Last year in our great premiership run we were able to slow down the ruck, draw penalties easily and roll over our opponents by tiring them out.
This year they've introduced a new rule where they have basically eliminated all wrestling components in the ruck to speed up games.
Now while I am all for speeding up the game and bringing back the old school 'run, get tackled, quick play the ball' style of play that our game is known for, this is having a bigger negative impact on our team than first thought.
There are 3 reasons;
1. WE ARE GIVING AWAY MORE PENALTIES; With more speed around the ruck and quicker play the balls this means that defences need to be on their toes. We had an amazing defence last year but that's because our players could be lazy and come in 3 at a time and slowly peel off defenders. This is not the case this year. Refs are telling players to release and with our 3 player tackles this means we usually don't have a marker or our players are too slow to release and end up giving away uncharacteristic penalties.
2. WE ARE MISSING MORE TACKLES; This was most evident in the second half of the Cowboys and Raiders games where they completely shredded us up the middle. Similar to giving away penalties, our players end up lying around the ruck which leaves barely anyone to play as marker and our players tend to run backwards away from the defence. George and Tom were the perpetrators in the Raiders game and it's usually the forwards who end up on the floor.
3. WE ARE GETTING MORE INJURIES; This only occurred to me recently, but seriously we've been injury ravaged so far and partly is to blame because of this imo. Our players are more frantic in defence and therefore have to put their bodies in awkward positions to stop attacking players. Have you noticed the rise in hand/arm injuries this season? I'll put it down to that.
This new rule is killing our team and I believe the only way for us to go back to back is to get the team practicing playing like the Dragons and Broncos old school defence. They do a lot of one on one tackles and Stewart was great with that before he got injured I believe he was making the most one on one tackles in the league.
New Ruck Interpretation rule is killing us
This year they've introduced a new rule where they have basically eliminated all wrestling components in the ruck to speed up games.
Now while I am all for speeding up the game and bringing back the old school 'run, get tackled, quick play the ball' style of play that our game is known for, this is having a bigger negative impact on our team than first thought.
There are 3 reasons;
1. WE ARE GIVING AWAY MORE PENALTIES; With more speed around the ruck and quicker play the balls this means that defences need to be on their toes. We had an amazing defence last year but that's because our players could be lazy and come in 3 at a time and slowly peel off defenders. This is not the case this year. Refs are telling players to release and with our 3 player tackles this means we usually don't have a marker or our players are too slow to release and end up giving away uncharacteristic penalties.
2. WE ARE MISSING MORE TACKLES; This was most evident in the second half of the Cowboys and Raiders games where they completely shredded us up the middle. Similar to giving away penalties, our players end up lying around the ruck which leaves barely anyone to play as marker and our players tend to run backwards away from the defence. George and Tom were the perpetrators in the Raiders game and it's usually the forwards who end up on the floor.
3. WE ARE GETTING MORE INJURIES; This only occurred to me recently, but seriously we've been injury ravaged so far and partly is to blame because of this imo. Our players are more frantic in defence and therefore have to put their bodies in awkward positions to stop attacking players. Have you noticed the rise in hand/arm injuries this season? I'll put it down to that.
This new rule is killing our team and I believe the only way for us to go back to back is to get the team practicing playing like the Dragons and Broncos old school defence. They do a lot of one on one tackles and Stewart was great with that before he got injured I believe he was making the most one on one tackles in the league.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire