Technical Coach
Bencher
People tend to overuse the "not up for it attitude" as an easy way to explain a loss, yes it's a contributing factor but not always the underlying major issue.
It's impossible to maintain a high level attitude in such a brutal contact sport all year what you have to do is mask the low points with class, clinical precision in execution and a will to win when the game is close.
Our technical structural issues/bad habits in attack and not being able to score feed into our defence not the other way around. When you combine the above with our major attacking weapons on the sidelines these results are a no brainer.
Yes sickness, attitude and players out can be offered as genuine excuses but we had enough ball and field position in their 1/4 to score 2-3 tries and we didn't. With two international/rep halves and enough reps in the remaining players--- not scoring points in the first 20mins last night is unacceptable even when the attitude is not "up for it"
Bennett tends to create defensive patterns that are good laterally on their line flooding the areas of ball play with good numbers. You need to either go wide and come back through the middle with hard straight runners(not just crab across and not link with a straight runner) or use shorter more direct and flat passes up the middle before going wide.
Foran in attack usually gets shown up in these games---to be honest for over a year now his effectiveness in creating decent assists or line breaks has been on the slide. Yes injury once again contributes but his attacking passing game is not developing a more rounded edge.
DCE is also developing bad habits that started last year also---both get caught out during "night games" more often than not during the regular season.
We can turn this around but it's getting to the point now where luck and injuries really need to be on our side more so than ever before.
More attacking drills that limit the ball playing to the middle 1/3(width wise) with only one pass outside the zone allowed need to be developed. I have a few in mind that combines shuttle runs for the defensive set to add fatigue into the equation but i'm employed somewhere else these days so only a brown paper bag deal will do lol.
In short Manly need shorter ball playing and flooding attacking areas with more options closer in field.
The Parra game is not a good indicator of great structures in attack as Parra were diabolical.
It's impossible to maintain a high level attitude in such a brutal contact sport all year what you have to do is mask the low points with class, clinical precision in execution and a will to win when the game is close.
Our technical structural issues/bad habits in attack and not being able to score feed into our defence not the other way around. When you combine the above with our major attacking weapons on the sidelines these results are a no brainer.
Yes sickness, attitude and players out can be offered as genuine excuses but we had enough ball and field position in their 1/4 to score 2-3 tries and we didn't. With two international/rep halves and enough reps in the remaining players--- not scoring points in the first 20mins last night is unacceptable even when the attitude is not "up for it"
Bennett tends to create defensive patterns that are good laterally on their line flooding the areas of ball play with good numbers. You need to either go wide and come back through the middle with hard straight runners(not just crab across and not link with a straight runner) or use shorter more direct and flat passes up the middle before going wide.
Foran in attack usually gets shown up in these games---to be honest for over a year now his effectiveness in creating decent assists or line breaks has been on the slide. Yes injury once again contributes but his attacking passing game is not developing a more rounded edge.
DCE is also developing bad habits that started last year also---both get caught out during "night games" more often than not during the regular season.
We can turn this around but it's getting to the point now where luck and injuries really need to be on our side more so than ever before.
More attacking drills that limit the ball playing to the middle 1/3(width wise) with only one pass outside the zone allowed need to be developed. I have a few in mind that combines shuttle runs for the defensive set to add fatigue into the equation but i'm employed somewhere else these days so only a brown paper bag deal will do lol.
In short Manly need shorter ball playing and flooding attacking areas with more options closer in field.
The Parra game is not a good indicator of great structures in attack as Parra were diabolical.
