Here’s your Repeat Set for Round 14:
Warriors end ‘culture’ chat
Taniela Paseka stands up for Manly
It was a round to remember for…Christian Welch
It was a round to forget for…the captain’s challenge
Play of the Round: Rabbitohs field goal
Graham Annesley’s Briefing Summary
Warriors Continue To Impress
While the culture of a club is very much a real thing and can influence on-field performances, “culture” is more often used as a buzz word amongst rugby league fans and pundits.
When in doubt, it’s a “culture issue”.
It’s a word that has popped up in regards to the Warriors in recent years. Forget the fact they rarely make headlines for unsavoury off-field reasons, are heavily invested in families, and have introduced avenues for players to give back to the community and their personal culture.
Because the Warriors aren’t winning games every year, it’s a culture issue.
That idea has been put to bed in 2020, though.
A playing group with culture issues don’t pack up and move to another country for an unknown period of time. They don’t pick up a few wins while playing every game away from home and certainly don’t push the top of the table side despite every number going against them.
The Warriors had made 96 more tackles, run for 483 fewer metres, completed 11 fewer sets and recorded six tackles in the opposition 20-metre line to Penrith’s 28 at halftime on Friday night. To only be ten points behind is a monster effort.
A 40 minutes like that could have been chalked up as a moral victory. After all, most watching at home assumed the extra defensive work they’d been asked to do would take a toll later in the match. Instead, the Warriors dug deeper.
A Panthers side scoring 25.5 points per game managed just a penalty goal in the second half to eke out a 16-12 win.
By full time, the Warriors had made 125 more tackles, run for 601 fewer metres, completed 15 fewer sets, and recorded just 15 tackles in the opposition 20-metre line to Penrith’s 52. A team with culture problems gives up long before then.
It started with Stephen Kearney; he was at the forefront of the playing group’s decision to make the move across the ditch for 2020. Todd Payten has produced improved results on the field as he juggles an injury-ravaged and homesick list.
It will be up to Nathan Brown to turn this character-building season into the long-term success he and Cameron George claim will come with his hiring in 2021. Any talk of a rebuild is an effort to deflect and buy time. This team should be competitive next season if coached correctly.
Taniela Paseka Stands Up
At his height, weight and with the agility that somebody his side shouldn’t possess, Taniela Paseka can carve out an elite career in the NRL if he wants to. He’s a monster of a human being. It appears as though he realised that on Sunday afternoon as he produced the best game of his short career right when Manly needed it.
With both Marty Taupau and Addin Fonua-Blake on the sidelines, the Sea Eagles looked to Paseka with the prop forward willing and able to pick up the slack.
He played a role in three Manly tries on Sunday.
The ball-playing of Jake Trbojevic with Daly Cherry-Evans occupying Mitchell Pearce out the back here allowed Paseka to get one on one with Aidan Guerra. Busting through the line, the big man draws Kalyn Ponga before throwing an excellent pass to Cherry-Evans backing up.
Later, Paseka’s run set up a try for Jack Goseiwski. His leg drive forces Guerra into the tackle, and while the Knights back rower is quick to peel, he’s slow in getting back into the defensive line. The ball is gone by the time he’s in position and turns with Cust dribbling one into the space behind the defensive line.
Combining his tackle-breaking ability, strength and ball-playing to set up Lachlan Croker, Paseka hits the gap while getting through Guerra’s attempted tackle before staying up just long enough to release his second try assist of the afternoon.
Paseka has always looked like he could do whatever he wants to on a footy field. On Sunday, he did. The key for the 22-year-old now is to produce this sort of quality over consecutive weeks.
It was a round to remember for…
If Christian Welch earns himself a nice little payday, he will have his Round 14 performance to thank for it.
He threw three timely offloads while running for 190 metres on 19 carries in Melbourne’s big win over the defending premiers. Defensively, he made 31 tackles at 86%. Displaying his excellent motor and non-stop work rate, Welch put his hand up to get paid on Thursday night.
While some may be reluctant to invest too heavily in a player the Storm aren’t making much of an effort to keep (Brodie Croft and the Broncos is the latest warning sign), Welch is worth the risk. He’s now a State of Origin representative entering the prime of his career. The Dragons, Warriors or Knights (if Tim Glasby is medically retired) could do worse than picking up Welch.
