Interesting to see the Huddersfield "response" after their loss to us last week. Wigans "kids" display against Leeds and the complete turn around in Saints performance last week.

Whilst attitude, commitment and desire should be a pre-requisite for any professional rugby league player, has Super League changed slightly this year in so much that aggressive defence (for 80mins) is the #1 tactic that is dictating results?

The game over here in recent years has focussed heavily on winning the collision and quick play the balls, but are we moving more towards the NRL style of uncompromising defence rather than a passive/efficient defence style? Obviously quick line speed and big tough shots in defence is what the crowd wants to see, but it seems that putting in good first contact, wrestling on your feet and controlling the ground has been replaced with a "hit him as hard as you can" style, which obviously takes more out of the tank, but is more effective in getting control of a game and therefore who wins the game?

Discuss!

It has changed, it's certainly gone more structured over here than it once was which could also be down to a dying breed of "off the cuff halves" or coaches drilling teams to much.

Wigan are the prime example. They are aggressive, tough, rough and well drilled in their attack and obviously had a lot of success off it.

Rather reminiscent of early 0's Bradford with only PLAN A!

I think Wigan have players that can do things out the blue as their plan B. Last year they had the X factor of tomkins if things wasn't working with that move out wide that they do.

This year they have Bowen who can produce that magic out of nothing and add SOL and Green then they are always dangerous if their structured play isn't coming off.

The bulls however didn't change, they just carried on with trying to over power teams.

That's a fair comment but they need to take care they don't go down that route - it looked that way last night once Hudds started getting in their faces.

They undoubtedly have some skilful players but do base a lot of their work on strong early defence.

I agree and haven't seen the game as I'm away but green is big for Wigan in the big games.

For quite a few seasons the game has been based on gaining momentum. This season is seems to be attitude, agression, wrestle control at the ruck.
Most of teams these days are operating an umbrella defence to stop the ball going out wide.
One of the biggest changes is the lack of consistency with the refs to the extent you are never going to know how they are going to interpretate the game.

Interesting topic. I think the game tends to go in trends - we saw this with Bradford 10-15 years ago who went for having a team full of huge players which worked for a while until Saints started going with fast play the balls and offloads to tire them out. Teams then copied this style. Whilst in-yer-face defence and NFL style playbook attack are currently in vogue, after a season or two some enterprising coach/team will find a way around it and then everyone will follow the new magic formula and create a new dynamic to the sport.

I don't think this is new. RL has always been a game in which aggressive confrontation usually decides the winner. Very aggressive defence is thus a kind of attack. If you can physically dominate your opponents without the ball, you will certainly dominate them with it. Saints' single biggest weakness is the absence of sufficient aggression to gain that dominance in the big games.

Are we seeing us move closer to the NRL in terms of competivness?

There's been a lot of results that contradict each other, suggesting that no matter which team you are, it's very dangerous to go into a game undercooked.

In terms of competitiveness I think it's getting pretty close with some of the scores. It's much harder to do the coupon than it was 4 years a go. I used to win a fortune on it.


I'm terms of ability I think we falling further behind.

I think that's true, and it's definitely the case at Leeds as Brian McDermott has said himself. They've changed from a steady defensive line to one where it's more a case of getting back into good starting positions and then getting up almost as fast as you can to try and pressure the attack into either making mistakes or turning the ball back inside.

It's almost a mix of a blitz defence and an umbrella defence, with B, C, D & E defenders responsible for getting up very quickly in defence.