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This is set to be an unusual NRL season.
In a welcome change, the rules of the competition will remain roughly the same year-to-year, with only a tweak to the six-again rule representing the only significant difference from 2021.
That means coaches will actually be able to build on what they are trying to achieve and apply logic to decision-making, as opposed simply playing catch-up with the ever-changing rules of the game.
Last season presented a sample size that they will be able to work with, and hours of footage to go through to pick out what other teams were doing that worked.
That should mean coaches will be able to have a more sustained impact on the game tactically, beyond the traditional leaguespeak dimensions of “culture” and “effort”.
The new trends that we might see are impacted by the general boundaries of the game as it stands under these rules, and the politics of the possible.
For all that tactical innovations can and do work, they are still predicated on the fundamentals of modern rugby league, things like effort, fatigue management, winning the ruck and kicking effectively. Don’t do that and it won’t matter what tactics you play.
It’s also worth considering that each team has varying goals and expectations, and it’s unfair to compare them tactically when they’re fundamentally trying to do different things.
There are teams going for finals, who need to have a consistent strategy to win most games and then potentially a modification to win elite fixtures (likely refereed differently).
There are others that need to win enough games to make finals but know they are likely to lose to the big dogs – works in progress, or teams on the slide, or not quite there yet.
Lastly, there are teams for whom the goal will simply be to beat those around them and not worry too much about those far above.
It’s perhaps the bottom teams that might have the best indicators, or at least, the most interesting ones, because they have worse cattle and thus more incentive to be better tactically than opponents.
Which brings us onto our first point…
One of the key losers, positionally speaking, in the past decade or so of rugby league has been the centre. Historically a glamour position, it has been relegated to a big outside body and then, last year, to something of an afterthought.
In Origin, for example, it was barely a specialist position at all with only one (Dane Gagai) of the six players to feature in the role in the series playing their club football at centre. It was a dumping ground for a guy you wanted to get in the team but didn’t know where to play them: even Jack Wighton played it when he came on.
Now, perhaps because of a dearth of good halves and a renewed emphasis on expansive play, the centre is seen as a place where struggling teams can find added value.
Take the Broncos: they don’t have an established five-eighth but might have the best centre pairing in the comp in Herbie Farnworth and Kotoni Staggs.
Or the Knights: whatever they’re paying Jake Clifford and Adam Clune in the halves is less than what they’re giving Gagai and Bradman Best.
Often ideas filter through the league, and Manly were perhaps the best example last year of a return to what you might call a more classic style, almost like something from the 1990s or early 2000s.
They had a functional distributive dummy-half getting the ball to a traditional halves combo with two strike centres and fast wingers, aided by edge forwards with both size and a pass. Of course, it helps when you have a transcendent talent like Tom Trbojevic at the back, but more on him later.
Manly were an exemplar in that they were absolutely the best of the middle pack, beating everyone below them but losing to everyone above. They were $1.80 to miss the finals last year and ended up in the top four.
Their centres, Morgan Harper and Brad Parker, weren’t seen as at all exceptional prior to 2021, but the team played in such a way to maximally exploit them. If you’re a Newcastle or a Brisbane, they are a blueprint you can follow – only you’ve got better centres.
One of the key trends that emerged from last season was the return of the ball-playing lock. Again, this was a trend that came from an earlier age, in particular the early 2000s, when plenty of the scoring records that we saw challenged in 2021 were set.
Two decades ago, Parramatta’s Daniel Wagon was named Dally M Lock of the Year. A lock (OK, a loose forward) Paul Sculthorpe won the Man of Steel Award and Brad Fittler captained the Kangaroo Tour from the back of the scrum. These three also played rep footy that year in the No.6 jersey. The positions were near interchangeable.
As recently as five years ago, rep locks included Sam Burgess, Paul Gallen, Jason Taumalolo and Adam Blair. Locks had become props.
Now, Isaah Yeo, Cameron Murray and Victor Radley have brought the passing aspect back, but kept the toughness and hard carries. They link the inner and outer, acting as playmakers through longer passing and getting on the outside shoulder.
