Quote Dux="Dux"I'm sure there are other reasons, but I think we suffer a lot from having ineffectual and/or small wingers. If you have wingers who can get their upper body through the tackle and dictate the speed of the play the ball on tackle one then you're probably going to get quick rucks for the rest of the set, as it's a snowball effect. If, however, your winger gets dumped on his backside on tackle one (which is what happens every time for us) then you're up against it from the start. People used to dish out some stick to Meli and Gardner, but when we had those two on the wings we got our sets off to a good start.
That doesn't explain how bad we are at controlling the ruck speed in defence, though. There were occasions at the weekend where we actually made dominant tackles but the tackler just got straight up as soon as the 'held' call came from the ref. Whether we like it or not, controlling the speed of the ruck is central to the modern game, and we look completely unpracticed at it.'"
I've been banging on about those first carries being so important to the set for years. People was heaping praise on Quinlan, SMD and Makinson for years when they are partly to blame for our sets coming off our line after a kick. That first carrie you need to win contact and win te ptb but those 3 and now Owens are dead on contact which results in the other team slowing the ptb and basically resulting in us making no yardage in that set.
Your correct in that ade and Meli would win contact and win the ptb if they caught it in first place but we now only have swifty who can do this.
