We’re back with the NRL Round 3 review. Sadly despite a number of high quality, tightly contested games, the main focus has been the performance of the officials after this weekend.
Theme of round: Video refs
Sigh. Again and again we come back to this. The weekend was marked by three awful video referee decisions with Blake Austin and Dallin Watene-Zelezniak both denied clear tries. Dane Gagai was awarded one after an obvious knock on earlier in the play.
This only a week after the Melbourne versus Manly game was also tarnished by errors from both the on-field and video officials.
Many people have called for an end to the requirement that the on-field referee make a ruling on the play before sending it for further review. It is argued that that this system effectively ties the hands of the video referee by preventing a common sense decision where there isn’t sufficient evidence on film to overturn the on-field official.
It is by no means certain that removing that requirement would in fact improve decision-making, but given the recent high profile errors it seems it seems inevitable that the league makes some sort of change.
Player of the round: Aaron Woods
While Dylan Walker grabbed a lot of the headlines for playing injured in Souths gritty win over the Tigers, the real player of that match – and the round – was Tigers prop Aaron Woods. Three weeks into the season and it is clear that Woods has made a profound leap this year. He is the leading metre maker in the game with an astonishing 643 metres at an average of 214 per game.
In addition Woods is also making over 30 tackles per game. Amongst forwards, only Paul Gallen is remotely close to Woods on a per game basis.
Woods was at it again this week, recording 233 metres on 24 carries, with 131 of that recorded in his powerful opening stint. While Woods may not have made any recorded tackle breaks, he bent the line with every run. Sadly for Woods, his teammates were unable to provide him with sufficient support to overcome a gritty Rabbitohs performance.
Disappointment of the round: The Cowboys
Along with the pitiful Sharks and unlucky Titans, the Cowboys have been the major disappointments of the first three rounds. If the home losses in the first two weeks to the Roosters and Knights were hard to swallow the execution at the hands of the Broncos on Friday night was truly sickening.
While the Cowboys started reasonably strongly their performance went very rapidly downhill as they conceded several achingly soft tries.
While the poor starts for teams such as the Sharks and Titans can be put down to demonstrably thin rosters, there should be no excuses for the Cowboys. They have a forward pack that includes two Origin props, young talents like Ethan Lowe and Gavin Cooper and the one man wrecking crew that is Jason Taumalolo.
Plus, they have the halfback of his generation running the show.
As it has been for a number of years the key challenge seems to be finding a competent complement to Johnathan Thurston in the halves. This week Michael Morgan, who was a revelation last year at fullback, was moved back to the halves to accommodate the return of Lachlan Coote. It is probably fair to say the switch had a limited impact in the game, but certainly Morgan was an improvement on Robert Lui who may soon find himself out of favour altogether and come to regret his to turn down a reportedly lucrative offer from the Warriors.
With games against the Storm, Panthers and Rabbitohs – the competition’s elite – coming up, coach Paul Green is going to need to find a solution to his team’s struggles quickly. While the reality of the modern NRL is that a team only needs to keep its head above water until after Origin to remain in finals contention, the Cowboys face some rough waters.
Personnel watch: Paul Vaughan and Shaun Fensom
This week’s interesting personnel decision came in Canberra where lock forward and defensive linchpin Shaun Fensom was replaced in the starting line-up by Paul Vaughan, nominally a prop forward. It was readily apparent that coach Ricky Stuart had determined that the way to beat the Dragons was to go through the middle of their forward pack
In the opening 20 minutes the plan seemed like a masterstroke as the Raiders ran up an 18-0 advantage due to incredible forward dominance. In that opening 20 minutes, Vaughan had 93 metres on 13 carries, while the starting props Josh Papalii and boy-mountain Shannon Boyd each had eight carries for 67 metres.
Sadly for Raiders, they were unable to continue the momentum through the middle as the Dragons clawed their way back into the game. After 200-gamer Dane Tilse and Frank-Paul Nuuasala surrendered the advantage, neither Vaughan nor Papalii were able to maintain their earlier performance in their second stints and the loss of Boyd to injury just a few minutes after returning to the field left a significant hole in the Raiders rotations.
However the experiment with a jumbo starting side looks likely to continue this week as Fensom has been charged with dangerous contact and will be suspended for the Round 4 match against the Roosters. It will be fascinating to see how the strategy works against a Roosters pack which is a benchmark for the league.
Embarrassment of the round: Brookvale
The NRL is a billion-dollar sport and yet on Friday night the elite level athletes who are integral to its success were forced to compete on a surface that would have been considered substandard several grades further down the totem pole.
While injuries can happen at any time, and even on the best playing surface, it seems intuitive that playing on a veritable overgrown sandpit would increase player’s injury risk. Injuries can cruel a player’s career and ruin a team’s season.
Whether it is the club, the local council or some other body that is responsible it is simply unacceptable for elite sports to be played on such a poor surface. It must be fixed and soon.
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