We need to talk about Sandow

The drums are beating for Chris Sandow. He didn’t play reserve grade for Wentworthville today, supposedly because of injury.

It’s the second time in two seasons since his big money move to Parramatta that the one-time Rookie of the Year has been sent down to the minors.

It’s been a bad few years for Chris. It’s been a bad few years for everyone in the blue and gold.

When he’s fit and firing, he’s a joy to watch. It’s a joy to watch when he would celebrate and whoop it up whenever he made a break and knew he couldn’t be caught.

It’s a joy to watch when he would hurl his tiny frame into larger men, and if he knocked them down, he’d rip in with a shoulder drop. It was a joy to watch watch his reaction when he scored tries or kicked important goals.

He’d point at the camera the way players do these days, or he’d just shout out with glee, a massive smile splitting his face. He had guts, he took chances and he played on instincts that so many footballers repress.

When he was playing well, you got the impression that there was nothing in the world he loved more than playing footy.

But it hasn’t been that way for a long time. He still has guts, but of a different kind. Without the kamikaze shoulder charges, he’s become a major target in defence. The incisive running has all but vanished. The ultimate confidence player has no confidence left. That’s why he’s back to Reggies.

The thing that really stands out about Sandow is how rough he still is around the edges. After five years in first grade, he’s still got a bad error or a poor option or a lazy missed tackle in his game.

Any young player will still have these sort of things in their game, but after 122 first grade games, they should be rarer than a GWS fan. At the moment people expect a few clangers from Sandow every game, and when he inevitably puts one out on the full, or misses a key tackle they shake their heads and say, “Well it’s Sandow. What did you expect?”

While Sandow bears a lot of the blame for the massive fluctuations within his career, a degree of responsibility also rests with the men who have coached him. Jason Taylor and John Lang were in charge of Sandow at Souths, and while both are solid coaches, neither was able to provide Sandow with a dominant and consistently firing forward pack to lay a platform, or a serious option at five-eighth.

There is still a certain belief that while John Sutton is a good number six, he’d be an incredible 13. Imagine Greg Bird, but with a bit more leg speed and bigger.

The reason Sutton works so well at five-eighth currently is due to the fact that Adam Reynolds takes on all of the organisational duties and good deal of the kicking. Sutton is free to run on the fringes, and throw a pass now and then. If he was moved to lock, he could play the exact same game, but the team would have another organiser to take a little pressure off of Reynolds.

Michael Maguire knows this, which is why he was blooding Luke Keary in the middle part of the year. Be it later this season, or early into next, John Sutton will be a lock forward before long.

A halves combination of Sandow and Sutton is enticing, but ultimately incompatible. They both play according to their instincts and lack the temperament to be an on-field general like a Reynolds or a Cronk or a Thurston.

The result of having a Sutton/Sandow is either a boatload of points, or a team that runs around like a bunch of headless chooks (some other examples of this phenomenon include the Carney/Campese combo that the Raiders tried a few years ago, Johnson/Leuluai in the earlier part of the season, the infuriating Benji Marshall/anyone combo that the Tigers have been rolling out these past few years and the Carney/Robson model that the Sharks are persisting with).

He’s never had a halves partner that will handle the on-field direction of the team, allowing him to relax and play what’s in front of him. Even if it means a move to five-eighth, if Ricky Stuart finds a genuine playmaker to partner Sandow in the halves the Sky is the limit.

Although he may be similarly defensively challenged, Luke Walsh would be a perfect choice. The organisation skills of Walsh and the sporadic brilliance of Sandow would be a potent combination.

It would allow Sandow to unlock the most important facet of his football – his running game. Judging on his play from this year, Ricky Stuart is following the Stephen Kearney line of thinking and trying to turn Sandow into a traditional halfback in the Adam Reynolds/Mitchell Pearce style.

Sandow may be able to make such a switch (even it feels like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole), but in doing so, he has all but abandoned his running game. He passes way in front of the line, dumping the ball out the back in second man plays. It is no co-incidence that his best game of the year, the Round One slaughter of the Warriors, saw those stumpy legs make two clean breaks, score a try and be denied another due to a dubious obstruction call.

He gained more metres and had more hit ups than any other game this season. Even in some of the terrible losses that Parra have had this season, when Sandow squares it and has a crack, he looks a right sight better.

The old saying goes something like this: “A halfback is only as good as his forwards”, and like a lot of the old sayings, it has a large element of truth.

While Sandow’s successor is playing behind a pack that may be the best in the game, a few years ago it was filled with tradesmen and fading stars. Instead of having George Burgess, Jeff Lima, Ben Te’o and a dominant Sam Burgess bashing it up, Sandow had the likes of Eddy Pettybourne, Jaiman Lowe, Shannon McPherson and Ben Ross.

Sandow only had one full season with Sam Burgess, and even then, he was used more on the fringe than in the middle. The pack had workers, and honest players, but not consistent metre-eaters. Reynolds is arguably not as naturally talented as Sandow, but when a horde of Burgesses (Burgi?), a rejuvenated Roy Asotasi and the highly underrated Dave Tyrell are putting in the hard yards, it makes his job a whole lot easier.

Don’t forget that Michael Maguire has taken a Souths team that was softer than Josh Dugan and turned them into a pack of monsters that physically dominated nearly everybody they come across. The marshmallow boys from years past are just a memory.

But instead, Sandow is behind a forward pack that has less punch than a one-armed boxer. Apart from Tim Mannah, Kelepi Tanginoa, Peni Teripo and maybe Fui Fui Moi Moi (Fui might be getting close to taking a trip to the glue factory), you wouldn’t go near them. Without space, the halves have no time. Without time, creating and building pressure is extremely difficult (Origin two anyone?).

Sandow can still be a top line-half, but not in his current environment.

There are three ways his career can go from here. If he stays at Parra in his current environment, he will eventually leave the club and disappear into obscurity.

If Stuart can put the right players around him, the future looks bright. 

In an utopian world, he’d go to Melbourne on a bargain-basement contract to replace Widdop, or even back to Souths to allow Sutton to make that move to the back row.

With the burden of organising play removed, and behind the right forwards, anything is possible for Chris Sandow.