Check-in with the Repeat Set every week to recap the latest round of NRL action. This week we’re summing up the Tigers, breaking down the Dolphins winner, looking into the Knights number nine, and appreciating Cody Walker off the ball.
Tuesday Night Footy
Sydney Roosters v St George-Illawarra Dragons NRL Round 8 Preview
When I think prime Sydney Roosters I think James Tedesco scheming around the ruck. I think of Luke Keary hitting a short side on the back of one of those scheming runs. I think of a high-risk high-reward approach that is successful because of how well-drilled this team is and how quickly they fall into shape while firing shot after shot.
Roosters players walk up to a cafe in shape they’re that well-drilled.
We’ve not seen a lot of prime Roosters to start the 2023 NRL season.
However, an ANZAC Day clash against the St George-Illawarra Dragons feels like a good opportunity for the Roosters to play themselves into form. They should win the yardage battle. From there, Ben Murdoch-Masila and Jack Bird look like good targets on a short side raid.
Joey Manu into the halves is another interesting element. His attack will be the main focus but it’s in defence that he will be able to replace Sam Walker best. The Dragons no longer have a diminutive half on both sides of the field to run at this week. Keary will be a target, but the Roosters will play to that by kicking to the other side of the field.
For the Dragons to win, they need to make it ugly. Put the Roosters under pressure and force early errors. Clog up the middle and let Ben Hunt do Ben Hunt things. Given the status of their coach and the unknowns surrounding the future of the club, it’s difficult to get excited about anything they’re doing at the moment. Even if we look at this game and the rest of 2023 through a playing-for-next-season lense, who will be there, who will be coaching them, and how will they be playing?
I love Ben Hunt, so I’ll be happy enough to see him play well.
The play that sums it all up
Regular readers over the years may have picked up on the fact that I find one or two teams each season that I really zero in on. Regular readers this season will have picked up that in 2023 it’s, obviously, the Wests Tigers.
While others change the channel (I’ll probably get to that point eventually if they don’t improve), I sit on the edge of my seat. I’m always trying to figure things out and this Tigers attack is still a bit of a mystery.
It all seemed to be coming together for a win in Round 8. As they have done a few times throughout the NRL season so far, the Tigers won the yardage battle. They did so by almost 500 metres. They played with 58% possession and generated 35 tackles inside the opposition’s 20-metre line. They were still fairly inefficient in good ball, but the work the Tigers did in yardage made it difficult for the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles to get up the field themselves.
The Sea Eagles scored late in a rare visit into the Tigers half to take the lead. With five minutes on the clock and only two or three sets to win it, Wests stuck to the plan.
“Up against the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles this week, the Tigers profile well to be in a position to win again. Manly defend fairly passive. Daly Cherry-Evans is a good defender in that he sticks to tackles relatively well, but he’s there to be caught out on short sides.” – Round 8 Notepad
In the end, the play goes a long way to summing up their first two months of the NRL season.
Alex Twal leaves a defender on the ground but it looks as though the Tigers are always looking to hit the short side here. Luke Brooks takes possession, and while I’d like to have seen him dig a little bit deeper and try to play Isaiah Papali’i through Daly Cherry-Evans’ inside shoulder, he passes one-out and into an albeit cramped three-on-two.
Papali’i does an excellent job of getting his arms free and releasing an offload, but Brooks couldn’t reel it in. It’s not in the bread basket, but it’s a pass he should be taking.
The plan is there, it even comes off in this case, but the last pass doesn’t stick and it all goes to waste.
That’s how it has felt a lot for the Tigers over the last two or three weeks.
Knights number nine
A lot of teams in the NRL like to carry a Mr Fix It sort of player in the squad. One that can fill multiple positions – ideally one in the halves – and does a decent enough job that those around them can still run the same shapes and lines they normally would. Think Drew Hutchison at the Sydney Roosters, Connor Tracey at the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks and Dylan Walker at the Warriors.
Those Mr Fix It players don’t often thrive at hooker.
A dummy half is always taking in information and looking for cues. It’s a position that takes years to develop into regardless of how clean the service or prolific the running game to start.
Given the injuries to Jayden Brailey in recent years, the Newcastle Knights have spent a lot more time than they would like with a makeshift dummy half behind the ruck with Phoenix Crossland taking the honour in Round 8.
Crossland is the classic Mr Fix It type. He can play across the park and can fill in at dummy half when required. He has his limits behind the ruck, though. Where he might be able to spot up for 15-20 minutes to give the first-choice hooker a spell, it’s far from ideal that he starts and finishes a game there.
With one last set to win it on Saturday night, we saw what the Knights will miss in Brailey’s absence as the Knights failed to fire a decent shot at the North Queensland Cowboys defence.
From a centre-field play-the-ball, the Knights take two plays to the middle. It’s not what a lot of people would like to see sitting at home, but they’re manipulating the defence and playing to their point to throw something dangerous at the defence.
Jackson Hastings is one of the best organizers in the NRL. He needs to be touching the ball multiple times in a set like this. However, outside of dropping a teammate off on the 1st tackle, this is his only touch – catching a poor pass at his ankles before he’s wrapped up and taken to the ground. In the end, it’s not his fault that the ball doesn’t get to him again.
Lachie Miller looks to step his way through traffic on the following tackle. He has found some success this season skipping across the field and looking for gaps, but this isn’t the time. In the end, he cramps the space the Knights are playing towards – Kalyn Ponga’s left edge.
