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This past weekend in the NRL saw our first State of Origin affected round, as half the competition took a week off.
Theme of the round – Be careful what you wish for
Much of the chatter in NRL circles over the weekend was the perceived dilution of the competition as State of Origin omissions injected its annual dose of chaos.
This hurts some teams more than others, with the Broncos, Cowboys and Roosters facing at least one game with four or more players missing.
More 2015 State of Origin:
» State of Origin news
» State of Origin fixtures
» State of Origin teams
» State of Origin 2015: Game 1 preview
» PRICHARD: Maroons to win Origin 1
Many people don’t like the enforced absences as teams struggle to stay afloat without key players. However for some teams Origin presents instead an opportunity – the chaos is not a pit, it’s a ladder.
Or at least it’s supposed to be.
Over the weekend we saw the Knights, Raiders, Eels and Tigers go into games with a distinct State of Origin advantage. With the exception of the Tigers, who were without two key players of their own, those teams were largely unaffected by Origin and faced teams missing key players. Even in the case of the Tigers, the absence of Robbie Farah and Aaron Woods was more than matched by a Cowboys team missing an all-Test front row and both starting halves.
Each of those teams entered their respective matches with an opportunity to capitalise on an understrength team, yet none of them won. The Eels were perhaps a tad unlucky as wet and wild conditions played as much of a roll as personnel on Friday night. However no such excuses exist for the dire Tigers, the slow-starting Raiders, or the limp-finishing Knights.
Each of those teams missed an opportunity to capitalise on an understrength team and blown opportunities like this come back to haunt teams in the final rounds as the scramble to make the eight is often decided by only a win or two.
Team of the week – Brisbane Broncos
The legend of the ‘baby Broncos’, which gets trotted out around Origin time every year, is about as clapped out as a sporting cliché gets. However whatever tired moniker one wants to apply to them the Broncos were superb on Monday without six Origin players.
Aside from a 15-minute period in the middle of the first half in which they conceded three soft tries, the Broncos were superb in coasting to a 31-18 victory.
With the Broncos down on forwards due to Origin and the Knights simply having little depth, metre-makers were both teams’ outside backs. Of the 10 backs in the game only Joey Leilua failed to make a hundred metres (and he broke eight tackles in his 97m effort). For the Broncos the efforts of centres Daniel Vidot (197m on 21 carries) and Jordan Kahu (139m on 10 carries) were critical in establishing strong field position early in each set, while allowing the young forwards to rest.
Ben Hunt had a typically excellent, unassuming game. He ran a little, passed well and as usual kicked superbly. However it was the performance of Anthony Milford that really stood out.
Wayne Bennett’s insistence on persevering with Milford in the halves in the face of the latter’s lacklustre start to the season in the role seemed like the triumph of stubbornness over evidence. To many, me included, it was clear that Milford should be switched to fullback where his natural running game could be utilised effectively.
However over the last three weeks Milford has shown remarkable improvement in the five-eighth role. After going eight games with zero try assists and only one line break and one line break assist, Milford now has four try assists to go with three line breaks and three line break assists over the last three games. All of this has come without sacrificing his deadly support running game and with only one error per game.
Six weeks into the season Canberra Raiders fans could have been forgiven for thinking that the rumoured $1 million deal Milford turned down to stay in Canberra was a case of a bullet dodged. Milford was struggling in Brisbane and Jack Wighton was thriving at fullback for the Raiders.
Milford’s rapid improvement as a playmaker however is making him look more like the player that might have warranted that million-dollar offer, and his return to Canberra on Saturday shapes up as a very long night for Raiders fans.
Player of the Round Part 1 – Lachlan Coote
Origin is always challenging for the North Queensland Cowboys. Even before accounting for the absence of the Test front rowers Matt Scott and James Tamou, losing Johnathan Thurston alone is challenging for a team built around his magical ability.
I wrote in last week’s review however that this season the emergence of Michael Morgan and Lachlan Coote gave the Cowboys as good an opportunity as ever to overcome Thurston’s absence and do better than simply tread water during Origin. A few hours after I published that story the task became even more challenging when Morgan was drafted into the Queensland side.
On Saturday night Coote took up that challenge with a standout performance in a game that was not exactly a great advertisement for the game. Nominally playing at fullback, Coote was in fact the main playmaker for the Cowboys, recording 61 touches, more than either of the Cowboy’s starting halves. He carried the ball well, with 216m on 21 carries, while recording seven tackle breaks. He also put in 15 kicks for a whooping 515m. Most importantly he made zero errors, despite the Tigers raining bomb after bomb in his direction.
Coote is one of the best stories of the season thus far. With his resurrection and the emergence of Jake Granville, the Cowboys now have one of the best spines in the entire competition.
Player of the Round Part 2 – Michael Lichaa
While Josh Reynolds got most of the headlines after the Bulldogs held off a group of small children dressed in the uniform of the Canberra Raiders on Sunday afternoon, it was the superb play of Michael Lichaa as much as anything that led to the Dogs victory.
It is now abundantly clear why the Sharks were so disappointed to lose Lichaa at the end of last season. Despite his relative youth in the position (hookers, like other forwards, often blossom in their mid-to-late 20s) Lichaa has been outstanding for the Dogs.
Despite starting the season with only 15 games of first grade experience, Lichaa has been an (almost) 80-minute player for the Dogs at one of the highest work rate positions in the game. Only the Round 6 game against the Dragons saw Lichaa play less than 70 minutes, and all the while he is averaging 46 tackles and 43 metres running the ball per game, putting him fifth and ninth respectively in those categories.
On Sunday afternoon he continued in a similar vein with eight runs for 86m along with four tackle breaks, an offload, a try and a try assist to go with 43 tackles. However statistics alone fail to account for just how artfully he shredded the Raiders defence. His constant movement out of dummy half exposed the Raiders’ awful marker defence and put his forwards on the front foot time and again.
The Raiders have long had trouble defending speed out of dummy half (though they’re hardly alone in that) as their giant forwards struggle to get set at marker or back into the defensive line. However on Sunday even mobile players like Shaun Fensom, Frank-Paul Nuuasuala and Josh Papalii struggled with Lichaa’s swift decision making and probing runs.
The Bulldogs have had a calamitous season thus far through injuries, suspensions and poor form, however with Lichaa mustering their giant, skilful forward pack, they remain a threat every week – as the Raiders discovered on Sunday afternoon.
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