With Round 8 complete it’s time for our regular NRL Round review. In Round 8 we saw the Rabbitohs and Roosters in free fall, the Dragons ascendant and a superstar out of position.
Theme of the Week – Free Falling
At the beginning of the season one NRL narrative was clear: despite the grand final surge of the Bulldogs last season or emerging threats from Penrith and North Queensland, the Roosters and the Rabbitohs were the teams to beat.
The first few weeks of the season did nothing to dent that argument. In week one they both stomped highly-regarded opposition on their home turf. In week two they played in each other in a knock-down, drag-em-out epic that I compared to gang warfare on The Wire and after four rounds both teams had three wins and looked like going from strength to strength.
However four rounds later the wheels have well and truly fallen off the bandwagons. The Roosters have dropped an extraordinary four consecutive games while for the Rabbitohs the record is little better with only a solitary win from their last five games.
Injuries have played their part, particularly for the Rabbitohs as they have discovered just how critical Adam Reynolds’ long kicking game is. Of course Reynolds isn’t the only name missing from the Rabbitohs team sheet but sadly for them Sam Burgess is not walking through that door this year.
With Burgess and Ben Te’o both departed the Rabbitohs second and third string forwards are seeing more and more time and in recent games this has hurt Souths badly. Things won’t get any easier with Glenn Stewart and Dylan suffering fresh injuries in the capitulation to the Raiders and the Dragons and Storm up next on the schedule.
The Rabbitohs’ need Adam. (AAP Image/Paul Miller)
For the Roosters the loss of form is harder to pin down. Injuries have been a factor with the loss of Blake Ferguson hurting the team in the backline while Sam Moa and Jared Warea-Hargreaves have also missed time. Much attention has also been given the large number of penalties the roosters are conceding.
The team has conceded eight penalties a game and lost the penalty count in every game of the four-game losing streak. However the team also had a terrible record of giving away penalties during their premiership season in 2013.
Perhaps the good news for Roosters fans is that this slide may simply be a matter of playing the top three teams in back to back weeks, plus a little mental let down against a Jack Bird inspired Cronulla team. Not only that but the reality is that the Roosters were within a try of victory in their last three matches, so things may not be as dire as they appear.
Team of the Week – the Dragons
The Dragons started 2015 among the favourites for the spoon and their early season form, featuring two losses and a miserable eight total points scored, led to a campaign among disgruntled fans to have the Chief Executive removed.
However, the team has now built a remarkable six-and-two record capped off with an outstanding performance in the marquee Anzac Day game on Saturday. In weather conditions that could be best described as a pleasant day in Melbourne the Dragons took an early lead and never relinquished it despite withering pressure from the Roosters late in the game.
That this signature win was built on a terrific defensive performance was entirely appropriate. The Dragons defence is currently conceding a mere 10.75 points per game while the next best team, the Melbourne Storm, are at 14.5.
What’s more remarkable is that the Storm are themselves an outlier as the next best team after them comes in at 17.25 points per game. So the Dragons are nearly seven points per game better than the third best defence in the completion.
However the team’s lack of offence will remain a concern. The team is currently 15th in the competition in points per game with only the truly awful Sea Eagles trailing them.
Even if one throws out the diabolical performances in rounds one and two the team is still producing only 17.5 points per game which would put them in position 14. Improvement will be essential if the team is to convert the six and two start into a more meaningful season.
Player of the Round – Kane Elgey
This one will be bittersweet for the Gold Coast Titans’ fan (this is deliberately “fan” not “fans” – it’s a joke) to read, with recent news that Elgey is likely to sign with the Sea Eagles for next year.
However on Saturday afternoon Elgey was still in Titans colours and demonstrated exactly why the Eagles have targeted him to anchor the post Cherry-Evans and Foran rebuild.
Elgey had two tries, two try assists and two linebreak assists to go with a linebreak of his own and two offloads in what was a match-winning performance for the Titans.
While Elgey is nominally the halfback he has thus far played mostly as the secondary playmaker with Aidan Sezer directing traffic and taking the vast majority of the team’s kicks. This freedom allows Elgey to play the type of off the cuff game he played on Saturday.
All in all Elgey looks like a promising signing for the Sea Eagles however there is no shortage of halves who looked promising in the under 20s and at the beginning of their first grade career only to stall shortly afterwards.
As with a lot of those young halves defence may become a critical weakness for Elgey. On Saturday afternoon he missed fully one third of his tackle attempts.
Over the course of the year he is missing 3.6 tackles per game which, while not quite in James Maloney or Jamie Soward territory, is still a troubling start, especially as you can reasonably expect that teams will now begin to target him in earnest to try to exhaust him so he can’t contribute in attack.
However for the time being, and certainly on Saturday afternoon, his contribution in attack is more than offsetting his frailty in defence and he is a worthy player of the week.
Interesting Personnel Move of the Week – Greg Inglis returns to five-eighth
Despite being named at fullback mid-week, on Sunday afternoon Greg Inglis returned to five-eighth for the first time since Round 25 2011.
With his team struggling in recent weeks one can certainly understand the temptation for Michael Maguire. On one level there is logic to trying to get your most talented players as many touches as possible. Moreover with wunderkind Alex Johnston available to switch to fullback Maguire may have thought his comparative advantage lay in getting them both more ball.
However while Johnston was solid if not spectacular in his debut at fullback Inglis was largely ineffective in the six. Of course when it comes to Greg Inglis, ineffective is a relative term. Inglis did score one try and made four tackle breaks, but that counts as a light day for him.
Perhaps the key difference between playing fullback and playing the line was the number of times Inglis was able to run the ball and the space in which he had to do so.
Playing at fullback Inglis averages 14 runs a game for 131m whereas on Sunday he had only four runs for 34m. Even when accounting for kick returns as part of his running stats at fullback (3.7 per game for 46.1m) there is still a considerable gap between his usual run game and his performance on Sunday.
Moreover for all his gifts Inglis has not been a regular kicker in recent years. Indeed in 2014 he kicked the ball in general play on only seven occasions.
With such limited practice it was inevitable that the kicking burden would fall more on Luke Keary. While Keary did execute a number of well-placed kicks, having only one recognised kicker allowed the Raiders defence to pressure Keary and force poorer kicks or rushed passes to alternate kickers as the game wore on.
There is a little doubt that Inglis would in time adjust back to five-eighth, after all he did win a Dally M positional award in the role in 2008. However Inglis’ main strength is his running game and with Reynolds back at some point it does seem like returning him to fullback and finding an alternative make-shift option at six makes the most sense.
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