We can expect that trend to continue in 2022, with Brandon Smith permanently positioned there to join the three mentioned, as well as Kurt Mann and Tyrone Peachey, both converted halves, likely to feature in the No.13 jersey at the Knights and Tigers respectively.
The new development of this might yet be the extra playmaker being found elsewhere. While some teams, notably Newcastle and Wests, have sought to go down the ball-playing lock route (Jackson Hastings, notably, has been mentioned as a possible lock at the Tigers when Adam Doueihi returns) others might try to find their value elsewhere.
In attack, the game is as loose as it has been since the pre-wrestle era and, while some go down the 13-as-playmaker-route, others will empower their centres to play as auxiliary five-eighths when in good-ball position.
It was a clear tactic Fittler employed during Origin last year, with Trbojevic popping up on Latrell Mitchell’s side to create a try in Origin I before Mitchell returned the favour later in the game. Mitchell played as a more orthodox centre for the Blues but Turbo had a licence to roam.
This year, watch out for Joey Manu being named in the centres but being told to play wherever he likes at the Roosters when he gets the chance. Zac Lomax at the Dragons is also primed to take on a more creative role beyond being stationed out wide, especially in a side that should have plenty of pace in the spine if Tyrell Sloan, Junior Amone and Jayden Sullivan get named in the same side.
You might think of it as akin to the inside/outside centre dynamic in rugby union, or even the ‘false nine’ in soccer, where a striker is named as the furthest-most player forward but rarely occupies that space. Just because they’ve got a three or a four on their back, don’t expect them to stay there.
When the six-again rule came in, many thought that the big beneficiaries would be the running hookers. That hasn’t come to pass.
Damien Cook, the fastest rake in the comp, has led the league in dummy-half runs for the past four years, but his numbers have fallen off drastically: from a high of 211 in 2019, the last year before the six-again revolution, to 169 last time around.
Cook has become less effective – as has another heavy runner, Josh Hodgson – because defences aren’t allowing hookers to get around the back of the ruck.
The theory went that, if ruck infringements were punished by repeat sets, they would decrease and thus there would be a greater incentive to run from acting half.
That hasn’t happened. What has instead occurred is better teams have proven more than willing to concede ruck infringements rather than allow their line to be broken.
The stats bear this out. Take the Roosters: they conceded the second-most penalties per game, averaged less than 50% possession, committed the most errors and completed the fewest sets.
Trent Robinson clearly backs his boys to withstand pressure, as you’ll remember that he did before the six-again rule, when the Roosters routinely conceded multiple slowing penalties on their line.
They also conceded their six-agains later in the tackle count and closer to their own line, giving them a massive advantage under the new 2022 rules – (hat tip to Rugby League Eye Test for the data).
What, you might ask, do these two things have to do with running hookers? Well, as scoring is up, there must be space on the field somewhere – it just isn’t behind the ruck.
The space on the field is wider and the best attacking sides have realised this. Beyond Souths and Melbourne, who have exceptional runners in Cook and Harry Grant, and thus play to their individual strengths, the other top-four teams have moved away from it as a tactic.
Reed Mahoney runs 4.3 times per game at Parra, Penrith’s Api Koroisau runs 4.1 times, while Sam Verrills at the Roosters (2.9) and Manly’s Lachlan Croker, disher in chief, does it just 1.8 times. Cook is up at seven and Grant at eight per game.
That isn’t to say there isn’t a time and place for it, but there does seem to be a realisation that the best teams are running less from dummy half and instead are getting the ball wider earlier.
Some teams might greatly improve as a result of this. The Titans will see a disher, Erin Clark, take over from a runner, Mitch Rein, this year, while the Warriors will get a new dominating half in Shaun Johnson and already have one of the best passing hookers, Wayde Egan.
All the Dragons options, whether Andrew McCullough or Sullivan, are also very low down the runner rankings and prefer to get it out early.
In fact, if they were to shift Ben Hunt to the No.9 jersey, they would have a long passing expert, one of the best 40/20 kickers in the game, an experienced leader in the middle so they could play Sullivan in the halves with Amone. Anthony Griffin, if you’re reading, you know what to do.