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 Week 2 of the 2022 NRL Finals:
- Breaking down Brown’s brilliance
- How the Rabbitohs shut down the Sharks
- Green Machine runs out of gas
- Sharks circling for 2023
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Breaking down Brown’s Brilliance
Take a bow, Dylan Brown.
It feels as though we’ve said it a few times already throughout the 2022 season, but Brown put together one of the best performances of his NRL career on Friday night.
Constantly floating to both sides of the field, dropping players underneath, hitting short sides in yardage and getting deep into the line on a shift in good ball – he had a hand in everything. His 321 running metres is comfortably a new career-high, smashing his last mark of 198 running metres set in Round 12 this year. Yet, outside of the monster running metres number, Brown’s impact doesn’t show on the stats pages.
He ended up with only one try assist in a game that his side scored 40 points. However, as we dig into a few of the tries Parramatta Eels scored on Friday night, we start to see just how influential Brown was to the result.
It became clear early that the Eels had circled Canberra’s left edge as a target. Brown spent the night attacking the space around the three and four-in defenders, creating room and numbers out wide for Mitchell Moses and Clint Gutherson to throw the highlight reel pass. He targeted the inside shoulders of outside defenders, changed the tempo of his run, and caused general havoc to the defensive line across the full 80 minutes.
You can see the plan start to come into action in Parramatta’s first try of the night.
Brown first drops Reagan Campbell-Gillard back off underneath to setup for the long-side shift. As he takes possession from Reed Mahoney and moves slightly to his right, Junior Paulo as an option short attracts three defenders. Importantly, it’s enough to put Mitchell Moses on the outside of Hudson Young and it’s a numbers game from there.
This next one is similar to the first but the setup for the shift is different.
Following a Paulo carry to the middle and Campbell-Gillard settler, Brown sparks the set into action with a dart down the short side. He could have chanced his arm and fired the ball to Clint Gutherson. It’s something the ‘bad Eels’ would have done earlier in the year. Instead, he takes a few quick steps forward to engage the A defender while pitching Shaun Lane onto the much smaller Jamal Fogarty.
The Eels are on the front foot and Brown is scheming. Always moving, the 22-year-old starts to float over to the right side. Again, the option is there for the Eels to get ahead of themselves and throw a speculator but Matterson settles the ball into the middle of the field.
Jack Wighton has shot out on Brown. He’s behind the ball and that is a target for Brown on the next tackle as he eyes up the space between Wighton and his outside defender. As he did in the first try, Brown floats to the outside of his man, engages Wighton with Isaiah Papali’i short, and bang, Mitchell Moses ices an overlap for Waqa Blake to score.
Back at it in the second half, Brown also produced the decisive run and pass for Marata Niukore to score.
Flat with Mahoney at dummy half, Brown straightens the attack and changes the tempo of his run to create the overlap out wide and it’s Gutherson who makes the right read out wide this time.
The reverse angle shows us how well Brown does in using his option short to engage the A and B defenders and create a numbers advantage out wide.
Watch Elliott Whitehead’s feet and hips. He’s sliding in anticipation of a shift out wide. Turned out and ready to apply pressure on Gutherson out the back, Brown’s quick acceleration into the line forces Whitehead in on Oregon Kaufusi and the second the Englishman’s hips turn in, Brown fires the ball out the back to Gutherson.
Brown isn’t credited with a try assist in any of these. Somewhat ironically, the one try assist he did register in this one came from a fairly bland kick that went through the legs of Xavier Savage for Tom Opacic to score. In Paulo’s try, Brown was involved in the build-up and his constant movement behind the ball put Fogarty on his heels and made things even easier for Matterson and Paulo on the line.
Dominance doesn’t always show in the numbers and Brown’s performance in Week 2 of the NRL Finals is a prime example. He dominated with the ball and the Raiders had no answer for his speed, deception and willingness to engage the line.
This segment can’t end without showing his final pass of the match.
A fitting end to a superb 80 minutes.
How the Rabbitohs shut down the Sharks
The Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks reinvented their attack this season and found regular success with their slingshot approach to the edges. Teig Wilton became one of the most underrated players in the game (and by his own coach, for mine) to play a key role on the left edge, Briton Nikora returned to form, and Wade Graham improved as the season went on. They ran hard lines for Matt Moylan and Nicho Hynes to ball play and for the Sharks outside backs to run riot.
In Week 2 of the NRL Finals, however, the South Sydney Rabbitohs did an excellent job of cutting down their time with the ball out wide and stifled what has been a decent attack for most of the NRL season.
The Sharks weren’t short of opportunities to attack early. Souths crossed the line to start but it was Craig Fitzgibbon’s side who spent most of the early exchanges attacking in good ball. And it was throughout those early exchanges that the Rabbitohs showed how they intended on defending in this one.
In the space of three tackles, both Rabbitohs wingers jammed in on Sharks shifts in what became a regular feature of their defence throughout the match.
Taane Milne and Alex Johnston disrupted the sweeping shifts while Lachlan Ilias and Campbell Graham on the right and Cody Walker and Isaiah Tass on the left worked hard from the inside to get in behind their jamming winger and close down the space.
