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Cooper Cronk delivers in Origin return

Cooper Cronk has his natural successor. (AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts)
Roar Guru
9th July, 2015
19

Watching last night’s game I was trying to figure out what I should write about. I could analyse the Blues tries, but then I wouldn’t have an article.

I could analyse every one of the Maroons eight tries, but we might be here for a while. I could write about Mitchell Pearce’s atrocious defensive performance, but some Roosters fans get offended when Pearce is criticised and while his defence was bad, it wasn’t the reason the Blues lost.

I could discuss some of the terrible calls by the referees, but while some of them did swing the match they did not alter the outcome of the game. So instead, I decided to discuss Cooper Cronk’s Origin performance.

Cooper Cronk was one of the most talked about players heading into Wednesday’s game. Many experts were quick to highlight the Maroons struggles when Cronk is out injured and their successes when he plays the 80 minutes. In the last six games Cronk his missed almost three full matches, the Maroons have lost those three. It is quite clear that the Maroons are a better team when Cronk is playing at halfback.

He is the best halfback in the NRL after all.

The Maroons 46-point thrashing is only going to make things look worse for dropped halfback Daly Cherry-Evans. It is very easy to look at the score lines for Game 2 and Game 3 and claim that Cronk was the difference, that while Cherry-Evans was unable to take control of Game 2, Cronk led with aplomb in Game 3.

However we must highlight one caveat. Cherry-Evans was playing behind a badly beaten pack at the MCG. On Wednesday night at Suncorp, the Maroons forwards ran rampant. Take Cronk out and replace him with Cherry-Evans and the Maroons still dominate Game 3, especially given the way Johnathan Thurston played.

Cronk was good on Wednesday night, he wasn’t great but he definitely did play better than Cherry-Evans did in Melbourne. In attack he started a bit slowly, he ran across field with his first two attacking touches. However, after this he was far more direct and kept the Blues guessing by attacking the line.

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In the 21st minute he took on the line and threw a short ball to Sam Thaiday running a hard line. It took a brilliant tackle from Trent Hodkinson and Michael Jennings to stop Thaiday so close to the line, but Cronk had now sown the seeds for future attacking raids.

Just six minutes later Cronk found himself in the same situation, albeit 20 out rather than 10 out from the try line. This time, however, Hodkinson hedged his bets and held off Cronk, knowing that Thaiday would be running straight at him.

Cronk saw this and dummied and went through the gap, before being dragged down by Boyd Cordner who came across from the inside. This situation only occurred because of what Cronk and Thaiday did six minutes early and is something that the Blues halves were unable to do, put doubt in the opposition’s minds.

While Cronk’s attack improved throughout the match, overall he wasn’t required to do that much attacking. Instead, his halves partner Johnathan Thurston took charge of the attack and absolutely terrorised the Blues right edge, in particular Mitchell Pearce’s defensive channel.

Seven of the eight Maroons tries came down this side of the field. With the Maroons left flank completely dominating the Blues, Cronk just had to complement his teammates on the right side of the field. There was no need for Cronk to overplay his hand, or attempt to take control of the match, he knew his teammate was on fire and allowed him to run the match accordingly.

The one area in which Cronk was a major contributor was his kicking game. Unsurprisingly, his kicking game was outstanding, as it always is. He had 10 kicks, one of which was bad and two were average.

Of those three subpar kicks the Maroons scored a try off one, forced a dropout off another and held the Blues to just 32 metres in the ensuing set of six. When the Blues put in a bad kick it results in a 20m tap restart, and a seven tackle set, or an easy exit from their own half.

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Cronk was able to get away his kicks with very little, or no, pressure as a result of the dominance of his forward pack. He had time and space to think about where he wanted to kick the ball and execute those kicks.

As a result, he almost always executed those kicks. It was far superior to Cherry-Evans’ kicking game in Game 2 and far better than either Pearce or Hodkinson in Game 3. In Pearce and Hodkinson’s defence, they were regularly kicking from inside their own 30, sometimes inside their own 20.

You can’t possibly hope to get a deep kick away when you’re kicking from that deep inside your own half.

Overall, Cooper Cronk did exactly what he was expected to do. His kicking game allowed the Maroons to start each defensive set on the front foot. Although he didn’t do much attacking, he left most of that to Thurston, when he had the ball in hand he attacked the Blues defensive line and put doubt in their mind.

Queensland didn’t win this game because of Cooper Cronk, as has been the case in the past, but he certainly helped them to victory.

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