Also most sides have a fullback with ball handling skills as a 3rd outlet but Briscoe is very poor in this regard and cant help Dobson out either.

They can i agree but not after defending set after set on there own line, this is what grinding us down.

you have issues,seen a good doctor lately?

Who?

you know funnily enough i thought dobson did pretty well last night with some outlet kicks. We did similar to salford last week with containing them within pretty much their own thirty and returning the ball with some real vigour so they weren't making much ground at all, with rushed kicks as well.

Last night dobson did a reasonable job of getting rid and finding the floor between the 'two fullbacks' system that we're using at the moment, don't know if you picked up on that from last night's game but we've been doing that for most of this year and is a bit of a bugger to kick against.

i thought our lads peformed well considering that wire appeared to have a mole working with them to that bin mole SMITH of course. cant bring the game back but a few of the super league refs really do need a check up from the neck up bad decisions turn a game within a split second lets wait til it happens to the wire see how they feel. i tip wigan to win the league and grand final and saints to win the challenge cup there ya go............................

Didn't see the game (rubbish fan me) but this is interesting, could you expand/explain please?

Standard practice for covering kicks, is come 4th or 5th tackle, one of the defending wingers will drop back to cover the touchline for 40/20's and that side of the field, the defending fullback will position himself generally in the centre of whats left, probably quite a lot of open space.Obviously the winger isn't too far back from the defensive line incase he needs to rush up.


Warrington this year are dropping one of the wingers back from the 3rd even 2nd tackle and what we're doing is rather than the above, we're literally having say chris riley dropping all the way back to stand level with richie mathers, with possible 15-20 metres distance between them working as a pair, it narrows the available space for a kicker to try and hit the deck with the ball and gives us immediate options on kick returns, at the start of the year when we were in real good form a lot of it was on the back of matt king playing on the wing and returning kicks with full vigour, he was getting us back to the half way line so we were starting sets almost immediately in the opposition half.

The only downside to this is that you're obviously shortening your defensive line early on, so a good team with good passing could go round you if you don't slide quick enough, however as you've probably seen warrington are defending in a very un-warrington like fashion this season, so I reckon we've only been caught out like that a handful of times if that.

Certainly the only prominant example i can think of is the game at the HJ against wigan earlier this year(we lost) they got round us at least once and scored, but that stemmed mainly from our forwards missing succesive big hits and the line getting stretched.

Hope i've explained that ok, failing that, have a watch of the superleague show later, it may be more aparent now you're looking for it.

That really does seem a very good tactical ploy, simple but potentially very effective, I can really see the advantage of having King bring the ball back in those kind of situations and I'd be tempted to drop him back there even from centre (although I must qualify this by admitting that my own tactical preference would be to ludicrously run the ball or chip and regather at all times).

The only down side I can see (and this is probably mitigated by there not being many players capable of this) is doesn't this leave you vulnerable to 40/20's as you've narrowed the angles but by effect of having brought two players in field are leaving the touch lines open.

I'll apologise now for the awful paragraph above, my brain is in new technology melt down. I'll have to and cut the grass, with a push mower.

Could leave you vulnerable to cross field kicks, but not many are going to be brave enough to try it from distance in a close game.

Wire do the odd one here and there in matches (bravery/stupidity/confidence)

One thing i have thought this year though is the distance between fullback and the defensive line, we have been caught out with the little chip and chase, it cost us the game against Wigan.

Kris Welham cant defend

How insightful.

Didn't do too bad smashing Matt King in to touch though did he?

He misses a fair few tackles racing out the line, but he's also nailed a few that have probably won us games. Would like to see a few of the more higher paid 'stars' show the same level of consistency that Welham has for the last couple of years.