I get your points about the problems Lodge has faced, and will continue to face, until our fitness and conditioning also staff start to adapt to the needs of a faster game. It's on them to get our forwards in the best shape to cope with a much faster game. It is no longer the same rules, and we are for mine seeing natural selection in action.
As for Joffa, agree, however again, it's more on our coaching staff to get him fit. Based on the boneheaded bullshit spouted by Lodge and Turpin in their media after the game, leaving such things up to the players simply won't work.
100% agree.
I've said a few times that I think we focussed on big powerful middles to roll through the opposition and keep us on the front foot ... Haas, Flegler, Lodge, TPJ, Joffa, Kennedy are all big middle forwards, but Haas and Carrigan are the only guys really able to play long solid minutes (with Lodge's fitness in question), and even then this is Carrigan's first year of having to play long minutes in the NRL ... and then the rules changed making the job much much harder for big middles.
If the rules stayed the same the workload on those middles allows them to get some breaks during the game (stoppages for penalties, etc.) and then if you are really struggling you give away a blatant penalty to allow a reset of the defensive line.
A lot of play was also happening inside the 20's under the old rules, because of kicks for touch... so you didn't have the added miles for moving up and down the field at game intensity ... now under the new rules a lot of the play is happening between the 20's. It's end to end and the players are having to do a lot more running and also having to do a lot more running at game speed intensity (they're not trotting downfield waiting for a kick to touch or going to a scrum... they're having to get downfield for the kick chase or having to run back to get onside for their set of six)
To me our roster was built to play a certain way and then that changed overnight, and we haven't been able to adapt... which is not unexpected given we had 4 weeks to prepare for a complete change to the rules... but we have had long enough now to get our players in shape for the new form... so that is on the conditioning team OR the coach (if he doesn't want to lose the size of his forwards)... you can see examples in JWH, RCG, etc. of props looking leaner and playing long minutes in the middle. I doubt Robinson is telling JWH to trim down under last year's rules
The 5 middle forwards in the 17 each week are more important than ever in this version of the game and the bench rotation is really killing us... guys on the bench should not be playing 20mins a game.
You really need full contribution from the whole 17 in the current game... at least until the players adapt, which I think will occur over the next offseason.
The fittest team will win the comp this year