The jamming defenders didn’t always need to complete the tackle. Graham crunched William Kennedy on one sweep left. Later in the match down the right side, a jamming Tass applied enough pressure on Kennedy to force a poor pass and eventual turnover.
Souths kept at it all night. Even as injuries forced a reshuffle, the instructions remained the same. They now prepare to face a Panthers side that plays with more variation in attack than any other team in the NRL.
Viliame Kikau, Izack Tago and Taylan May run a variety of shapes on the left edge that can expose a jamming winger if they’re too late. On the right, Nathan Cleary is likely to kick in behind the line early to keep the defence on their heels. The Rabbitohs will need to adjust the way they go about things and I’m curious to see what changes they make after performing so well without the ball in Week 2.
Green Machine runs out of gas
What a roller coaster that season was…
The Canberra Raiders looked like dead-set spoon contenders to start the 2022 NRL season. Awful across the opening rounds, Ricky Stuart found himself under pressure. You know things are bad when Stuart’s name is popping up in the media as one in the hot seat. However, the Raiders bounced back in the second half of the season. Led by a career-best year from Joseph Tapine and thanks to a late-season capitulation from the Brisbane Broncos, the Raiders secured their place in the NRL Finals.
A win over the Melbourne Storm offered hope of another Cinderella run to the Grand Final but the Green Machine ran out of gas in Week 2. Where the Parramatta Eels did everything right, the Raiders couldn’t get into the game. They looked for the easy option on the edges without getting into the grind through the middle.
It’s a disappointing end to a strange season, but one that looks about right when measuring it against preseason expectations.
Reviewing the season preview
Emre Guler showed some nice signs in 2020. I circled him as a player to watch in 2021 but he didn’t kick on quite like I expected. Doing the same for 2022, I’m still not sold. He has all of the skills to be an impactful forward in the NRL. A big unit at 191 cm and 112 kg, few on the field can match him for size. Few his size can step and pass quite like he can either. However, Guler can’t seem to consistently put it all together. He is still only 24 years old and has another year or two before props tend to peak. Still, that breakout season didn’t come for him in this one.
Xavier Savage, on the other hand, was given his opportunity to play regular first-grade football.
“I want to see Savage on the field and if it’s at fullback over Nicoll-Klokstad then I think I’m alright with that.” – Canberra Raiders Season Preview
He certainly had his rookie moments, and in the end, Week 2 of the NRL Finals summed him up fairly well. Conceding a horror try between his legs before scoring on a superb solo effort later in the game, the Raiders still need to take the good with the bad with Savage. While his errors and defensive issues are what you would expect from a 20-year-old fullback, he will be better off for the 19 games in the top side this season when he runs out in 2023.
Overall, the Raiders travelled roughly as expected. They took a strange path to my preseason pass mark of 8th, but got there in the end. The cohesion developed in recent years and the addition of Jamal Fogarty helped to build the sort of consistency that ultimately booked their place in the finals. Setting the peak at 6th, a Week 2 loss is as good as I saw the Raiders getting this season. Considering their start, it’s quite an achievement.
It’s difficult to measure such a roller-coaster season, but the Raiders deserve a pass mark for 2022.
Sharks circling in 2023
The Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks stumbled in September but when you look at the season as a whole, a Week 2 loss feels like an accurate and fair reflection of their 2022 campaign.
Their easy draw is well known. There is little question that the Sharks overachieved in finishing 2nd on the NRL ladder. Still, they made significant improvements on their 2021 season and made the sort of changes that put them in a good position to continue to improve in 2023.
Craig Fitzgibbon impressed in his first season as head coach and Nicho Hynes became one of the most influential players in the game upon his arrival. With a long-term coach at the helm, an improving star in the #7 jersey, and a mix of young and experienced players on the roster moving forward, this season looks as though it will act as a building block to bigger and better things in the coming years.
Reviewing the season preview
“Hynes won’t be the best half in the competition in his first year but he’s going to add a lot to this Sharks attack.” – Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks Season Preview
Well, some would argue that Nicho Hynes was, in fact, the best half in the NRL this season.
As one of his biggest believers when he arrived at the Sharks, I didn’t see him being quite this good. It’s safe to say that 2022 will go down as Hynes’ breakout season.
Franklin Pele, on the other hand, wasn’t given the opportunities in the NRL I hoped he would. He played 20 times for the Newtown Jets, scored 11 tries, broke 17 tackles, threw 19 offloads and averaged 100 metres per game, but Craig Fitzgibbon couldn’t find a place for him in the first-grade side at all throughout the year.
Soft draw or not, the Sharks exceeded expectations in 2022. I set their pass mark at 8th – they cleared it easy. Setting their peak at 5th, that’s roughly where they ended up after losing in Week 2.
The chat around this team has predominantly alternated between overhype based on their ladder position or dismissal due to the draw. However, the Sharks can be happy overall. They showed positive signs on both sides of the ball but lacked the consistency to get it done in September. Although, we would be looking at all of this a lot differently if they had held onto the lead they should have in Week 1…
Given how they’ve been perceived this year and how it ended, I expect to see the Sharks relatively underrated heading into next season but again feature in at least Week 2 of the finals.