Origin season is well and truly upon us now but the club football does continue if in slightly anaemic fashion as teams field understrength and in experienced line-ups.

Tonight we will be travelling to Brisbane to see the Broncos host the Tigers. That’s right Friday Night Football in Brisbane. I’m as surprised as you are.

Recent form
While the Broncos may have lost last week and the Tigers may have won that certainly doesn’t suggest that the Tigers’ form is superior.

For the Broncos it was yet another one-point thriller against their little brothers from the far North. While the Broncos fell a little short on this occasion the quality of play, in the second half at least, was outstanding. And the team is unlikely to take the loss to heart.

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Meanwhile, at Campbelltown Stadium the Tigers did what they needed to do by easing past Nathan Brown’s brave but undermanned Knights team. While the Knights are clearly in deep rebuild mode you still need to put the points on the board and for a team that had struggled to find consistency in recent weeks it was a solid if unimpressive performance from the Tigers.

Friday night footy!
» Sydney vs North Melbourne: Friday Night Forecast
» The talking points: Super Rugby Round 14

Team sheet

Broncos	Position	Tigers
Jordan Kahu	Fullback	Jordan Rankin
Lachlan Maranta	Left winger	Josh Addo-Carr
Jack Reed	Left centre	Tim Simona
James Roberts	Right centre	Kevin Naiqama
Greg Eden	Right winger	David Nofoaluma
Anthony Milford	Left half	Luke Brooks
Ben Hunt	Right half	Mitchell Moses
Joe Ofahengaue	Prop	Tim Grant
Andrew McCulloch	Hooker	Dene Halatau
Adam Blair	Prop	Ava Seumanufagai
Alex Glenn	Left second row	Chris Lawrence
Jaydn S’ua	Right second row	John Aloiai
Jarrod Wallace	Lock	Elijah Taylor
Jai Arrow	Interchange	Sauaso Sue
Herman Ese’ese	Interchange	Matt Ballin
Tevita Pangai	Interchange	Kyle Lovett
Kodi Nikorima	Interchange	JJ Felise

As expected, there are a number of changes, with both teams heavily affected by Origin.

Origin period is always challenging for the Broncos though the annual complaints about it from Supercoach Wayne Bennett do get a little tiresome. Is Bennett right that the burden on Origin players is probably too high? Absolutely. How do the fans of all 15 other teams feel about it? Not a care in the world. Perhaps he would like to return to the Knights where he won’t have anywhere near as many problems?

But Bennett is right about one thing: Origin period hasn’t missed the Broncos this year. The team will be without Corey Parker, Darius Boyd, Sam Thaiday, Corey Oates, Josh McGuire and Matt Gillett. It is undoubtedly a substantial chunk of their team with a number of key contributors unavailable.

The spine at least remains three-quarters intact with McCulloch, Milford and Hunt all available and the man that will replace Boyd at fullback, Jordan Kahu, did recently play for New Zealand in the position. Meanwhile, Corey Oates’ brutally efficient finishing will be missed on the wing but Lachlan Maranta is a fine player and Greg Eden will competently backfill Kahu’s slot on the right wing.

It is the forward pack that will suffer the most with all four players in strong form recently. Notwithstanding the colossal impact that Corey Parker has on a week to week basis, it is arguably Gillett who is the hardest of the three to replace. Gillett has been a constant for the Broncos having appeared on the right edge for all but two of the last 40 games. Moreover in the vast majority of those games Gillett has played the full 80 minutes or very close to it. He will be replaced in the line-up by 18-year-old Jaydn S’ua, a huge ask for a young man on debut.

With Parker and starting prop Josh McGuire both unavailable, Bennett has opted for a bigger starting side with Jarrod Wallace to start at lock Joe Ofahengaue to start at prop alongside Adam Blair.

