Diary Of An Aotearoa Warriors: Gauge-Game vs Rabbitohs
One lovely positive in post-pando life is that we are up to the third Friday night Aotearoa Warriors game in a row, with one more 8pm Friday night slot vs Melbourne Storm coming up next weekend. It's pretty cool settling into that kind of routine, well as long the Warriors are rolling out decent performances and now is a good time for appreciation as after the Storm game the schedule gets a wee bit more scattered. Plus, the next three games are rather niggly affairs for the Warriors; Rabbitohs, Storm, Broncos.
This game against South Sydney Rabbitohs is going to provide a nice gauge of Warriors limitations as the Rabbitohs re-started their season with losses to Roosters and Storm, before touching up the Titans. I'm currently balancing hype from the strong Warriors performance against the Cowboys and understanding that the Cowboys weren't so good; Cowboys are 8th but have conceded more points than six of the bottom eight teams.
The biggest predicament with the Warriors is David Fusitu'a's inclusion, which is far less about Fusitu'a himself and more about Peta Hiku and Gerard Beale playing well enough to hit pause on the Fusitu'a at centre stuff. It is hard to gauge the impact or value of the centres in this Warriors season because of the disparity in performances of the forward pack and halves in the wins and losses. For example, it's far easier to get early ball to Hiku with time and space to work with when the forward pack has generated momentum and then it's the opposite on defence; defensive reads are far easier when players inside have slowed the play-the-ball down.
Some of this is about feel - Hiku and Beale feel like the best duo right now. Both are experienced enough at the centre position, both have good footwork and nice hands (passing/offloads). Again, they feel pretty good defensively, although that is far more dependent on what's happening in-field and I won't go too deep down this rabbit-hole other than some minor tackling efficiency stats...
Hiku - 71.1%.
Beale - 89.5%.
Keighran - 66.7%.
Fusitu'a - 80.1%.
Beale did have a boo-boo last weekend in missing Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow who had shifted to fullback and set up Valentine Holmes for the Cowboys first try. This was a bad miss from Beale, although there would have been little fullback prep done for Tabuai-Fidow and this try came after back-to-back penalties, generally fucking up the Warriors defensive line. Beale was merely following Blake Green in rushing in to stop the threat as the Warriors were stripped of number via good Cowboys roll-on in the middle.
Harris is on his heels, Green has to respect a steaming Jason Taumalolo and imagine that there is a rope connecting Beale and Green so that as soon as Green steps in, Beale follows:
Beale just needed to make the tackle:
We've seen Hiku's value with the footy and having a natural baller at centre in the current NRL is an asset given the speed of the game; get the footy to a centre with footwork and skill and watch things happen. The most logical conclusion is bumping Adam Pompey out, with Fusitu'a coming into that spot as I wouldn't take Fusitu'a at centre over Beale or Hiku and Fusitu'a is a better winger than Pompey. That's more in tune with a strongest possible backline.
Beale at right centre, along with Blake Green (2nd for Warriors missed tackles) and either Tohu Harris or Jack Murchie will be playing down the Warriors right edge where Latrell Mitchell and the Rabbitohs like to get busy. Remember that last week Harris started at right edge, then when Murchie came on around the 20-minute mark, Harris slid into the middle and Murchie played right edge. The threat facing the Warriors right edge is that Mitchell is equipped to offer a threat in any scenario and I went through his last three games to scope things out...
Mitchell had a try assist vs Roosters in round three, even numbers and Mitchell hits Cameron Murray with a short-ball:
Round four vs Storm and Mitchell has an overlap, so he fires a long pass out to the winger while under pressure:
Ah, but then last week Mitchell starts to flex down the Rabbitohs' right edge and the Rabbitohs run a nifty play for Mitchell to again throw a last-pass under pressure:
Come back to the Rabbitohs' left edge and Mitchell's putting a grubber through the line:
And if any Warrior tries to emulate Bryce Cartwright's horrible body position here (eyes in, no idea Mitchell's steaming in, feet planted etc) then Mitchell will run over the top of them for a try:
Mitchell also has great footwork as another issue in the mix to set up a try:
Those examples shows A) the left edge is favoured and B) Mitchell has immense skill. Things get borderline scary considering that Mitchell didn't do much in the first two games and appears to be heating up for this Warriors encounter...
Round One - 1 tackle break.
Round Two - 1 tackle break.
Round Three - 1 try assist, 5 tackle breaks.
Round Four - 1 try assist, 10 tackle breaks.
Round Five - 3 try assists, 1 linebreak, 11 tackle breaks.
Mitchell's move to fullback permanently with the Rabbitohs has him 7th in try assists, 3rd in linebreak assists and 5th in tackle breaks. All of which has been building up to this point right now and there is a strong possibility that if the Rabbitohs gain ascendancy through the middle, then Damien Cook's dummy half threat, Cameron Murray's mobility and the play-making of Mitchell, Cody Walker and Adam Reynolds will tear the Warriors apart.
Although, I'm not so sure that the Warriors will give up the middle to the Rabbitohs like that. Things seem a bit different in that Warriors forward pack, especially if/when Tohu Harris is playing in the middle and even just the idea of having two good catch-and-wrestle defenders in Harris and Adam Blair through the middle is useful. I mentioned the game plan of forcing Jason Taumalolo into a 30+ tackle count (53 vs Warriors) and to add to that, Taumalolo had an average play-the-ball speed of 4.14 seconds - rather slow.
Taumalolo was one of three Cowboys forwards to average over 4secs and of the nine Cowboys forwards, only two averaged less than 3.50secs. Compare that to the Warriors where no Warriors forward averaged over 4secs, while Jamayne Taunoa-Brown, Harris, Blair, Poasa Fa'amausili and King Vuniyayawa all averaged less than 3.50secs.
The high tackle count obviously influenced Taumalolo's running involvement, I'd also suggest that there are signs of good wrestling from the Warriors and they'll need all their tricks to slow the Bunnies down; the Bunnies pose a far greater tempo-threat than that weakened Cowboys team. The beauty with the footy is that the Warriors have now built a forward pack that offers plenty of footwork, agility and athleticism.
I mentioned Fa'amausili in the Cowboys debrief and I'm pondering his impact off the bench given the speed and mobility he showed last weekend.
Blair is also on just one penalty conceded this season.
Warriors are 15th in offloads, 16th in errors. That translates to minimal offloads and minimal errors.
Warriors are slowly creeping up the dummy-half-run ranks; now 11th.
Warriors are slowly sliding down the missed tackle ranks; now 6th.
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Peace and love.