Donstuie wrote:
Juddy&theKruezers wrote:
To win we need to be pro-active and not re-active and this starts with Ratts...a pro-active mindset against these knobs is a winning mindset...even Pagan got this one right on occasion with limited perssonel....it really is time Ratts gets it as well.
Well said. Ratts himself has admitted we've been reactive in the past, and even using TC as an example, all the talk is of "we need to stop their run...who do we put on this guy" etc. If these thoughts have popped into the MC's head we're a long way towards getting done again.
Let them worry about us for a !@#$%& change!
We're just discussing the basics here, so using TC as an example is a bit rough on the MC.
Ultimately there are plenty of ways we can exploit the Bombers once we have possession, and they should be highlighted, but we also need to:
A) Get the ball off them
B) Keep it off them
C) Use it as per instructions until such a time as the instructions appear useless
D) Come up with a new strategy, rinse, repeat
B, C & D have been straight forward enough for us over the last 18 months, it's A we have trouble with, especially against this mob. They position numbers better around the contest to exploit handballs, knock-ons, scrubbed kicks, the lot. We get sucked in (and the same thing used to happen vs Brisbane where we'd swarm the contest and Black would scrub it out to the runners), and leave opponents sitting in space.
You can't give such an offensively minded team such space to roam in. We need to defend smarter - not necessarily closer - because they have an edge in foot speed. As far as I'm concerned that's not worrying about what they can do, that's concentrating on the fundamentals.