Tuesday 7 April 2009

Round 4: tsaoR yadseuT ehT (The Bizarro Roundup)

That wraps up this bizarro edition of the Tuesday Roast. Hopefully normal service will resume next week, although with unpredictability in the NRL reaching new highs, anything is possible. See you next week.

But back to Matt Bowen: his game was so poor that even the usually fawning NRL media couldn’t help but criticise. Admittedly FOX’s Warren Smith is not an ex-player, so is somewhat less reticent to criticise players, but he said of Bowen “Matt Bowen, coming off a fairly serious knee injury it has to be said, they took some cartilage out, they flew it to the other side of the country, they grew it in what’s called an artificial matrix; maybe they took his confidence with them to Perth when they grew that cartilage when they put in back in his knee….” Apart from a few laughs, Smith was largely left on his own in criticising Bowen by FOX’s crew of analysts, but the Tuesday Roast heartily enjoyed seeing someone – anyone – in the media criticising anyone but the most obvious offenders or the softest targets.

The Cowbores somehow found their way to a try, but Canberra dominated the remainder of the half and led 20-6 at the break. Even though they eased off in the second half and allowed the Cowbores back into the game, they did just enough to score a well-earned 23-18 win.

Canberra’s excellent start to the game was in contrast to the Cowbores’ pathetic display. Their forward pack was dominated, Feral Thurston struggled (even muffing a simple kick for touch) while The Overrated One Matt Bowen shied away from contact, directly leading to a Canberra try.

From early on in this game, it was clear Canberra was committed to getting their first win. Their effort started with a series of stellar runs by props Shillington and the veteran Logan (just back from injury) before the likes of Campese, Tongue, Purtell and Croker converted this advantage into points. Many points in fact: 14 in the first 16 minutes.

Finally, the winless Raiders hosted the Cowbores in Canberra last night. Despite the significant difference in climate between Townsville and Canberra, the Cowbores have been known to display some surprisingly unboring play in previous encounters between these teams, but Canberra would certainly have taken a boring win in this game: they had only ever lost four in a row and two in a row at home to start the season twice in their history.

But it was an all-round bad afternoon for Manly. How bad was it? Their highlight was probably the sideline, into-the-wind conversion by Shane Rodney of a very late consolation try.

Manly did hold on for a while, but eventually Newcastle overwhelmed them. The surprise return from injury of Jarrod Mullen helped, but Newcastle hardly had a bad player. Even the much-maligned Ben Rogers was dangerous. Meanwhile, Manly had few stars. Most noticeably, Glenn Stewart continued his very slow start to the season. Does he miss the Beaver? Does he miss his brother? Whatever the reason, Manly certainly miss his ball-playing talents.

They were without Jamie Lyon and Brett Stewart – two key attacking pieces. Steve Matai was injured early on, while David Williams had a solid but not spectacular return from injury. New five-eighth Chris Bailey has been slow to adjust to his new team (this is a polite assessment of his play) and while Michael Robertson may be a good winger, he has little to no fullback skills, especially with the ball. Hence, Matt Orford was Manly’s attack: not a good situation.

However, once Newcastle received some good attacking ball, it quickly became clear their difficult first few games had not seriously affected their physical capabilities nor their confidence. They believed they were a better side than Manly and systematically beat them over the next 50 or so minutes. Their forwards neutralised Manly’s: this is a key battle in any NRL game, but more so given Manly’s lack of talent in their backline at present.

The third Sunday game saw Manly try to break their drought at Newcastle. Manly’s troubles have been well documented, but Newcastle had a difficult opening few rounds of the season, having to endure a number of injuries and games being played in trying conditions. So when Manly registered a strong opening 20 minutes, it looked to be a tough task for the under-strength and supposedly weary Knights to come back (even though they were just 6-nil down).

Next up was the Bulldogs against Cronulla. Cronulla’s cause was not helped by the withdrawal of Trent Barrett (although Dragons supporters would argue that his not playing can often lead to improved team performance). The Bulldogs dominated the first 20 minutes and almost ruined this game as part of the bizarre theme, but from here, Cronulla’s under-strength and attack-challenged team stopped the bleeding (through a combination of luck and solid defence). What appeared to be a very secure Bulldogs’ 18-point lead was incredibly cut to 6 in the second half, before the Bulldogs secured the win. The Bulldogs certainly deserved to win, but like last week, Cronulla’s determination gave them a chance to win for much longer than their ability suggested.

Still…Souths’ best hope appeared to be a Warriors’ mistake, an intercept pass perhaps or errors and penalties. In the end, the key mistake was a poorly executed cross-kick to the right, which was over-pursued by Ah Van and Kirk and returned 95 metres for a try by Talanoa. Souths were boosted by this and scored again for an unlikely win: the dominance enjoyed by the Warriors in possession and attacking field position rarely results in a losing performance.

During this time, the Warriors often found themselves attacking Souths’ line: a try here would have most likely secured victory, but the Warriors’ attack was…not quite right. Well…it was too right: too often they attacked to their right – where the new combination of Ah Van and Kirk went up against Souths’ strong defensive combination of Best and Talanoa – while their left side attackers (Ropati in particular) saw relatively little ball.

In the end, it was a very similar game to last week for Souths: a slow start and trailing their opponent well into the second half. But this week, Souths’ prospects looked somewhat grimmer. An injury to centre Shaune Corrigan meant greater use of the interchange bench, so much so that Souths’ final interchange was made with more than 15 minutes left: a very unusual occurrence.

