The Numbers Game: Lachlan Ilias on how halfbacks actually play heads-up footy

A few weeks ago, after a victory that sent St Helens to the top of the Super League, TV pundit Jon Wells got Saints playmarker Jonny Lomax to talk him through a few plays from their victory over rivals Warrington.

You can watch the whole clip below and suffice to say, it went a bit further than the average Fox League analysis. Braith and Blocker this was not.

Lomax was capable of detailing the split-second decisioning-making required to make the calculated probability gambles that factor in defensive decision making and relative match-ups of teammates and opponents.

What Lomax talks about is numbers. Specifically, the reading of opponents’ movements in terms of where players are split in relation to the play-the-ball, whether those opponents are ‘real’ defenders or deterrents, and thus where Saints should go with the ball.

It was a breathtaking insight, delivered by someone who had literally just walked off the field, into what goes through a halfback’s mind in the heat of battle.

Playing heads up-footy requires having footy up there in your head all the time. Anyone who has watched Lachlan Ilias play this year will know that he has that skill in abundance.

I cornered him beneath Accor Stadium after Souths’ win over the Dragons last Saturday and asked him to talk me through what the Bunnies do in these situations.

Like Lomax, he did it with ease: in fact, he did it while eating a cup of hot chips.

“We’ve got a pretty good system and we have shape both sides, so we’re reacting off what the defence does,” Ilias explained.

“If they put numbers on my side then we’re going to go left and vice versa. That’s in play: we count the numbers and react well. There’s a good structure that we go off.”

The principle is the same whether you’re at Souths or Saints but each team adapts based on their own strengths.

For most teams, this part of the game is controlled by the halfback, but at Souths, it is a collaborative effort, as they have Cody Walker and Damien Cook, two of the best improvisational players in the NRL.

“It’s everyone (who calls it),” said Ilias. “Me and Cody are picking the numbers and Cooky as well at the play the ball.

“It’s on all of us: I can tell Cooky if they’ve got an extra number, so go left, or Cody could say the same on his side.

“It’s all of us combined and working together as a team.

“Cookie has a licence to run and he’s freakishly quick, so when he sees something he’s got an override call.

“We saw him do it (in the Dragons game) and break tackles and we scored our first try off the back of it.”

This is where the two ideological camps of ‘playing what you see’ and ‘structured, block footy’ meet. The best way to play what you see is to know what you are looking at, and indeed, what you are playing with.

Ilias knows exactly where he fits into the system and what he can offer. A large part of that is because he learned from one of the best in Adam Reynolds.

One of the areas this plays out is in terms of line engagements, a key metric for halfbacks, and one that speaks to how many questions they ask of the defence.

Line engagements are exactly what they sound like – how many times a player engaged the line – and Ilias is rated as fifth in the comp for them.

In fact, if you take line engagements per possession, a measure of how often players take the ball to the line against how many times they get it, Ilias jumps to third place – behind Reynolds and his teammate, Cody Walker.

This speaks to the way that Souths play, and how much they’ve backed their new man to pick up where the old guy left off. Ilias excels not only at spotting where the opportunity might be, but also in putting on the play that makes the most of it.

Credit: Fox League

Take the Bunnies’ third try: the halfback is only one part of a move that goes through six pairs of hands, but his is the crucial one.

Ilias takes the ball, draws the defender and then weights the pass so that Keoan Koloamatangi is aligned with the outside shoulder of Dragons half Ben Hunt, a clear mismatch that ultimately results in Souths taking an unassailable lead.

“It (engaging the line) is part of my job,” said Ilias. “I try to dig in and give the boys outside some space. My job is to worry about what’s in front of me, to dig in and hopefully give the ball out the back and create some space out wide.”

“The line engagements is something that Reyno did so well for years for this club, and I’ve tried to take that onboard.”

When it works, it works big: just watch the pass that put Taane Milne in to seal the game last week. Ilias caught the Dragons short, called the play and then executed it perfectly, doing enough to engage Junior Amone before slipping his teammate through the gap.

“It’s not even if we score, it’s just handing the ball over in the corner,” he said. “It feels good to finish the game with that ball for the try but it all comes down to process and the plans that we put on.

“I’m loving it, I’m having such a good time out there. The boys make me feel at home and I’m comfortable on the field. It’s challenge on the field but the boys make me feel good.”