Knowing that, and despite there being little room for the four Knights players to move, Crossland sends the ball in Ponga’s direction anyway. The pass is again off the mark and Bradman Best is now forced to scramble.
Newcastle’s game-winning set ends with a Daniel Saifiti crash ball under the posts.
Provided Brailey returns from his latest injury for Round 1 of the 2024 NRL season, he will feature in only 35 games throughout the 2021, 22, and 23 seasons.
He’s an underrated player at this point. Even as he battles match fitness and cohesion issues as a result of lengthy periods out of the game, the subtlety he brings to the Knights ruck, his ability pass his forwards onto the ball, and his ability to read what is in front of him will be sorely missed this season.
For all of the positive signs the Knights have displayed throughout the opening eight rounds, lacking a genuine #9 looks set to hold them back again this season. Temple Kalepo is a young Kiwi hooker playing for the reserve grade side at the moment but has a history of injuries himself. He has only played 18, 25, 42 and 39 minutes in the four games he has played this year. Perhaps has his minutes increase he becomes an option for Adam O’Brien?
That Dolphins winner
The Dolphins have that Wayne Bennett resilience.
The Gold Coast Titans… Well, they’re the Titans. They’re a neutral’s dream in their ability to play out chaotic contests whether they win or lose.
In Round 8, that Bennett resilience combined with some Titans chaos matched the biggest comeback in NRL history, but one that ended so simply in the end.
It’s the simplicity and execution under pressure that I love. I’d imagine it’s something The Dolphins drew up in the video room during the week.
Jarrod Wallace called himself a “frustrated five-eighth in a big man’s body” after the game and his ball playing helped to create the winner. By tying up Tino Fa’asuamaleaui and Joe Stimson, the Dolphins produced the matchup they wanted: Euan Aitken v Tanah Boyd.
Boyd is always going to tackle below the ball here. With Hamiso Tauai-Fidow out the back of Aitken’s lead to hold Jojo Fifita just a little, Fifita can’t make strong enough contact to hold Aitken up which allows him to reach out to score.
A big centre with great leg drive running at a low-tackling half – perfect.
The Dolphins didn’t start well enough. That will be a major talking point for them during the week. However, the comeback allowed them to play out what has become their ideal game plan to hang around for long enough to be in a position to win it late.
With it all on the line they produced a beauty.
Many are waiting for the new club to slip out of the Top 8, but if they can remain relatively healthy from here, they’ll be flirting with finals football all year.
Walker is always there
To another match winner…
The South Sydney Rabbitohs and Penrith Panthers played out one of the best games of the NRL season so far on Thursday night.
Penrith did Penrith things to charge the middle, apply pressure, defend well, and take their opportunities to score. South Sydney struck the right balance between matching them set-for-set in the middle and chancing their arm out wide. In the end, they took one of those chances out wide to win it.
Cody Walker is just always there…
He’s a maestro with the ball in hand, but his work off it is among the best in the NRL.
Remember this one from the 2021 Preliminary Final?
Walker is left on the ground after being hit in a hard tackle. He’s 25 metres behind where the kick lands before he gets up and pushes up in support. When Damien Cook kicks inside to nobody, there’s Walker to clean up the scraps.
Just four weeks ago he came from nowhere to score this one.
Walker scores tries others wouldn’t be in a position to score through effort alone and was there to confirm South Sydney’s place among the premiership favourites in Round 8
What is a hip drop?
Whether I agree with a judiciary decision or not, there is usually an argument on the other side that at least makes sense. Demanding consistency is laying the foundations for weekly outrage and not something I’ve ever put a lot of thought into. Every incident is different and every incident will be looked at a little different.
However, I’m lost when it comes to hip-drop tackles.
I thought I knew…
Recent rulings have me baffled now, though.
So, I’ve looked back at some of the explanations Graham Annesley and the NRL have provided over the last season or two.
It hasn’t helped…
This is from May last year.
There is a reference to swinging the hips this time. Particularly those that “look unnatural.”
He showed three clips as examples in this video but we don’t need to see them – they’re obvious. The sort that most can see first time and accept as dangerous and worthy of punishment.
He also showed this one as an example of a tackle that some considered to be a hip drop, but isn’t. Again, fairly obvious for most. His hips hit the ground first and he’s making a desperate – natural-looking – tackle from behind.
“The hips are already on the ground,” said Annesley.
“As the upper body hits the ground the leg gets caught underneath the upper body of the defender.”
“This is very different to the hips dropping onto the exposed leg of the defender. They hit the ground first, and then it’s the rest of the body as they fall to the ground. It’s as the momentum of the tackle forces the defender to turn their body that their upper body ends up trapping the leg of the ball carrier.”
12 months later and this is the new interpretation:
“Unacceptable risk of injury” is the notable inclusion. No mention of swinging the body is a notable exclusion.
“All of the data is heading in the wrong direction,” said Annesley.
He’s right on that…
However, I’m again confused following the explanations.
J’maine Hopgood’s seemed fairly obvious from the start. He starts in front, twists his body, leaves his feet and lands on the attacking player’s leg – easy.
Ezra Mam’s is clear enough, too.
Payne Haas’ is different, though. The momentum of the tackle turns Haas, the attacking player’s leg is already on the ground and you could say that is a more unnatural aspect of the tackle than anything Haas does.
“The hold, twist, body heading to the ground, and body weight lands on the leg,” Annesley said.
Is anybody else still confused?