So the squad is complete and from what I can gather we only have 3 recognised halves, Sammut, Barthau and Api who is already out injured. That's the weak area of the team imo. Also with leatherbarrow gone we lack an organiser.
Agree its an area of concern given Barthau and Api's injury issues in the past and Api's current issue? In terms of organiser, Sammut is surely as good as organiser as Leatherbrow? Although i agree letting him go may prove to be a mistake, although i think the general view was despite his many good qualities his lack of speed held him back? An option would surely be to use Cunningham at 7?
Watching the 4 nations final it struck me that NZ had no chance doing the normal things well, they needed someone to throw in something unexpected in every set.
Playing in the Championship is not like that. We have done pretty well playing a fast and simple style from the half backs and hookers. We musn't became too predictable, but I think we should be looking at a 'genius play' in perhaps at most a quarter of our sets. We do seem to have a resonable set of guys to do this level of magic, most signed for the next 2 seasons.
Half-backs And hookers
JARROD SAMMUT ~2018
7. WILLIAM BARTHAU ~2018
9. JAMES CUNNINGHAM ~2018
14. ANDY ACKERS ~2018
26. API PEWHAIRANGI ~2017
27. BEN POINTER ~2017
It would be great if one or more of them stepped up as a precision kicker, or a pairing suddenly clicked. At the moment though more worried by the injury stats of the 6 above than quality or numbers.
At least we are not still complaining about not having any grunt up front.
A decent kicker on the park would help us, last tackle options are pretty essential in our game, being able to exploit the playing surface at home is pretty important in my view. I was surprised on how few 40/20 s we had at ealing it's perfect for it.
But mentioning the 4 nations the aussies have perfected the basic premis of the game 3 drives 4th you have the option and last 2 go to the fringes, add to that a solid defence and you win games, assuming you keep hold of the ball.
Looking at what we have I think it's pretty balanced.
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