Opinion
After the helter-skelter play of the last couple of seasons, discipline is again a major factor in 2022.
Whether it’s giving away a penalty, a sin bin or a send-off, the pressure is back to players to make sure they don’t sail too close to the wind while also being aggressive.
The new rule that means a penalty is given instead of a six-again for sides coming out of their 40-metre zone has rewarded the teams who have smart tactics whether on the attack from the ensuing penalty or in defence when they reset their line.
It’s the old story of don’t give the referee a chance to take the game out of your control. If you do something that puts yourself at risk of being penalised or sin-binned then you can hurt your team.
Last Friday night the Roosters gave away two penalties inside the 40 against Souths and they made them pay. They organised their attack nicely with an out-ball to Cam Murray, then an in-ball back to Cody Walker and they isolated Sam Walker and Sitili Tupouniua on the Roosters’ left edge.
The Cowboys constructed a clever one as well on the back of a penalty against Brisbane when they found Tesi Niu in the line near the post and Chad Townsend put the kick in for Jeremiah Nanai on an early tackle.
It’s been great to watch because we haven’t seen that as much in the past two years with the constant six-agains.
If I look at the strategy and attacking strikepower of some teams, it’s good to see that skilful part of the game re-emerging.
You can see teams are putting thought into when they get those relieving penalties, how they set up in the attacking zone to get to the right position on the field to set up for a move and how to target the poorer defenders. They’ve now got time to have that conversation while the kick goes downfield to work out what set they are going to run.
I remember back when I was playing for Warren Ryan at Canterbury in the 1980s, we’d spend a large part of the captain’s run each week working out what we’d do in those situations. But of course we hardly got any penalties back then so it was often a waste of time.
If you went away from the plan, you’d be in strife. Say, for example, Steve Mortimer decided to do a chip over the top then he’d better regather the ball and score otherwise he’d be in trouble from Wok for going away from the plan of the structured set.
This season we’re seeing some well thought out, creative stuff that we haven’t seen since 2019. As a fan, I’m really enjoying that and I think most supporters are thinking that way as well.
When it comes to sin bins, the balance of being aggressive and leaving your team a player short is nothing new.
It’s an aggressive sport and it’s very much about taking the risk versus the consequence if it goes wrong.
We saw a few instances on the weekend where players were probably lucky or unlucky to fall either side of that fine line. Nelson Asofa-Solomona should have gone to the sin bin for his high shot on Makahesi Makatoa in the Storm’s loss to Parramatta and Jaydn Su’A found himself in the bin for the 3rd time this year for his high tackle on Dale Finucane when the Dragons went down in the wet to the Sharks in Wollongong.
Genuine professional fouls should always result in 10 in the bin but the line-ball ones, I reckon a penalty is sufficient. Su’A got him a touch high with his shoulder and he will miss a week of footy.
Cronulla scored two quick tries on the back of Su’A being off and we are seeing teams that can take advantage of the extra numerical advantage with some clever tactics.
The Sharks took advantage of the time and space by being direct and then sending the ball wide to exploit the overlap with some really slick passing by Matt Moylan and Nicho Hynes despite the torrential rain at WIN Stadium.
You’ve still got to play with a level of go-forward, play-the-ball speed and going straight. They played a skilful level of footy – their passing and decision making was really good, which helped them skip away on the scoreboard and win the game.
Mitchell Barnett. (Photo by Mark Evans/Getty Images)
Even the Nicho Hynes try late in the match when it was 13 on 13, he saw a tiring forward in Jack de Belin close to the line after a break. Most teams would shift the ball sideways but he went nope, he’s on his heels, I’m going to take him on and stepped past him.
The other side of the coin is the sides who panic when they think they have to throw the ball around when the other team’s down to 12. In the last 10 minutes of the Wests Tigers’ game against the Warriors on Friday, Marcelo Montoya was marched for a blatant professional foul which was fair enough.
He’s a left winger so the Tigers then should have directed all their traffic to that edge but they were all over the place. It looked like the Warriors had 13 and the Tigers had 12.
They looked like they were totally exasperated and didn’t know how to construct a try when they needed it most – trailing by four against a team with 12 players.
I don’t want to kick them while they’re down because you can see Michael Maguire is trying to do all he can to turn them around but they were playing like a team that’s highly stressed and not sure how to win a game of football. I’ve got some empathy for them because I know how hard it is when you’re in a situation like that and it’s difficult to get yourselves out of it.
And when it comes to a send-off like we saw with Newcastle losing Mitch Barnett for 48 minutes of their game against Penrith, it’s very hard to hold on for that long.
The Knights did well to hang in there but the Panthers constructed some really good tries.
It took until the last 15 minutes of the game when fatigue started hurting Newcastle.
Penrith were the opposite of the Tigers – they have no stress. They weren’t at the best but they’ve still got that joy about playing at the moment and they were able to finish the job.
The teams with the smarter halves with game sense are reaping the rewards. A little bit of nous can go a long way.
On the defensive side of things, teams practise a lot game situations at training where they’re defending eight on 10 or their edge is working out what they’ll do when they’ve got an overlap heading their way.
When you’re faced with that challenge of defending a man down, it’s all about the desperation and scramble on your try line that is required so you don’t concede a try or two to keep your team in the game.
Michael Hagan is a former dual-premiership winning first grade player and current assistant coach of Australia's Kangaroos team. Hagan played 183 games for Canterbury and Newcastle and represented Queensland five times. He transitioned into a successful coach and took the Knights to a premiership in his first year in charge back in 2001. He went onto coach 205 NRL games and six times for Queensland in Origin.
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