Jason and Oscar are linking up on a Monday to compile a Take the Two and Repeat Set hybrid wrap of each week through to the Grand Final.
Here’s your Repeat Set for Week 1 of the NRL Finals:
Canberra’s Jack Wighton
NRLW: Tamika Upton on fire
There’s always next week for…
Goodbye 7th & 8th
Play of the Round: Eels
Annesley’s Briefing Summary
Wighton in the Clutch
It’s hard to remember the last time Jack Wighton didn’t produce in the clutch moments.
Last year’s Clive Churchill Medalist - in a losing team no less - again stood tall on the big stage as Canberra knocked out the Cronulla Sharks over the weekend to book a finals rematch with the Sydney Roosters.
There were plenty of doubters when Ricky Stuart moved Wighton into the halves for the 2019 season, and the fullback-cum-five-eighth is still making them look bad today…
Whatever Wighton lacks as a genuine play-maker or game manager he makes up for in sheer effort and skill, as he produced another mini highlights reel on Saturday to help the Raiders to a 32-20 victory.
George Williams’ intercept try just before halftime may have been a turning point for the Raiders, but it was a few involvements from Wighton that caught our eye as Cronulla watched their halftime lead slip away in the second stanza.
His first try will be argued about for years to come down in the Shire, but it was Wighton’s awareness and eagerness to take the quick tap when Andrew Fifita gave away a lazy penalty that got the Raiders back in front early in the second half, and from there they didn’t look back.
Just minutes after that opportunistic try, Williams lobbed a chip kick across field to his halves partner, who produced this:
Strength. Will. Desire. The commentary box erupted with superlatives over this one, but in reality, it needs no analysis - there aren’t many in the competition who pull this play off.
The Raiders weren’t done there.
We highlighted Briton Nikora’s propensity to come off his defensive line last week, and when he got the blinkers on for a leading Dunamis Lui here, Hudson Young burnt him on the inside to again get the Raiders into good ball against a scrambling defence:
It’s only third tackle, and as Young hurriedly plays the ball Wighton is there at first receiver, not looking for a settler but pressing over the advantage line and looking to attack:
The speed at which Wighton runs onto the ball means Aaron Woods can’t come up off his try line, and Siosifa Talakai is too wide to help stop Williams who pushes up to score the unlikeliest of halfback tries.
Young can take the credit for his run in the lead up here, but there aren’t many halves pairings in the competition who would react like this on the following play. Neither Wighton nor Williams bothered with positioning their forwards into block shapes or getting set for a backline shift given the tackles they had up their sleeve.
Both men just reacted to the line break and then attacked the space around the ruck where Cronulla have been poor all season - good footy.
Special mention must go to Joseph Tapine, who is enjoying a career-best season in the lock-forward position for Canberra this year. He carved up a soft Sharks middle on Saturday, busting nine tackles on his way to 136 meters, one try and 28 tackles with no misses.
~ Oscar
NRLW: Tamika Upton on fire
If you didn’t know Tamika Upton after she spent two relatively quiet games on the wing and one at fullback for the Broncos last season, you certainly know the name now.
It seemed as though she scored every time she touched the ball in the first half of Brisbane’s 28-14 win over the New Zealand Warriors. With shades of Ryan Papenhuyzen and Josh Addo-Carr in one, Upton carved up the Warriors defence with elite support play putting her into try-scoring positions and her speed finishing the job for a first-half hat trick.
Her first was a beauty and capped off a dangerous Broncos left shift.
An overeager Tazmin Gray turned in on the Broncos lead runner which allowed Tarryn Aiken to get on the outside of Simone Smith. Presented with a three-on-two, Upton kept the defence sliding by holding the ball in two hands before breaking two tackles on her way to the line:
Upton’s second try highlights her support play and speed. With Chelsea Lenarduzzi able to release and offload to Millie Boyle, Upton put on the afterburners to fly into the gap and wrong-foot the cover defence:
Upton’s third comes courtesy of some poor Warriors edge defence, but she made it look so easy with the slightest change of direction at close to full speed enough to skip through the gap:
Having scored three herself already, simply hanging off Aiken’s inside shoulder was enough to create a four on three down the Broncos left edge. You can see Kirra Dibb point Upton out in the line, but with Dibb’s inside defence slow to get across, she ends up on her heels committed to Aiken who threw a peach to Julia Robinson to score:
We’re only one week into the 2020 NRLW season, but Upton’s Round 1 performance will be tough to beat. She did it all. If not scoring a try, she added 192 running metres while asking questions of the defence with every touch.
I’ve seen enough already: Upton is a future superstar of the game.
~ Jason
There’s Always Next Week For…
… the Sydney Roosters.
They started exactly how we thought they would.
Exactly how they’ve dominated over the past two seasons.
