Quote: Roy Haggerty "Not attacking him. He backed up well, and if he keeps following Roby around the middle of the park, he'll get more. But he made an awful miss for their first try, and was bumped off several more times, two of which resulted in more tries.
I've got an issue with very small backs. Tackles made by threequarters are much more likely to be 1-on-1 than those made by the forwards, and they're also more likely to be tangential - having to grab with the arm as your opponent tries to get around you - whereas most forward tackles are head-on shoulder-led collisions. This means that backs either have to be at least as big and strong in the upper body as their opponents, or have superb anticipation or tackling technique. Preferably all three. What we have are (Turner-excepted), easily the smallest backs in the top 8. None of them are particularly special defenders, although Makinson's technique is pretty good. So when their bigger opponents run at them, our lads often manage to get a hand or arm on the carrier, but are simply not big or strong enough to impede progress sufficiently to prevent either a full break, or an easy pass to a supporting runner who then breaks.
The other teams have figured this out now, and that's why they're coming at us out wide. You're right that we can neutralise this tactic to some extent by having our forwards become so dominant and aggressive that the opposition don't get space to move it out wide, but our forwards are struggling to do that at the moment, and it's killing us. However, even if the forwards rediscover dominance, we're still being hurt by our Lilliputian backs, because our lads CAN be brought down by the outstretched arms of their bigger, stronger opponents. How many times do we see our threequarters actually beat their opponent one-on-one, compared to the reverse ? Often we see a half-break which doesn't quite make it as our carrier is dragged down by a tenuous grip, where a bigger man might have been able to exploit greater momentum. It's not coincidental that our most effective attacking force by far is Turner, who is the only one of our backs who can ride a tackle and continue to make yards when hands are laid on him.
We need some size.'"
It would be nice to have one or two bigger guys, sure. But I take issue with the idea that our backs can't punch holes in the opposition. Our problem isn't that our backs are hitting the opposition big guys and being thrown backwards like the heel in some kind of WWE match. Our problem is that our backs don't receive enough ball.
As you say, Turner breaks tackles for fun. So does Adam Swift. Tommy has never been a break-maker. But there isn't another player in SL I'd trust more to finish a move without screwing up. As for Percy - once he gets on the outside of his opposite number it's all over.
If we do have a problem at the moment it is that we are badly missing a wide-running second row or loose forward who injects himself as an extra man into the back line. At the start of the season I don't think we really appreciated just HOW MUCH Vea was giving us in that department. Especially as he seems capable of doing the work of two men.
Greenwood is a cracking prospect. But he's also a completely different kind of second row. Sav is the closest thing we have to Vea in terms of ability. But he tends to stay in the centre channel.
And as you say - the backs defend fine when the forwards do their job in defence. For the last few weeks they haven't. Let's just hope it's down to tiredness.