The bench sees the return of Herman Ese’ese and recent debutant Jai Arrow while former Raiders under 20s standout Tevita Pangai Jr will also make his debut. Pangai’s debut may leave Raiders fans with a slightly sinking feeling after he left the Green Machine for Brisbane late in the preseason this year. Originally an edge backrower, Pangai is now viewed more as a middle unit player if only because he is now slightly larger than the Mountain from Game of Thrones.

While the Broncos may have more Origin call-ups in total, the Tigers are nonetheless badly affected as well, with Aaron Woods and Robbie Farah both named for NSW. While Farah has been a contentious figure even among Tigers supporters and we don’t have the space here to fully explore his role on the team, the loss of Woods is a big blow for the team.

Woods is undoubtedly the leader of the pack for the Tigers and while he may not break many tackles he leads the team in metres gained at 173 metres per game and trails only Farah in tackles per game at 30.9.

However the most important statistic for Woods is probably his average minutes per game which, at 61.9, is extraordinarily high for a front rower. For comparison other elite front rowers such as the Cowboys pair of Matt Scott and James Tamou average somewhere in the 40s and even notorious workaholic James Graham trails Woods slightly.

With Woods using up 60 minutes and new recruit Elijah Taylor also capable of plying 70-80 minutes per game in the middle unit Jason Taylor has the flexibility to use players like Sauaso Sue (whose return this week is a huge inclusion for the team) and Ava Seumanufagai for more impact rather than relying on them to be workhorses. He won’t have that luxury this week.

Woods’ omission is a tough blow for the Tigers however it is not the only change from last week. Kevin Naiqama returns in the centres after being a late withdrawal from last week’s game while Jordan Rankin continues at fullback, a position in which made a strong impact in the game against the Knights.

What to watch for
We last previewed the Tigers before the Round 9 Thursday night game against the Rabbitohs. On that occasion the team had just lost in embarrassing fashion 60-6 in Canberra. The focus of my preview on that occasion was the lack of personal discipline shown by the Tigers players in that game even before the score line got out of hand. I identified several instances of players breaking structure or playing thoughtlessly and hurting their team.

The good news is that over the subsequent weeks the team has improved in some of these respects. While the Round 10 loss to the Bulldogs had some awful defensive errors the wins over the Rabbitohs in Round 9 and then on the weekend against the Knights showed some improvement.

However there are still times at which the team falls into bad habits, searching for easy options and taking risks when prudence is called for. This next image shows four examples from the game against the Knights in which the Tigers tried to take a short cut to success rather than holding the ball and building points from the ground up.

In each one of these examples the Tigers had tackles in hand and as is readily apparent in the images in most cases, the Knights’ defence was struggling.

In the top left we see Mitchell Moses poised to lob a pass over a retreating Knights defender to hopefully reach David Nofoaluma.

In the top right we have Tim Simona attempting a no look flick pass that has more chance of going to Aku Uate than of reaching his teammate Josh Addo-Carr.

The bottom left again shows Chris Lawrence over-handing the ball back inside to the trailing Luke Brooks, a pass that would perhaps have made sense it Brooks didn’t already have two defenders in close proximity.

Finally in the bottom right we can again see Tim Simona this time attempting a tap on pass that, if it had worked would have put Addo-Carr in space, but sadly had little chance of actually working.

All of these speak to a fundamental question about the Tigers this year – how to balance the freewheeling football of a young and excitable team with the necessary structure required in the modern NRL?

This has been perhaps the most commonly articulated concern that people have with the Tigers: that the team plays with too much structure for young halves Luke Brooks and Mitchell Moses to thrive. This complaint is directed either at Coach Jason Taylor or dummy half Robbie Farah depending on which is the current target of the “… in crisis” segment of the media.

Critics cite the sort of instinctive try that Mitchell Moses scored against the Knights on Saturday, which I analysed in my Round 11 edition of Good Offence, Bad Defence on my website Back the Ten, as an example of the sort of play that the Tigers could and should be playing if they were freed from the shackles of structure.

