti at the smaller Billy Walters and Jordan Riki. Playing onto the smaller Walters promotes a quick play-the-ball and bringing Riki into the tackle forces another middle to reload on the short side. From there, Ponga swings into action from first receiver on the short side. As soon as he applies that goose step to the outside of Payne Haas at A defender, the defensive line scrambles backwards to buy time.
The Broncos keep Bradman Best out on this occasion but the Knights go straight back to it. Again it’s Walters and Riki in the tackle and Ponga at first receiver. Ponga gets to the outside of the A defender and straightens before playing Lachlan Fitzgibbon into half a gap on the line.
It ended up as a no try, but it’s the blueprint for the Knights moving forward. Let’s see it again.
Rabbitohs
The Rabbitohs don’t have a huge problem getting up the field despite their NRL-high 13.5 errors per game. They’re 6th in yardage averaging 1,664 running metres per game and generate 33.7 tackles inside the opposition’s 20-metre line per game (2nd).
The problems seem to come when the Rabbitohs reach good ball. Terribly inefficient for a side that should score a lot more given the opportunities, it’s an area of the field the Bunnies need to improve if they’re to climb the ladder. Cameron Murray’s possible return this week would help. So too will having Latrell Mitchell in the side later in the season. Still, they need to develop their good ball attack beyond sending it wide to the left edge.
I had high hopes for Keaon Kolloamatangi this season but we’ve not really seen him dominate with the ball. However, he’s running at a poor Tigers left edge that has conceded 49% of their tries so far in 2022. If Koloamatangi is going to click into gear with the ball, it’s likely to be this week.
Tigers
This is Jackson Hastings at his best and where the Wests Tigers must continue developing if they’re to build any consistency into their attack. Too often we’ve seen the Tigers work through periods where the attack appears to be coming together before quickly realizing those promising periods were built on actions that can’t often be repeated and a healthy slice of luck.
With Hastings, however, they’re playing with a plan and running with purpose throughout a set.
Here the Tigers take two settlers to the right side of the field. They’re generating good ruck speed and shrinking the defensive line as a result.
They shift the ball left and isolate Luke Garner onto Kyle Flanagan. It’s an action they worked towards throughout the whole match and while Flanagan defended this one well, Hastings was there to make the most of the advantage they had created down the short side.
A lovely double-pump gets Jayden Okunbor in the air and Hastings makes the right pass for Starford To’a to score.
This was a well-planned and well-executed set that can be repeated and, as we saw, added to on the fly. If the Tigers can continue to produce points like this, they might finally be able to start playing consistent football and make a genuine start on their latest attempted rebuild.
Sharks
What’s doing, Craig?
We talked about Wade Graham starting ahead of Teig Wilton last week. Unsurprisingly, the Sharks looked a lot better once Wilton entered the field and the points started to flow.
The Sharks left edge operates better with Wilton in over Graham. That much we know. So, what now for Graham?
He’s always been tough and skillful for his size. As well as being brutal in defence, those are the key traits to Graham’s game. They sound a lot like those of a good ball-playing middle forward…
Tohu Harris is transitioning into the middle for the Warriors and they look better for it. Perhaps Graham can play a similar role for the Sharks and offer some variation to Cameron McInnes who is used more as a trigger for their long shifts.
Roosters
The Roosters are a frustrating team to dig into at the moment.
Just as they appear to be finding their feet in attack and looking like the team a lot of us expected before Round 1, they put in a head-scratching performance and leave you wondering how it could be going so bad.
In their defence, they played their best game of the season in Round 10 and were asked to back that up against the defending premiers and best team in the competition a week later. That’s less than ideal when you’re simply looking to put in two good back-to-back performances to get the 2022 NRL season back on track.
So, we’re ignoring last week. It didn’t happen. Most teams in the competition should ignore results against the Panthers right now – they’re that far ahead of the pack. It’s important the Roosters back up their Round 10 performance with another good one here.
I noted that Luke Keary touched the ball a season-high 61 times in Round 10 and considered whether that might be a reason behind their impressive win. He touched the ball 70 times in their loss to the Panthers…
How often he touches the ball and where on the field he touches it is again a focus as we look to see whether or not the Roosters have moved him into a more traditional #7 role moving forward.
Sunday
Bulldogs
If we’re going to see Mick Potter make any changes and improvements to the Bulldogs side in 2022, it starts this week.
Remarkably, Matthew Dufty has again been named at fullback. He has been on thin ice all season and I’m beyond surprised that he has remained in the side after his Round 11 performance.
