Quote: PopTart "I always feel like people are just reacting to bad results when they moan about effort but clearly sometimes you can see things on the field that don't look right.
I still say it is organisation and execution rather than fitness or tactics.
When you look at the stats we had players putting in a mountain of work. More than they should have to which is bound to affect the energy available when they need it later in the game.
If players miss tackles it looks like they are not trying hard enough. When they make 48 and then miss one, I don't think that it the case.
Westerman - made 36 missed 1 97.2% - 8 carries for 57 metres 2 offloads
Pitts - made 45 missed 2 95.7% - 7 carries for 48
Tanginoa - made 26 missed 4 86% - 14 carries for 97 metres
Kopczak - made 33 missed 0 100% 10 carries for 82 metres
Battye made 48 missed 4 92.3% - 21 for 144 metres
Crowther - made 48 missed 1 97.9% - 14 carries for 99 metres
K Wood - made 31 missed 1 96.8% - 2 carries for 41 metres
J Woods - made 31 missed 1 96.8% - 5 carries for 24 metres
Navarette - made 29 missed 3 90.6% - 13 carries for 115 metres
There are a couple of things to look at but there is no lack of effort there, in fact you'd say Crowther, Kopczak and Battye were outstanding in both defence and attack. Pitts in defence and Navarette in attack have good stats too.
However, all that is wasted if when we get to the sixth tackle we just hand the ball over cheaply. Or when the ball goes wide we leave a big hole.
Gigot and Bailey have awful stats in defence. Bailey missed 9 tackles in total but did make another 20. He was stood next to Gigot who missed 5 and made 14. For me Gigot was the one Chester was talking about waving players through. Left Bailey vulnerable until they were moved around.
If Miller isn't available I'd still progress with Bailey and to be honest when he's back I think I'd play Miller at 7 to see how he and Bailey work together.
I still say our 1,6,7 and 9s are if not the issue, they are the fix that isn't working.
Doesn't matter what Chester asks them to do, if they are not finishing the set well or not organising the team properly, then the effort of the others are wasted.
If you put any other teams spine in our team, apart from maybe Hull KR and Salford, our backline would rain in tries. Tupou and Lyne make great yards when they receive a good pass, or even an average pass but so often they are simply taking the ball up from the back. BJB looks like he could get his form back too with 20 carries for 164 metres. (missed 3 tackles'"
I know you love your stats PT but they don’t tell you the whole story
All the stats are from players who’s first responsibility is the middle channel, with the exception of Pitts.
Now far be it from me to decry the hard work done in the middle channel but with all due respect the largest number of tackles are always made in that channel and they’re often the most direct collisions and not a lot of evasion is present.
What those stats don’t tell you is how static were those players when it came to mapping out from the play the ball toward the edges as the attacks went wider. Maybe they did this or maybe not, experience of the last couple of hundred games would suggest they didn’t do this enough or with any consistency.
Only a thorough analysis of the defensive misses will tell you where the genesis of a missed tackle truly formed and who was ALSO at fault for it.
