NRL Repeat Set: Round 8
Rugby league doesn’t get much better than what we saw on Thursday night. Naturally, our Play of the Round comes from within the 85-minute thriller.
Also, George Williams did some damage on Friday night, the Panthers rate a mention for their performance on Saturday, and Dean Pay is still in the hot seat. Should he be?
Play of the Round
The match of the season so far produced the Play of the Round this week.
It won’t come as a surprise to see Ryan Papenhuyzen’s field goal highlighted here, but it’s how the shot came to be that is most impressive.
It probably started on Monday. Many, many Mondays ago. The work of Craig Bellamy and the coaching staff is evident in this play more than anywhere else.
Just watch as Suliasi Vunivalu wins Melbourne possession with 34 seconds to play in regulation. Papenhuyzen, Felise Kaufusi, Dale Finucane and Ryley Jacks all react and point to the same spot. And that’s just the list of players we can see on screen.
Jacks and Papenhuyzen have a word to each other as the first tackle takes place.
Hughes and Papenhuyzen do the same during the second tackle.
And as the defence looks for Melbourne’s three most likely field goal kickers, Jacks is to the left of the ruck, Hughes is to the right and Papenhuyzen has his arms on his hips out the back.
Crichton goes straight for Jacks from marker while Friend does his best to get close to Papenhuyzen out the back. Hughes is perfectly positioned as a blocker, though.
With all of the time and space he needs to snap it, Papenhuyzen splits the post to complete a perfectly executed late-game plan so many other teams would struggle to emulate.
The organisation, the poise, the deception of Papenhuyzen standing hands on hips.
Perfect.
George Williams Fires Raiders Past Dragons
This has been the home of Shaun Johnson truths for a couple of weeks now. He doesn’t need that sort of treatment here anymore, though. So, we move onto another half that has been unfairly questioned when his side doesn’t perform to expectations: George Williams.
He picked up three Dally M points on Friday night in a fantastic performance that laid bare his talents as a triple-threat.
Williams first puts the ball on a penny for Bailey Simonsson to challenge Mikaele Ravalawa in the air. Simonsson wins Williams his eighth try assist (3rd-most in the NRL) with this one.
The Englishman then scored one himself just before half time. Anybody that has seen him play in the Super League knows he has a decent step. We’ve not seen too much of it throughout his NRL career just yet. But as Korbin Sims ends up very wide at ‘A’, you can see Williams have a look ahead, go back to his hooker, and has one more sneaky peek just before taking possession.
He shapes to kick on the last, but is only ever doing one thing here with Sims not coming off the line straight.
Williams can beat the opposition with a pass, kick or on his feet. We caught two examples on Friday night and will no doubt see more in the future.
The Raiders are struggling in attack at the moment. Perhaps there has been too much of a focus on Jack Wighton on the left side of the field. With Williams beginning to dominate down the right side, it won’t be long before the Raiders return to form with the ball in their hands.
Panthers Premiership Push
Initially reluctant to appoint the Panthers as genuine premiership contenders too early, they’re forcing themselves into the conversation. Round 8 provided yet another example of how good this team is and the damage they can do late in the season.
All of the pieces seem to be there.
The Panthers pack is one of the best in the business. James Fisher-Harris has featured heavily here recently as he begins to be recognised as one of the best props in the NRL. Paired beside a veteran in James Tamou to start games with the reliable Zane Tetevano and improving Moses Leota off the bench, Penrith can lay the foundations through the middle against any opposition. Isaah Yeo’s development as a high work-rate lock forward has set the tone for the Panthers since Round 1.
With strike power on the edges in Viliame Kikau, Stephen Crichton, Josh Mansour and Brian To’o, Nathan Cleary and Jarome Luai have plenty of options in attack.
Luai, in particular, has really kicked on in recent weeks. Perhaps the pressure of Matt Burton coming up behind him has pushed Luai forward? Whatever the case, he’s finally started to look like the player we’ve been hearing about for the last two years. He can still do more on the ground when it comes to running metres, but his distribution has made up the difference with four try assists in his last two games.
But the piece that has this Panthers premiership puzzle taking shape is Api Koroisau.
He’s a tackling machine averaging 52.3 tackles per game, but it’s these moments that have him as the Buy of the Season so far in 2020.
He splits the markers and ducks under some tired tackles through the middle, assesses his options on the run, and completes a perfect pass to Dylan Edwards rushing up in support.
