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 16 of the 2022 NRL season:
- How the Panthers stay ahead of the competition
- Six again, again
- It was a round to remember for… Edrick Lee
- It was a round to forget for… Gold Coast Titans
- Brian To’o and the Rugby League World Cup
- Play of the Round: Tohu Harris
How the Panthers stay ahead of the competition
The Penrith Panthers are cruising through the 2022 NRL season and are clear premiership favourites after 16 rounds.
Talking about the Panthers being good is hardly breaking new ground but we caught a fine example of exactly why they’re always so good over the weekend.
We’ve seen good teams come and go over the years. Sometimes the stars – and rules – align and a team rises sharply before a sudden drop. They dominate with a particular style but in the end, opposition coaches figure them out and that briefly good team is back in the pack chasing the likes of the Panthers and Melbourne Storm.
It’s how the Panthers constantly adjust that makes them so good and what has people talking about them as one of the best teams in NRL history if they pile up the premierships people expect over the next few years.
The try Brian To’o scored on Friday night is what I’m getting to in the end, but first we need to look at a few others.
We’re going back almost a year to Round 18 of the 2021 NRL season when To’o scored this one in the left corner.
Tyrone May feeds the scrum and sweeps around to the left side and as he sweeps, Matt Burton fans out behind a lead line that holds up the two-in defender. Dallin Watene-Zelezniak follows his centre in-field and May makes the right pass to To’o in the corner.
Seven weeks later and the Panthers were back at it. The players and path to points is different, but the shape and result remain the same.
Nathan Cleary this time sweeps around the back of the scrum. Jarome Luai is in for Burton on this occasion and it’s Burton running the line. Unlike Watene-Zelezniak, Blake Ferguson doesn’t jam in and instead holds in the hope his inside defence will recover quickly enough to slide across.
No problem for Cleary. He gets further forward this time having seen the defender in front of him slip before feeding Luai who quickly shifts the ball wider for To’o to score.
The Panthers pulled off almost exactly the same try in Round 7 this year against the Raiders. Cleary sweeps, takes a few steps forward at the defender who ends up flat-footed having anticipated the break of the scrum. That allows Cleary to get deep into the line with Izack Tago off his hip before sending the ball to Luai who throws a dummy to go over himself this time.
That one was called back for an obstruction, but you get the idea.
On Friday, however, the Panthers changed things up.
The scrum is at the same spot as all of the others only this time Cleary fakes the sweep and reloads onto the right side. Simple hands to the outside ends up with To’o diving over in the right corner this time.
It’s a nice variation to a move they’ve used plenty of times before, and that’s why it’s so effective. The Sydney Roosters planned for the Cleary sweep. They knew it was coming. The Warriors, Eels and Raiders all split the field with three defenders on each side and conceded. The Roosters, however, loaded up their right side with four defenders leaving only two on the left.
It’s the pass from the base of the scrum to Cleary that is so simple that does the trick.
Api Koroisau doesn’t overplay his hand. Instead, he gets the ball flat and fast to Cleary who is able to bring Joey Manu into the tackle and make it three-v-two on the outside. By engaging Manu straight off the scrum, the Roosters are left with two players defending roughly 40% of the field.
Even when opposing defences think they have the Panthers covered, Cleary and company produce something different and force a rethink. Any other opposition defence preparing to overload the right side where the Panthers have consistently scored points from scrums in this spot needs to think again.
The Panthers are a superb football side but aren’t content with just winning games. They’re constantly looking to improve, and while we’ve not seen quite to many trick shots from them in 2022, this try suggests they have a few up their sleeve for when they need them.
Six again, again…
Here we go again…
It’s not what we want to do at RLW but sometimes we have to dive into the crisis areas of the game. The ending to Dragons v Raiders on Sunday evening can’t be ignored.
For those that spent longer than 15 minutes considering the unintended consequences of the six again rule, something like this was always going to happen.
