http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...l-ceo-dave-smith/story-e6frexnr-1226625436437 What an absolute disgrace. Yes I'll just promote going back to grass roots country areas by charging double the admission price to a regular season game. That makes great fucking sense. Fucking idiots.
Nah Hadley is completely on the mark there. The crowd would have been at that 10K mark if not for the tix. The issue is in part that Coffs got a pre-season trial feat. Souths with approx. $5-10 ticket prices and to ask fans to fork out $50 for gstand and $30 to sit on a fucking hill is just not going to fly.
I think it's harder in the modern game for those sort of players to be effective at five-eighth too. Back in Daley's and Fittler's time, five-eighth was a genuine second receiver position so they still had some space and depth to run onto the ball off the halfback. These days every team plays left/right to at least some extent, so if you're playing in the halves you're going to have to do a lot of your work at first receiver, and it just doesn't suit these guys. Daley and Fittler would've no doubt adapted and coped like Campese has, but there's a reason Greg Bird, Feleti Mateo, Joseph Paulo, Wade Graham, Luke Lewis, Braith Anasta etc have all ended up edge forwards, and it's because their ball skills are far better utilised on the edges than in at first receiver. A lot of them might have been ended up five-eighths if they played one era earlier. If you've got a second rower with good ball skills you can use him almost like a traditional five-eighth on one side of the field, taking the ball at second receiver and having the option of giving early ball to the centre, cutting out to the winger, dropping back to a fullback on a sweep play or taking the line on himself and then trying to play through the line with an offload to the support-running fullback. It's a far better way to utilise a big bloke who has some ball skills but is primarily a runner than having him organising one side of the field himself at first receiver.
Completely agree with that. I made a thread about how split halaves are ruining Rugby League on rleague while I was banned, and what you're talking about is a large part of my point.
Which is why he made 17 line break assists last year, 9th in the NRL and much better than most halves. I don't know what your beef is with Mateo. I never used to be a big fan either but since he stopped trying to play middle third and five-eighth he's been a massive weapon for the Warriors on the left. Maloney definitely bought him a case of beer when he got his big Roosters contract...
Most of which is from offloading, not from ball playing. I just don't like him as a player. He'd rather not make a single metre forward if it meant getting away a miracle ball.
I don't know about ruining the game. I like the fact that it's made the ball-playing abilities of more positions relevant and I like how it stops defensive sides getting clever and allocating most of their resources to the open side all the time knowing the halves have to line up there.. but I do agree that it's an over-used tactic. I'm surprised it's basically become an automatic thing at most clubs to run with that structure regardless of who they've actually got in the side that week. Brisbane last year with Norman playing first receiver on one side and Hoffman playing open-side pivot was a classic example of why you can't just pick a traditional side and then split the halves. If you want to run with Norman at five-eighth and Hoffman at fullback then you need a much more traditional structure in place.
Agree 100% with Benny's team, although rough for Fensom to miss out. Also agree with Hadley tho he is a bit of a tool. No need to call the guy a dunce, just say it was dumb pricing and move on.
I considering offloading to be ball-playing; it's just ball-playing through the line. If it's just making a run and then flicking out a Hail Mary as an afterthought then yeah it's not really ball-playing but that's not what Mateo does. He times and places his run with the pass in mind, looking to break the initial contact and the pass through the line to the support player. It's definitely ball-playing when it's done like that, and the fact that it produced so many line breaks is testament to all that.
If it's one-handed, it's not ball playing. Beside the point anyway. He isn't a five-eighth because he isn't a five-eighth. He's not a playmaker. He's a pathological offloader with a bit of ball playing in his repertoire. If that makes you a five-eighth then Adam Cuthbertson is a five-eighth.
Yeah, I agree that he'd probably need to do more before the line to be a proper five-eighth even in a traditional structure, so he wasn't the best example of what I was saying. I was basically just making a list of the first players I could think of who were youth five-eighths but now play as ball-playing edge forwards in the NRL.
