NRL Thursday Night Forecast: Eels vs Broncos

Welcome to the first in a new regular series from The Roar, the NRL Thursday Night Forecast.

With the new NRL broadcast deal seeing the adoption of a marquee Thursday night game we’ve decided to get your football weekend started on Thursday mornings with a detailed forecast for the evening match.

Each forecast will look at the form line entering the contest along with line-ups and any notable shake-ups. However, beyond that we will also include a ‘what to watch for’ section, throw in a bound to fail first try-scorer tip and make a prediction about the end result.

Finally, there will also be a ‘shoe-in of the week’ which will be a (hopefully) funny bonus prediction.

What’s that you say, there isn’t a Thursday night game every week? Not to worry, we’ll just shift the preview to whichever game Channel Nine are showing first that weekend. That will generally be the Friday night football game though there is also a Good Friday afternoon game (which will hopefully end more pleasantly than last year’s iteration).

Unsurprisingly one particular team has grabbed a significant chunk of the marquee Thursday night games and that team is the Broncos Rabbitohs. Wait, what?

In years past the popular complaint has been that the Broncos are allocated too many high-profile and highly marketable Friday night games but the Rabbitohs have grabbed the lion’s share of Thursday’s fixtures this year. But then again Thursday night games are going to be tough for fans to get to so perhaps the league hasn’t done the Rabbitohs any favours.

In fact, we will see the Rabbitohs seven times in either the Thursday night or Friday night (in weeks without a Thursday game) fixture. The Broncos do have ten games in the first 20 rounds on either Thursday or Friday but the majority of those are on Friday (so that tradition at least survives).

To be abundantly clear, though, I do not care which team is on which night or which team gets fair coverage and which doesn’t. It has virtually no bearing on the result of a particular game or the final standings. It’s just a fact of the schedule that we will be previewing a lot of Rabbitohs and Broncos games.

Recent form
This is the part of the forecast where we will look over the recent form line for each team. Obviously in Week 1 it’s going to be tough because all we have to go on for the Eels is trial form and the Auckland Nines and for the Broncos, the Nines and the World Club Challenge.

However, the good news is that both teams have done nothing wrong in the lead-up to the real thing.

The Eels won the Auckland Nines but more importantly looked sharp in two trial games against the Titans and Panthers as new combinations were put to the test for the first time. The performance against the Panthers was particularly pleasing as they came away with a win on a rival’s home ground.

However it is still just a trial game and it is unwise to put too much stock in those.

By contrast, the Broncos got to shake off the wrinkles and iron out the rust in the (semi) competitive environment of the World Club Challenge in England. However while Wigan may have started their domestic season strongly they were clearly no match for the Broncos who blew them away to the tune of 42-12. Frankly, it wasn’t even that close.

While a win is nice it is not something to set much store by as the team enters the season proper. Though it was a nice opportunity for the Broncos lads to break out the winter woollies, they usually only get to wear that stuff on the annual trip to Canberra.

Team line-ups
So here’s something a little different. We’re going to present the teams as they will actually line up on the field, which means nominating which edge a player will appear on.

Every team in the NRL now employs a base structure in both attack and defence that puts players on a particular side of the field. Wingers, centres, second rowers and yes even halves all operate almost exclusively on one edge or the other. Almost exclusively.

Let us be clear, while the alignments are generally quite fixed for outside players, halves can and do operate across the park especially close to the line in attack.

There will be times when one half will pass to the other in midfield and there will be times when a short side-long side situation places a half far into his teammate’s nominal territory. And yes, one playmaker generally does more of the kicking and organising than the other a half and indeed some playmakers like Johnathan Thurston and Shaun Johnson have a more roaming commission than most.

But in broad terms halves are, like everyone else, focussed on one edge.

So whether a half wears six or seven is almost (there’s that word again), almost irrelevant. On Saturday, for instance, we will see Johnson wear No.6, but does anybody seriously think he is going to leave the primary playmaking to Jeff Robson?

So with that in mind, the Thursday Forecast will discuss teams as they will line up on a play-to-play basis, with outside players listed according to their sides.

Which brings us to the first Thursday night team sheet of the year:

For the home team, the interesting things to note are the absence of Anthony Watmough, who is either retiring from football or back in a couple of weeks, and the return of Ken Edwards from the ACL injury that forced him to miss the entire 2015 season.