But much like a freestyle rap or a jazz improv, off-the-cuff play doesn’t just happen out of thin air. The best off-the-cuff play comes from variation from an established and well-functioning structure. It is mastery of fundamentals that provides for the opportunities for creativity. The broken plays highlighted above are all examples of a team that is still trying to build the required foundations to support the expansive style they are capable of.

So if the Tigers are still learning that they need to build a win from the ground up and that creativity isn’t exclusive to structure, but rather flows from structure, then the Broncos are the finished product.

One great indicator of the team’s ability to combine exciting play with the discipline required to be an elite team is their extraordinary error rate of 8.6 per game, the fourth-lowest in the competition. Only fourth lowest you say, what is so impressive about that. The impressive part is that they maintain such a low error rate while at the same time the team has scored 49 tries (third most in the competition) and has the most line breaks in the competition.

It’s worth noting that the Tigers’ error rate is also very impressive but they have scored far fewer points and recorded considerably fewer line breaks. To play tight, disciplined football to grind out wins is one thing, to do it while blowing teams away is quite another.

Combined these statistics suggest (though don’t prove conclusively) that the Broncos as a collective have the nous to quit when they are ahead. They tend to avoid attempting passes which are unnecessarily risky. Rather the team is happy to build pressure and try again. It is this sort of discipline that is the difference between the Broncos, Cowboys and Storm and the rest of the competition.

(Yes, I know the Sharks are on top of the ladder, but their business model is different. They don’t mind pushing passes and making errors but the difference is that they have raw playmaking talent and individual brilliance to overcome the errors that a team like the Tigers doesn’t.)

In a lot of ways a player who has broken a tackle or has run through a hole is under as much pressure as a player defending on his line. Those split seconds in which that player has to choose whether to take a tackle or attempt a pass or a kick can have just as big an impact on the game as a defender who has to choose whether to rush up or slide across. Both scenarios can lead to points and it is as important to get one right as the other. In baseball analytics they would call those moments ‘high leverage’ situations.

Watch closely tonight and look at the decision making of the two teams in those high-leverage moments. If the Tigers can make good choices they will have a chance but the team they are playing are the high percentage masters.

First try scorer – Anthony Milford
I’m not going to lie to you all, I’m pretty disappointed to be previewing a Broncos game and not being able to select Corey Oates for first try. Regular readers will recall my pledge at the start of the season that any time I was previewing a Broncos game and Corey Oates was playing on the wing that he would be my first try scorer tip.

However with Oates earning a well-deserved call-up to the Queensland State of Origin team I’ve had to look a bit further afield for this week’s tip.

However, I haven’t had to cast my eye much further down the team list to find the perfect candidate in Anthony Milford. The great thing about Milford is that this little wizard can score tries in multiple ways. He might beat a fullback to a typical Ben Hunt kicks towards the posts. He might scoop up a loose ball or grab an intercept and take it to the house. Or he might just step past some poor hapless forward with his truly ridiculous footwork and glide around any remaining defenders.

However he does it Milford is an utter treat to watch and I’m backing him to score first tonight.

Prediction – Broncos
Even without six State of Origin representatives it is tough to go against the Broncos at home on a Friday night. Even with four running forwards absent the team still boasts an exceptional spine with a recent test debutant replacing Darius Boyd at fullback.

This is by no means to suggest that it is an impossible task for the Tigers. If their forward pack overpowers the inexperienced Broncos unit and the team can avoid the sorts of over-excited errors they made last week and prosper in the high-leverage moments then they certainly have the capacity to overrun the Broncos.

It just seems unlikely that they will do so.

Shoe-in of the week
With State of Origin one just a handful of days away and a potential blowout on our hands, what’s the bet there’s as much discussion of Origin as there is of these two teams?

You can read the Thursday (or Friday) Night Forecast here every week or check it out along with more great rugby league analysis on Lachlan’s website Back the Ten. You can also follow Lachlan on Twitter @backtheten