Sunday’s action started in Auckland, where the under-strength Warriors hosted Souths. The Warriors were without a number of important players, such as Tate, Price, Vatuvei, Hohaia and Matulino. But would their best be good enough to get a win? Souths thrashed the Roosters, but lost to Parramatta and eked out a win over a weakened Newcastle: the varied form and playing strength of these teams made this a difficult game to predict.

This realisation gradually dawned on the Titans and when Bull Bailey barged over late in the half, they had a 10-nil lead. Melbourne tried hard, but never really threatened. While some of the Gold Coast’s “tactics” would have made the 1969 Tigers proud, it was nevertheless a very important win for a team often chided for lacking toughness. Melbourne looking flat and lifeless at home, Gold Coast winning away and without Prince as well as Chris Walker – of all people – not just back on the field but playing ok: what a bizarre game this was.

However, the Titans ignored the thrashings they had received in past visits to Melbourne and gave a committed display which obviously surprised the Storm. Perhaps Melbourne’s difficult start to the season (with two games in humid Queensland) took its toll on them; whatever the cause, this was not the usually dominant Storm team at Olympic Park.

Saturday’s final game saw Melbourne host the Gold Coast. The consensus view was that Melbourne’s win over the Cowbores last round was a sign that normal service was being restored; that the Storm was beginning to adjust to life without many important supporting players. Few gave the Titans any chance, especially as they were again without Scott Prince.

As Penrith failed to kill off the Tigers, increasing fatigue from Monday’s game rapidly became evident. The Tigers, led by Robbie Farah, and their momentum was such that an avalanche of points and a big win looked quite possible. However Penrith, led by Civoniceva, Pritchard and Lewis, reached down deep and pulled out some more effort: this was enough to get a penalty to retake the lead. A sin-bin really should have resulted from Hanbury’s unsubtle leg pull, but Penrith played like they had an extra player anyway and added three late tries: a very impressive effort given their obvious fatigue and the concerns about team unity and chemistry.

Penrith did struggle as their game against the Tigers progressed, but the Tigers gave Penrith a major head start: two extremely poor kick-off plays, some silly penalties and some soft defence allowed Penrith to a sizeable first-half lead. To their credit, the Tigers were not ruffled and looked threatening whenever they garnered any significant amount of possession, but they were lucky to still be within striking distance early in the second half.

The first of the Saturday matches saw Penrith host the Wests Tigers. Penrith has dominated the Tigers in recent years. However, several factors pointed to a much better chance for the Tigers this time: more size and strength in the Tigers pack, confidence of their own after their big win last round, but most importantly, Penrith was being asked by the NRL’s schedule makers to back up just five days after a physically draining win in the wet against Manly.

The Roosters may not be as bad as implied above, but they have to feel highly fortunate to play two talented teams (Canberra and Parramatta) near their worst. Consider this: both Canberra and Parramatta threatened to score a try early in their games against the Roosters but were unlucky not to; both rarely looked like scoring again for the rest of their games, despite a mountain of attacking possession (Parramatta even had more overall possession than the Roosters). Even the most one-eyed Roosters supporter would admit their defence, while solid, is not THAT good.

In fact they did and they were so disappointing that the ‘new-look’ prefix has to be questioned. This was a performance straight out of last year, when the limp-wristed Hagan was the coach. The Roosters were committed, they played to their strengths, they executed their two or three set plays well and their kicking game was excellent. But most NRL teams at anywhere near their best should be able to dispose of such a ‘threat’. Parramatta was mundane, lifeless and monotonous with the ball: the Roosters were never threatened.

The other Friday night game saw the struggling Roosters host the hot-and-cold Parramatta Eels. Parramatta appeared to have turned the corner in Round 2 when they ground out a tough win over Souths, but their soft effort against Canberra looked disturbingly 2008. Surely the new-look Eels wouldn’t post such a sub-par effort again under their new disciplinarian coach?

Even though the Dragons led by just two at half-time, the foundations of a big win were laid: Brisbane, who thrashed the large Warriors last week, could not cope with the Dragons and their dominance. Soward, Sailor, Morris and the hard-running Beau Scott feasted on Brisbane mistakes, many of which were due to their fatigue, to establish a match-winning lead. After struggling to score two tries in each of their first three games, the Dragons came up with four in this one, almost entirely due to their aggressive and intense style of play.

Hodges appeared to play the assist role again for Folau, but the try was rather harshly disallowed. In the meantime though, the Dragons scored rather easily, but most importantly, they were very definitely establishing a physical dominance.

The absence of Cooper – and the return of Brisbane’s prolific right centre Justin Hodges – was perhaps of most concern to the Dragons (as admitted to the Tuesday Roast by Dragons legend Craig Young in an exclusive interview last week). Brisbane took an early 6-nil lead as Hodges easily beat his somewhat mismatched defender (Neville Costigan) before setting up Israel Folau.

The round kicked off on Friday night when the Dragons travelled to Brisbane. This appeared to be the toughest test so far for the new-look Dragons. Despite their recent excellent record against Brisbane, they were missing several key players (Cooper, Poore and Nightingale) and had trouble disposing of the struggling Sharks last Sunday. Meanwhile, Brisbane was undefeated: their victims included two of the NRL’s more imposing teams in Melbourne and New Zealand.

Round 4 of the NRL was one of the more unpredictable rounds in recent memory, although this was not entirely unexpected. When two learned scholars of the tipping science arrive at much the same conclusion after close perusal of the rounds’ games – “It is one of those weeks where I would not be surprised to get 7, 3 or 1” and “Fhark… I could get 0 this week, or 8… who knows I give up” – one should not be surprised at the outcomes a round can deliver. With that said, only one result over the weekend was a huge shock; however, all other results had elements of the bizarre world attached to them.

Read More...