A rapid power game through the middle gets you rolling backwards before slick shifts to the edges leave you scrambling for numbers and wondering where it all went wrong.
The Roosters started an early set on their 30-metre line and worked quickly upfield with simple one-off carries through the middle before Isaac Liu changes the tune and acts as a ball-playing forward to get Luke Keary and Boyd Cordner wide of the ruck:
Cordner crashes into Nathan Cleary and earns a quick play-the-ball, and before the Panthers can respond, Keary is down the short side again to put Josh Morris over in the corner.
The Roosters deliver this one-two punch better than most in the competition - Keary straightens at the line before releasing to his outside men perfectly, while the speed at which Cordner plays the ball gives Penrith’s short side almost no chance of resetting in time. If anything is un-defendable in rugby league, this is it.
Next up was young hooker Freddy Lussick, who directed traffic from dummy half to get Penrith scrambling on their own try line before barging over himself shortly after in another combination punch from the defending premiers.
The Roosters start this set in good ball courtesy of a penalty, and some strong carries from Siosiua Taukeiaho and Liu get the Roosters playing over the advantage line:
The shape Sydney’s forwards are running with here makes it so difficult for Penrith to win the ruck, as they can’t commit multiple defenders to the tackle with so many option runners around the ball carrier.
When Liu wins another quick play-the-ball and Jarome Luai comes off his line to shut down the backline shift, Lussick hits Angus Crichton short but he is just denied by a brilliant effort from Viliame Kikau and Luai, who drops back to help:
But Luai and the Panthers couldn’t stop Lussick on the following play.
The Roosters’ rapid-fire attack forced Penrith to make four tackles inside 20 seconds of play, as Taukeiaho, Liu, Crichton and Lussick worked across field, dragging defenders in towards the ruck before finally finding an opening on the edge - great footy.
Unfortunately for the Roosters, they faded almost as quickly as they fired.
When Brett Morris was bundled into touch in an attacking raid not long after, the tide began to turn and Penrith ran away with it. The team with the best go-forward in the NRL targeted Lussick’s small frame in defence to win the ruck for the remainder of the match, while Penrith’s backline again oozed class despite the quality and experience of their opposition - you won’t expect these kind of numbers from the tri-colours next week:
Despite suggestions that the Roosters’ tank may be running on empty, they still came within just a point (and a 50/50 call for Cleary’s first try) of this year’s Minor Premiers - all while being far from their best. Without the direction of Jake Friend and influence of Sonny Bill Williams on Friday, the Roosters still showed enough to suggest for me that they are still well and truly in the premiership race.
~ Oscar
Goodbye 7th & 8th
7th - Knights
A 46-20 Week 1 loss to the South Sydney Rabbitohs goes a long way to summing up the 2020 season for the Newcastle Knights.
Fast to start and showing flashes of brilliance throughout, an inability to play out the full 80 minutes against top tier opposition saw them fall short overall.
It all looked much the same on Sunday afternoon.
Getting out to an early 14-0 lead just as they did in Round 10, the Knights couldn’t hold onto this one. They looked a different team from the 15th minute onwards.
While not the reason for losing, Mitchell Pearce poked the bear as he got in the face of Cody Walker who dominated the game from then on.
A lack of quality on the edges in defence cost the Knights points. Meanwhile, their biggest stars - Pearce, Kalyn Ponga, David Klemmer, and to a lesser extent, Mitch Barnett - weren’t up to the task when Newcastle needed them most.
Pearce struggled throughout. A lack of a second kicker put all of the pressure on Pearce at the end of sets and he had too many poor efforts in him on the day. Some early in the set with next to no pressure on him at all:
Ponga was ineffective in attack. His 123 running metres is 60 metres below his season average while he made two errors. Likely in large part due to a lack of cohesion in the halves, the Knights couldn’t get Ponga in threatening positions often enough. The Rabbitohs left edge was there to be challenged if they could.
Meanwhile, Klemmer’s 129 running metres is his third-lowest mark of the season. He also failed to find an offload after averaging 2.1 per game this season.
Newcastle’s big three turned up often enough throughout the season to play finals football but went missing too often to climb the ladder or make much of an impact in October. They had displayed the sort of form to be hopeful heading into Sunday. The gap between themselves and the six above them eventually showed, though.
The Knights improved in 2020. It’s their first finals appearance since 2013, so that box is ticked. However, like the end of last season, it feels as though they left a lot out there. Perhaps 2021 is when it all finally comes together.
~ Jason
8th - Sharks
The Cronulla Sharks’ very long 2020 season has finally come to an end, following their second half blowout against the Canberra Raiders on Saturday.
While the way things finished up may be disappointing, there are plenty of positives to take from John Morris’ second year in the coaches box.
