Honest question, fam: is our backline actually elite
Honest answer? We've got one bloke carrying the whole 10-12-13 channel and everyone else is on a free ride. That centre makes the line look decent on paper, take him off and we're the same mob who ground out three games under 20 points while hogging the ball. Possession means nothing if every phase ends with a crash ball into two defenders.
And before anyone says "game-plan problem", sure thing, mate, the plan seems to be give it to the same bloke and hope. I'd have less of a problem with that if the outside backs ever got clean ball at pace. As it stands the backline looks elite for about ten minutes a match and pedestrian the rest. Any punters backing us on the TAB to score 30+ deserve the loss 😏
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✓Honest answer? We've got one bloke carrying the whole 10-12-13 channel and everyone else is on a free ride. That centre makes the line look decent on paper, take him off and we're the same mob who ground out three games …Are we going to talk gut feelings or actual numbers here? What specific data shows everyone else is just coasting?Sample first, conclusions after.
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Nah, giving up on our lot is never an option, we fight for that every week 💪🔥.One love, one side ❤️
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Rob, I keep the numbers every round so I'll back Jack partially here. Three games under 20 points while we dominated possession is a red flag for conversion, and possession without points usually means the 10-12 channel isn't creating the final pass. One caveat though, three games is a small sample, one tight win changes the story. My read is it's more game-plan than passengers, we're kicking away field position we've earned. 📊Numbers > vibes.
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Back in the day one good second five carried Canterbury for years. Seen worse than this, and possession without points usually means the plan, not the men. 😄Seen it all, trust me.
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ha, FanaticTillIDie beat me to the good old days line 😄 but i'll say it anyway. back in the day at Lancaster Park we had seasons where the forwards ate up possession and the backs still starved, and nobody blamed the second five. when you dominate territory three times and still come up short, that's the game plan going narrow, eh. give the coaches a look before we hang the midfield. ah well, we'll see.Seen it all, lads.
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Metric_nerd's right, watched plenty of games at the old Lancaster Park where the pack did all the graft. The real question though: who's actually finishing those moves when we get to the 22?Hype isn't an argument.
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Metric_nerd nailed the history lesson, I could be wrong but my spreadsheet says the same thing: possession without points has been our pattern for weeks, and that smells like a game-plan issue more than missing personnel. My caveat is that the finishing at the 22 does look thin, so it's probably both. I've got the conversion rates sat in a table on my kitchen bench in Invercargill and honestly they don't flatter anyone in the 10-12 channel either. 📊Do the math before you argue.
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Honestly Jack, I'd put actual NZ$ on the coaching box before I'd blame the midfield, and I'd lay better odds than the TAB on it too 😏. Three times we've hogged the ball and still bottled it under 20, that's a coach telling blokes to recycle into brick walls. Sure thing, mate, one centre fixes that 🤡It's a lottery, not sport.
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Amy putting NZ$ on the coaching box, who would've thought 😅 but nah I reckon it's half both eh. Recycle into brick walls all day and no matter how good our 13 is he can't finish what never gets wide 🤬 give the backs one clean phase and see what happens 💪In the stands since I was a kid.
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Interesting that nobody's separated the three under-20 games by how the possession came. I could be wrong, but from my own tracking the pattern isn't identical across them: one was carried by the pack, the other two we had the ball in the 10-12 channel plenty and just kept hitting the same two runners. So Jack's "one bloke carries the channel" and Amy's "coaching box" theory can both be partly true, depending how you count it. What I can't settle from the numbers alone is Uncle's point: if the ball never gets wide cleanly, is that selection, structure or the 10's timing? Context matters there and I don't have enough tape on it to call it. My honest position is the sample is too small to bury anyone, but the finish-at-the-22 question Nick raised is the one I'd chase next. Gut feel says give the backs a clean phase before we spend a single NZ$ on scapegoats.