Oh, and the Eels also added a current Test half and Test centre, a current NSW backrower and an elite fullback who also happens to be one of the four best goal-kickers in the NRL (along with Jarrod Croker, Adam Reynolds and James Maloney if you’re wondering).

That should probably help quite a bit (though it’s worth noting that there are persistent rumours that Kieran Foran is battling a hamstring complaint which may make him a late withdrawal).

For the Broncos there are three main things to note. Firstly, there is the debut for James Roberts who will take up the right centre role from the team’s spiritual leader Justin Hodges. Secondly, there is the return from injury of Josh McGuire who was arguably the Broncos’ best forward in the first half of the season in 2015.

Thirdly, there are the absences of regular backs Lachlan Maranta and Jack Reed with Greg Eden earning a spot on one wing and rampaging wildebeest Corey Oates to retain his spot on the left flank after he filled in on that edge admirably last season.

What to watch for
Each week in the Thursday forecast we’ll use this section to try to point out an interesting wrinkle in the game to focus on. Is there a particular tactic a team has been using to good effect? Perhaps an interesting substitution pattern or personnel decision to look out for. Maybe just a player who has been in particularly good (or poor) form to keep your eye on.

Again though because its Week 1 it’s going to be very difficult to point to any interesting tactics, or areas of concern for either team heading into this game. For the Broncos in particular with a mostly settled line-up and the steady old man in the coaching booth it is hard to predict anything except a continuation of the strategies that took the team to the grand final in 2015.

It will, however, be interesting to see how Roberts settles into his new team. At the Titans Roberts was at times a one-man band, creating many of his tries through sheer ability and lightening pace. At the Broncos he will be simply one of many try-scoring threats, and solo weapon plus steady playmaking structure does not always lead to beautiful harmony.

The big question for the Eels and by extension the key thing to watch is how the new spine functions and in particular how Foran adapts to life on the right edge.

While trial games are generally fairly vanilla affairs with teams focussing on getting the basics right rather than running through more complex set plays, the Eels did wheel out one interesting tactic to utilise both halves against the Panthers.

The following play shows both Foran and Corey Norman switching to the short side to create not just an overlap of numbers but also a surplus of ball-playing ability. With two halves who are both legitimate run-pass-kick threats the defence was left in two minds – or maybe six minds – creating great opportunities to score.

Here is the play as it unfolds. Initially we can see Foran and Norman are paired together with right side second rower Beau Scott’s bald head visible as the first receiver on the left side where Norman would usually be stationed. The Eels already have a four on three advantage, but they still need to execute and having both halves together makes that so much easier.

Foran then receives the pass from dummy half while Norman dashes around behind him and Brad Takarangi runs a decoy back inside. Already you can see Jamie Soward thinking “what?”.

Finally we see Foran passing to Norman – who remember would usually be on the other side of the field – while Soward comes in on the decoy leaving the Panthers winger in a very uncomfortable position as Norman and Gutherson come at him.

Needless to say, it ended up with Eels winger Clinton Gutherson scoring untouched in the corner.

Yes, in some ways this is a fairly standard play but it works so well because the Panthers aren’t expecting to see two halves on this side of the field and because the Eels utilise two elite ball players to throw the critical passes.

First try scorer tip: Corey Oates
Here is a promise when it comes to these previews – every game that the Broncos are involved in and Oates is in the starting line-up I guarantee he will be my pick for first try. The lad is for the time being a second rower playing wing except that he actually has a winger’s pace. He won for me in the grand final and here’s hoping he can do so again tonight.

Prediction: Broncos in a close one
This is such a great game to start the season because of all the sub-plots at play.

For the Broncos we have a number of players, Ben Hunt chief among them, for whom this will be the first genuine competitive hit out since that agonising grand final loss.

Those players will no doubt be itching to get on the field and start making amends. But at the same time their coach is a psychology major who won’t let the team get too agitated for a Round 1 game. Will the team push too hard or will the steady hand of the old man keep them grounded.

For the Eels meanwhile this is finally it. After one of the best off-season recruitment sprees of any team in recent years, Eels fans have worked themselves into a lather of expectations. The team is wonderfully strong on paper but now they finally get to put it all into practice in front of a demanding home crowd.

In the end, I think the Broncos have the slight edge. A mostly settled line-up who know how they want to play, there is no chance they will be overwhelmed by the moment.

Shoe-in of the week
Phil Gould and Ray Warren have an awkward conversation at some point during the broadcast about the recent announcement that Warren may soon retire from commentating.