It’s easy to forget this is a club that farewelled on-and-off-field leaders Paul Gallen, Luke Lewis and Matt Prior, among others, over the offseason.
A club that lost teen sensation Bronson Xerri to a doping scandal and veteran campaigner Josh Morris to the Roosters, where he has played close to career-best footy since.
A club that has had to navigate long-term injury layoffs to big name, big money players like Shaun Johnson and Matt Moylan.
While these ‘excuses’ will hang heavy on the Cronulla faithful over the summer break, the numbers from Saturday’s game serve as a reality check for a Sharks outfit that just couldn’t get the job done against quality opposition this season.
A new starting combination of Braeden Hamlin-Uele, Toby Rudolf and Siosifa Talakai looked to shore up what has been a leaky, immobile middle third for Cronulla this season and is quite possibly a glimpse into a brighter future for the Sharks. But with Blayke Brailey going down injured and Johnson already on the sidelines, Cronulla simply didn’t have the points in them to match it with Canberra on the weekend.
It’s not all doom and gloom for the Sharks. A difficult season has developed players like Will Kennedy, Talakai and Rudolf into genuine first-graders, while Sione Katoa and Ronaldo Mulitalo form one of the most exciting young wing pairings in the competition.
A few tweaks to their forward rotation and some better luck with injuries should see the Sharks only improve on their efforts this season. For now, though, eighth place seems about right.
~ Oscar
Play of the Round
What started as a Storm planned play ended with Clint Gutherson extending the Eels lead on Saturday night.
In what must have been a pre-planned play, Josh Addo-Carr went searching for the ball on the Storm right side. In a Cameron Smith to Cooper Cronk to Billy Slater type action, Smith played to Jahrome Hughes from dummy half who turned it inside to Addo-Carr.
Clunky and mistimed, the pass goes behind Addo-Carr who loses it forward and into the hands of Reed Mahoney.
It’s not how I thought this would happen, but we’ve mentioned wingers exploring on the other side of the field towards the end of sets and leaving their wing vulnerable in defence a few times throughout the year.
With Addo-Carr down on the right side, Clint Gutherson looked to the gap the Storm winger had left in defence the second he received the ball from Mahoney.
Floating a long ball out to the right edge, Gutherson finds Michael Jennings who is too quick for Kenny Bromwich. With a burst of speed, Jennings is able to get by Bromwich while dragging Justin Olam and Ryan Papenhuyzen toward the sideline. His flick to Blake Ferguson sends the Eels winger streaking towards the line with Gutherson soon rewarded for not only starting the play but following up through to the try line.
It’s the sort of unstructured attack the Eels have always been able to score through this season. It’s when they need to play to areas and break down a defensive line that they’ve struggled in recent weeks. Nonetheless, being able to pile up points in a hurry and score from long range at least gives them hope when coming up against an on-fire Rabbitohs outfit in Week 2.
~ Jason
Graham Anselsey’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.
Finals Week 1 Briefing Summary:
Graham Annesley first wanted to congratulate Ashley Klein for refereeing his 300th NRL game over the weekend.
"Why does the referee make a decision before going to the Bunker?"
It's a question asked far too regularly by people in the game that should know the answer. Nonetheless, Annesley wanted to use Freddy Lussick's try as an example of why referee's do send decisions up as a try or no try.
Gerard Sutton deemed Lussick to have got the ball down over the line. None of the nine Bunker angles could confirm or deny the ball touching the ground, therefore, the referee's decision stood. Simple.
James Fisher-Harris charged down a Luke Keary kick on Friday night. Sutton ruled Fisher-Harris to be making a tackle and the ball wasn't played at. The Bunker didn't overturn the challenge and Annesley agreed with the final decision.
Per the rulebook: "A ricochet or rebound does not count as a touch."
John Bateman changed his line to impact Braden Hamlin-Uele chasing a grubber on Saturday afternoon. It was ruled interference by the Bunker. Annesley is happy with the decision of a penalty; no sin-bin necessary.
Jack Wighton scored from a quick tap as Wade Graham tried to challenge a penalty decision. The penalty was for a ruck infringement and can't be challenged.
Kenny Bromwich was ruled out of play when taking possession of the ball on Saturday night. Just like every other time this has come up throughout the year, the ruling was correct.
Suliasi Vunivalu's cramp stopped the Storm v Eels game. The trainer didn't even attend to Vunivalu before waving to the referee to stop the game.
"Rules are pretty clear."
The NRL will be seeking an explanation from the Storm before deciding if they will go any further. Annesley wanted to point out that referees are not at all to blame. They respond to the trainer.
"A team defending with 12 players isn't a reason to stop the game."
Mitchell Pearce wasn't able to challenge a ruck infringement yesterday. Again, ruck infringement...
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