Quote Geoff="Geoff"I think there are two separate points. Back in the dark days of Millward & Noble, we had no coaching towards support play, so there was rarely anyone there to take advantage of his offloads. Even back then I always said we needed an Edwards to be backing him up. That has changed.
I agree he'll need to be more selective about when he does it, but that can be coached into him, I'm confident, and more crucially, the current coaching staff have the ability to put in place a support tactic to have someone always on his shoulder - much as Leeds try to do with Lauititi, or Wire with Solomona.'"
Correct. Gareth Hock would be absolutely devastating in the NRL. Sometimes Gareth Hock was made to look daft when offloading the ball because no-one was backing him up. It is a two-sided coin. If someone backs him up and we get that second phase Gareth Hock is praised, but if he offloads and finds the ground with no-one reacting quick enough then Hock is scolded. I noticed from the WCC match that the St. George players were like a school of piranhas latching onto the ball from the offloading player. Now while Wigan have definitely improved in this area since the Noble days, we still have a tendency to sometimes be lethargic in support. I still believe that we can improve this area of our game. St. George were far superior to us in this department.
I just hope that we don't expect too much from Gareth Hock too soon. The expectations on this forum is astronomical. The lad has been out of the game for two years and I don't care who he has been working with, how much he has bulked up or how much talent he undoubtedly possesses - he wont be match fit and for a good while too. He will have to spend a few weeks - possibly months - in the reserves and will need a good few weeks - again possibly months - to get up to speed with the well formulated systems that Madge/Wane have put together. Plus he has to get in front of some damn good players who have been performing very well since he's been gone. I hope that fans are able to have patience with Gareth Hock when he returns & not just naively expect him to start running rings around opponents for the remainder of the year. Rugby League just doesn't work like that.
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