There have been countless occasions where a team would rather have taken the shot at goal than be awarded six more tackles throughout the year. This isn’t the first time a team has missed out on points because of the rule. However, this particular event cost a team an opportunity to win the match.
The predictability of the unintended consequences of this rule change is laughable at this point. If you’re here reading this, there’s a good chance that you’re like me and feel as though if you don’t laugh at the mistakes this game has made over the last three years, you’ll cry.
Like the move to one referee and the introduction of ten metres for ruck infringements, we all saw this coming. We can see the next band-aid fix coming, too. Instead of doing the right thing and removing the rule entirely, Peter V’landys and the ARLC will ask referees to make decisions for the team. While trying to referee a match, control the ten metres and adjudicate the ruck, they’ll ask referees to award either a penalty or six again depending on the game state. They’ll need to consider the scoreboard, the clock, where on the field the play is occurring and whether or not the defence is numbered up and which decision will most benefit the attacking team.
You know it’s coming…
That will then filter into more criticism of the referees which was again a topic this week. Andrew Webster wrote an important segment on the ridiculous backlash towards Ashley Klein following his perfectly reasonable binning of Felise Kaufusi in State of Origin II. You can read it here.
Both the rule changes and referee bashing are related and often intertwined.
People see what they want to see. If it’s poor refereeing decisions and players laying in the ruck they want when sitting down to watch the footy, poor refereeing decisions and players laying in the ruck is what they’ll get. The proof is in the fact the NRL introduced the six again rule to pander to a group of fans that only ever saw the wrestle. They changed the rule, those people were told the wrestle is no longer, and those same people now claim the wrestle is gone.
It hasn’t gone anywhere…
Unsurprisingly, rushing through poorly thought out rules to appease a group that don’t actually know what they want hasn’t worked out. Still, and this just follows the trend laying the blame for everything at the feet of the officials, the blow back on Sunday afternoon’s controversy so far has been directed at the referee.
“There needed to be courage on that ruling on the last play of the day.” – Ricky Stuart
No, Ricky. There needed to be a proper rule that actually penalised the offending team on that ruling on the last play of the day. Your team would then have had the chance to steal the two points in golden point…
So many of us saw this coming. Even the likes of Buzz Rothfield and Paul Crawley have seen the light recently. Still, while I expect it to be rolled back eventually, I’m anticipating at least one more gimmick fix before it becomes a serious possibility.
We will laugh the next silly change off too.
A round to remember for…
We love a feel-good story in rugby league.
They’re often pushed towards us in the form of ‘bad guy turns good’ or ‘Player X’s tragedy inspires him to improve’, but the best ones are those that come through genuine misfortune and hard work in response.
That is what makes Edrick Lee’s comeback so enjoyable to watch. Even the odd Gold Coast Titans fan must be able to sit here on Monday and smirk ever so slightly at Lee’s five tries against them on Friday night.
Injuries kept him to just 11 games throughout the 2020 NRL Season and wiped him out of 2021 entirely. Returning in Round 6 this season for the Knights, Lee has been one of Newcastle’s better performers in dire times and was rewarded with five tries in this one.
Signed with the Dolphins for the 2023 NRL season, I initially had him down as a “low-risk signing and at the very least provides the Dolphins with depth at the wing position” in my Dolphins signings and analysis piece. However, his segment may require a rewrite based on his form this season and the lack of proven NRL quality in the backline at the moment.
A round to forget for…
The Wests Tigers could be put here but they ended up with the unlucky honor of playing the Warriors in their first game back in New Zealand. The Warriors may not have beaten every team in the NRL on Sunday. Still, it was their best game of the season so far and one any opposition would have struggled to win.
So, the Gold Coast Titans it is…
This club is paying the price for falling in love with what many regard as the worst Finals team in NRL history. The Titans won ten games last season. Any other year and they miss out on the Finals. However, that one extra game seemed to bring with it assumed improvement.