The 26-year-old is negotiating his own contract for 2021 onwards so there are no issues over player managers and their future influence on a club.
It was a round to forget for…
I thought the Captain’s Challenge would be working better by now. Instead, we’re still seeing head-scratching decisions every week as players roll the dice on appeals from their teammates on 50/50 calls at best.
Captains, stop believing your props when they tell you the ball was raked out:
Captains, don’t use your challenge in the 15th minute of a game to contest a strip (which tend to be 50/50 anyway) when your teammate has his hands draped all over the ball before it is dislodged at the same time he removes his arm:
To be fair to the players, they aren’t the only group struggling. Graham Annesley had to explain an issue surrounding a referee getting a challenge decision wrong in Raiders v Broncos on Saturday night. More on that in ‘Annesley’s Briefing Summary’ further down.
Play of the Round
You want to get the ball into the hands of Adam Reynolds with the game on the line, and the South Sydney Rabbitohs executed a superb set to give their halfback the chance to win it on Saturday night.
Following strong carries from the kickoff by Thomas Burgess and Tevita Tatola, Keaon Koloamatangi forced the defence back with his metres after contact before earning a quick play-the-ball. Cody Walker once again dug in behind the ruck.
The transaction between Damian Cook and Tatola is clunky, but Tatola saves it by releasing an offload to Koloamatangi. Just as he did earlier in the set, the 22-year-old collects a few extra metres as the Cowboys work towards a one-on-one strip. If given the chance again, Coen Hess and John Asiata would surely wrap up the ball and force a play-the-ball 35 metres out.
Instead, they allow Koloamatangi to get ten metres up the field before he gets an offload away. With the defence scrambling, Tatola picks up the metres on offer, gets to his front, and produces a lightning quick play-the-ball. The Cowboys defence hasn’t even met the referee at the 10m before Reynolds is lining up the match-winner.
While the yardage South Sydney generated was impressive enough, it’s the late offload that scrambled the defence that setup Reynolds to chip it over. The Sydney Roosters did similar when Luke Keary knocked over his field goal in Round 8:
The late offload is a high-risk high-reward play that teams appear more willing to attempt with the game on the line recently. Koloamatagi and the Rabbitohs nailed it here.
Graham Annesley’s Briefing Summary
Despite not being ones to spend a lot of time focused on referees and measuring the impact a single poor decision can have on a game, we want to offer a summary of Graham Annesley’s weekly reviews that doesn’t deliberately mislead or misuse quotes to generate further controversy.
With a dodgy report suggesting blowouts are at their worst in NRL history during the week, Annesley eagerly pointed out that Round 14 produced the lowest average winning margin in 2020 so far.
Kaide Ellis had a try denied which Annesley confirmed to be the correct decision. The knock on came when Ellis lost control of the ball into Junior Paulo's arm.
Apparently, there was some controversy over Reed Mahoney's put down in the same game. None of the three angles shows Mahoney getting the ball down in the field of play with Annesley claiming it is a "perfectly reasonable decision for the Bunker to arrive at."
The Rabbitohs challenged Damian Cook's knock-on. "I'm the first to accept this is minute analysis," Annesley said. Nonetheless, he's happy enough with the decision the Bunker made.
The Raiders challenged a knock-on decision that caused "mass confusion."
Annesley said the right decision was reached, but it was then changed to the wrong decision...
The players can't challenge Jack Wighton being offside, but in the process of assessing the challenge of knock-on, the Bunker can make that observation and indicate to the referee he should have been penalised. (Those here last week know that to be the case.)
"It should have been a penalty to the Broncos."
However, the referee told the Bunker they can't rule on markers - that isn't correct. The Bunker then changed their decision on the back of that information.
Ideally, the referee shouldn't be getting involved. It's up to the Bunker to make the decision just as they are asked to normally.
Tevita Vuna had his foot in touch when chasing a kick on Sunday. The touch judge missed it - a simple mistake. Not a howler.
On Jack Wighton not being awarded a penalty for being taken out late and Jake Granville possibly giving away an eight-point try, Annesley highlighted that players will get injured and the match review committee will catch repeat offenders.
He acknowledged the gamesmanship of players coming up holding their neck but says that there has been contact with the neck in "most cases". There will be an update on how crusher tackles will be handled in the future in "the coming days."
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