The NRL Preview Notepad helps you get ready for Round 22 with talking points, players to watch and trends to follow every week.
Thursday Night Members Preview
This is it for the Sydney Roosters. They played well to beat the Titans last week, but it’s all for nothing if they can’t get past the Brisbane Broncos tonight.
Ilias kicking the ball
I should know better and usually do, but the headline Latrell return saves Souths No.7 from axe reeled me in.
Foolishly, I thought there was more to the story than one journalist telling another journalist on the telly that he thought Ilias would have been dropped if Latrell wasn’t named.
Dropped for who?
Oh, one of the best players in the game will help a young halfback?
Silly me…
One mildly interesting quote did come out of the exchange, though.
“He didn’t kick the footy, I can’t recall a halfback not kicking the footy in a match.”
That is correct. Lachlan Ilias didn’t kick the ball in Round 21. It’s the first time in his career that he hasn’t put boot to ball and it is fairly rare for a half not to kick in a game. However, how many kicks and for how many metres must a half kick to quality as enough?
In Round 21 alone:
Josh Schuster had one kick for 14m.
Jake Averillo had two kicks for 39m.
Tom Dearden had two kicks for 20m.
Daejarn Asi had one kick for 36m
Luke Metcalf had one for 11m.
Teams have different kicking plans and those plans change from week to week. Looking back at how the Rabbitohs ended their sets, it makes sense that Ilias didn’t register a kick.
Due to South Sydney’s 15 errors and the eight penalties Brisbane gave away, the Bunnies only kicked from yardage twice. Ilias was out the back nursing a knock to the face for one of them.
In possession around halfway, the plan clearly revolved around Walker kicking down the left channel at Selwyn Cobbo. In their very first set, Souths worked to the middle for Walker to kick and for the left edge kick-chase to pin Cobbo in his own end. It reduces his threat as a ball carrier in yardage and gets Reece Walsh involved on the first carry. It’s also not a coincidence that Kotoni Staggs ran for 171 metres – his second-highest tally of the 2023 NRL season.
Walker is averaging a career-high 209 kicking metres per game this season but it’s not a particularly strong area of his game. As the main man on the last tackle, he struggled to consistently land it on the spot. Still, the Rabbitohs persisted and it became clear that Ilias wasn’t avoiding the role, but wasn’t tasked with it.
Closer to the line, Ilias did shape to kick on the last but opted to pass wider for the Rabbitohs to run it and attack the corner. As the team that runs it on the last more than any other in the NRL, it wasn’t a surprise, nor was it the wrong option, for Ilias not to kick the ball here.
Is it strange Ilias went 80 minutes without a kick? Sure. It’s about the only area he’s stronger than his fellow halves partner and is a role he’s typically tasked with.
Is it a reason for him to be dropped? Obviously not.
Up against the Wests Tigers, there’s a chance Ilias doesn’t record significant kicking numbers again. It’s unlikely that the Rabbitohs spend a lot of time kicking from deep in their own end on Friday night. Nonetheless, Ilias’ kicking game, and his form overall, is something to keep an eye on this week.
The return of Mitchell will help. His gravity around the ball releases pressure on the young halfback and provides him with more time to execute the actions that had so many singing his praises earlier in the year. Mitchell’s return signals the beginning of South Sydney’s run at the finals and Ilias playing himself into solid form will be a significant factor in how deep the team goes in September – assuming they get there…
Is a Storm brewing?
Cameron Munster was not happy with how the Melbourne Storm performed in their 26-18 loss to the Newcastle Knights last week.
“I have been at the club a long time and I can’t remember the last time we’ve been beaten in effort areas so many times [as we have this year]. The things that we lacked on the weekend weren’t skill based. They were pretty much attitude driven – making your tackles and wanting to compete for everything – and they just competed harder than us on Saturday, which was pretty disappointing. We can cop a loss if they are better on the day, but when teams are beating you in effort areas… that’s where he [Bellamy] can’t cop it, and rightly so.”
Cameron Munster to Corey Rosser at NRL.com
Wanting to compete for everything…
It’s an area the Storm have dominated for years. It’s why they’re so consistent and why they find ways to win games in which they don’t play particularly well. Those effort areas create opportunities. When you play with the likes of Munster, Harry Grant and Jahrome Hughes in your side, those opportunities eventually turn into points.
ICYMI: The Art of Kick Defence
“We could go through all of the elite players, big wins and clutch performances to paint a picture of their dominance. However, it’s the little things that make these two teams so good for so long. The things that don’t show up on the stats pages and in SuperCoach scores.”
We’ve seen the Storm dominate in the little things for the best part of 20 years. Unfortunately for the Parramatta Eels who are desperate for a win, I think we might witness a clinic in effort areas on Friday night.
Where the Sharks need to improve
Craig Fitzgibbon swung the axe through the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks squad before Round 21 but many of the same issues remained.
While they almost completed the biggest comeback in NRL history and Fitzgibbon took exception to a few refereeing decisions, the fact of the matter is the Sharks didn’t play well enough in the first half. At home and with a lot to play for on the day, they didn’t turn up through the middle in yardage or on the edges in defence.
The Sharks finished behind the Sea Eagles in yardage. Only just, but it’s worth noting that Taniela Paseka and Josh Aloiai combined for only 30 minutes.
A pack made up of Toby Rudolf, Oregon Kaufusi, Dale Finucane, Tom Hazelton and Royce Hunt should be able to get their side up the field against a depleted Sea Eagles side.
So why didn’t they?
It’s something I want to look into a little bit more this week. By the numbers, nothing stands out as terribly bad. The Sharks are 2nd overall in yardage at 1,816 metres per game. They push up in support 45.9 times per game (7th), ask questions of the defence by running 43.7 decoys (7th) and engage the line 25.4 times per game (2nd). Their 515.6 post-contact metres ranks 5th, they play with 51.3% possessions (3rd) and they turn that possession into an NRL-high 27.5 points per game.
I have an idea of what their handbrake is in attack: They’re a team that knows how to dominate when given cues by the defence but up against the top teams and top defences, they struggle to generate those cues. Against the best yardage and defensive team in the NRL this week, we should learn a lot about where it’s going wrong for the Sharks or, hopefully, how they’ve started to improve in those areas.
The left-edge defence is an obvious issue but I’m somewhat confident we will see an improvement there soon.
It didn’t look good early on as Aloiai crashed over in the 7th minute…
But that’s a bad read from Connor Tracey. Horrendous. So bad that it can’t possibly be a regular feature of the left-edge defence. Perhaps he was overeager and focused on shutting down anything that came near him?
Whatever it was, he did improve as the afternoon went on and won’t be that far out of position this week.
Seeing Jason Saab streak down the sideline to set up a try on the last play of the first half will have been the final straw for some, but I can offer an optimistic angle to that one as well.
Tracey has the pace to contain Tolutau Koula here. Koula starts getting to his outside but given the lack of space, Ronaldo Mulitalo could probably have held off on turning in and leaving the space for Saab on the edge.
Had Siosifa Talakai been inside him then turning into help makes a lot of sense.
Cohesion is crucial to defending on the edge. Players need to move together and solve shifts as one, and with the lack of experience Braydon Trindall, Tracey and Mulitalo have defending together, there is a lot of room for improvement in the coming weeks.
That improvement needs to start in Round 22. While it would have been nice to beat up on a few lower teams on the NRL ladder and develop the combinations, the new-look Sharks will instead test themselves against the best team in the competition.
The ladder is congested and there is a world where the Sharks finish this round outside the Top 8. Still, this isn’t must-win. It is, however, must-improve.