It is all well and good to play fantasy coach and admittedly there is a couple of changes I'd like to see made to the side but for mine, the biggest problem we have is the brand of football we're playing.
Our strength is in our forward pack, yet I don't feel like our playmakers (McCullough, Wallace, Prince, Norman & Hunt) are consistent in organising them. A player like Matt Gillett should not be taking as many plain hit ups as he has to - he should be the type of player to run off a Scott Prince, Justin Hodges or Corey Norman - that's where he shines. Similar story with Alex Glenn who I feel isn't being given the room to run the lines which netted us an impressive 13 tries last year. I feel like our offence is just very shallow and this is how it usually goes down...
. One off the ruck for three tackles. Hope for an offload and play off the back of it. This either has a positive or negative effect on the play.
. Usually a wasted tackle because McCullough uses all the momentum to try and score from dummy half, or a forward (usually Parker) lumbers up and is comfortably tackled by the defence, forcing a slow play the ball.
. Long shift to either the right or left, which is usually so well telegraphed that the defence reacts before our offence is able to make the play.
. Either long shift back the other way or a cross field kick to end the set.
The problem is two fold. Firstly, it's too cliche. If fans like us can see it, imagine what a team of coaches - who are paid to analyse other teams - are capable of.
Second, that structure is flawed. The problem is that our settling plays suck and that our playmakers have little to no momentum to work off of and as a result, little room to create opportunities, which is why they're forced to play the percentages and just hoist up a cross-field kick into the corner.
That wouldn't be such a bad option, if our defence was awesome, but it isn't. There are issues we have that no amount of good coaching will fix, Prince is never going to become the Axe, that's just the truth, but I feel like our main problem is attitude. There are times where our defence is awesome. See that set where Prince put the bomb up and Gillett SMASHED GI? That was a great set. Yet, the boys couldn't keep it up and in fact were at times clearly intimidated by the Souths pack (particulary young Georgey Boy). Whatever Toovey is doing at Manly with his side in defence is what the Broncos need to do. Sometimes, I reckon Manly just want to defend, they smash players, they hurt them and they win the ruck with their defence. Our defence isn't the total shits, I feel like they're very courageous at times and we tend to recover quite well in broken play, but we just allow that broken play to happen too often. That's been a problem for a long time and goes all the way back to Bennett.
It needs to be fixed, especially if Hook persists with a conservative brand of football, which honestly, I don't have a huge problem with given our current strengths and weaknesses, but could be better.
I'm in no way saying Hook is an idiot, I'm sure he's aware of the problems and I'm aware that these problems cannot be fixed in the course of two months of football. I hope we grow and see improvements in these areas.