Koroisau is a master craftsman at dummy half and with the position growing in value as longer periods of unbroken play promote an extra element of fatigue in the game, it’s not difficult to imagine the 27-year-old winning Penrith a game in a similar fashion come finals time.
In The Hot Seat: Dean Pay
Fastened to the bottom of the NRL ladder with just one win through the first eight rounds, the Bulldogs face yet another season in purgatory.
The club is being pulled apart in a desperate seek for solutions, and while there is a lot that needs to change, the man in the coaches box isn’t one of them.
Canterbury have the worst list in the NRL. It’s not particularly close either. Yet, Pay manages to inspire this group to throw everything into every game every week. Despite a distinct lack of talent, the Bulldogs remain the threat. They remain competitive and a side that can’t be taken lightly by any team in the competition.
So much of coaching in the NRL is man-management. You can have all the talent you could ask for (see: Broncos), but if you can’t get everybody on the same page and mould the playing group into a cohesive unit (see: Anthony Seibold), it’s all for nothing.
With Pay, you can see the potential for success. He has the attention of the dressing room. Albeit, one that doesn’t possess enough quality players to climb the ladder.
There is only so much you can do with the current Bulldogs playing group. Riding the coaching carousel rarely produces immediate results (see: Warriors). Right now, there is no coach on the market you would expect to trigger a significant improvement without changes to the roster.
Signing Luke Thompson is a great start. Securing Kieran Foran on a friendly contract for 2021 and pairing him with a young half of the future would also be good business.
Rather than looking for a scapegoat and moving Pay along, look to the Parramatta Eels and Brad Arthur as an example of what sticking with an embattled coach can do.
The Eels roster has been built over time. Young players have been developed and positions of need have been filled through astute signings. You wouldn’t question the playing group’s desire to play for Arthur now either. Stability is at the forefront of everything, though. You don’t get that by sacking a coach still wearing the brunt of what those before him passed down.
Unless an elite coach ends up on the market at the end of this season, Canterbury might be better served to stick with Pay for another season. At least allow some of the developing coaches to become available before searching for a replacement.
Captain’s Challenge
Captains are finding the new challenge system awfully…challenging?
It was introduced to players to challenge referee howlers, but the howlers are coming from the players themselves. Very few captains have picked up on how to use the challenge system effectively.
Cameron Smith, obviously, knows what he’s doing. Daly Cherry-Evans has proven to use his challenges better than most others, too.
The Sharks, on the other hand, have had a few shockers. Saturday was no different as they challenged a rather innocuous first-half call that wasn’t only a poor challenge, but a close enough call that it’s better to let go through to the keeper so early in the game.
Earlier, the Titans let emotion get the better of them as Jai Arrow pleaded his case before the Bunker took less than ten seconds to dismiss the Gold Coast’s cry for a knock-on.
Captains have begun to ignore certain players, particularly props, when asked to challenge a call on their behalf. It’s time for Josh Jackson to do the same with Dallin Watene-Zelezniak. He’s given up his license to challenge calls with another shocker on Sunday night.
Initially sceptical of how well the captain’s challenge would be received by fans and rugby league media, it continues to highlight just how many decisions the referees do get right.
The NRL’s Approach To Wrestlers
We’re going back to Graham Annesley’s Weekly Briefing from Round 7 to highlight an important message the NRL is sending in regards to removing the ugly side of the wrestle from the game.
With an analyst looking at every tackle and play-the-ball of every game every week, the NRL is armed with the sort of data that can make a difference.
“We are communicating with some clubs, sending them clips of games where we believe that they should be taking up this information with some of their players,” Annesley said.
“The whole objective is to … we’re not trying to catch players out. We don’t want to see players out of the game. We’d much prefer, where players have a tendency to get themselves involved in this sort of thing, that, through coaching assistance, through the cooperation of clubs, that we’re able to address this.”
I really like that approach from the NRL. Suspensions serve a purpose, but we want the best players in our game out there on the field as often as possible.
Fans and sections of the media can get bogged down in sending every player to the sin-bin for every offence. It’s a lot more likely that a player changes his game if they’re presented with examples of what needs changing, knowing full-well that the microscope is on them every week.
Obviously, if the player continues to involve themselves in the dark arts of the rugby league wrestle, and there will be some that don’t absorb the information the way they should, those will suffer further consequences.
“But as we gather more data, if it’s clear that we still have a problem, we will have to determine how we’re going to address that going forward and that can only be done by taking recommendations and data to the commission,” Annesley added.
It remains to be seen how the data looks further into the season, but I applaud the NRL’s approach. Now, the players need to reciprocate.
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