NRL great PAUL GALLEN will appear on Nine’s 100% FOOTY every Monday night of the NRL season, debating rugby league’s hottest topics alongside Phil Gould and James Bracey. Tune in tonight at 10:30pm (AEDT) following a bumper round five!
Canberra’s performance against Penrith on Friday night is something I’ve never seen from a Ricky Stuart-coached side.
I said on the weekend on The Continuous Call Team on 2GB that the Raiders were soft in the second half, and they were. They were very ordinary.
But Ricky handled it really well. You saw his comments after the game where he talked about the embarrassment he felt, and apologised profusely to everyone for their performance.
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Sticky has that reputation for being a real hard arse, but that’s simply not true. He loves his players, and he always does the right thing by them. He’s not going to spend all week flogging the Raiders because of what happened on the weekend, he’s smarter than that.
He hasn’t survived for 20-odd years as a coach by doing stuff like that. If he did I don’t know too many players who would cop it. I know there’s a perception about Ricky, but he’ll address it calmly and professionally and he’ll have them ready to go against Brisbane on Saturday night.
You could see after the match that he was hurting, but the way he addressed it was really good. He wasn’t cranky in the press conference, he was controlled and he knew what he was saying.
What we saw was so out of character for any team that he coaches.
It was especially noticeable from the kick offs, there were breaks in the first sets after a restart, and Penrith forwards making big metres in that first set.
It used to be the goal to get back to the 20 metre line from a kick off, as a front rower you’d done a good job if you got that far. But now they kick the ball so high and long a lot of the time you’re lucky to get to the 10.
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On the weekend Penrith were making it to the 20 with ease. It was just really strange to see. It wasn’t good at all.
I’ve said before that I think Penrith have come back to the field a bit, but they were all over Canberra. Canberra’s completion rate was under 70 per cent, and they didn’t have much ball anyway because of the amount of tries Penrith scored in the second half. It just snowballed from there. Canberra made errors, and defensively they just couldn’t stop the roll-on from Penrith.
Penrith just kept storming through the middle. Canberra are a pretty tough side, they’ve got some pretty tough blokes in the middle, guys like Joseph Tapine and Josh Papali’i, Hudson Young is not far off being a rep player I think, but they were totally outplayed.
I don’t know what options Ricky has to turn it around from here. Obviously Jack Wighton still has another match to run on his suspension, he’ll make a difference, he’s a leader of that side, especially in defence, but I don’t know of any magical solution.
They play Brisbane next week up at Suncorp, so it doesn’t get any easier.
I know it’s a cliche, but it doesn’t matter who you play, they’re all hard games. Canberra could turn it around next week, just like the Dragons did this week.
If the Broncos think they’re going to have an easy game they’ll find themselves getting their pants pulled down. Ricky will have Canberra primed for this one, there’s no doubt about it.
Improvement needed at Manly
The other match that really interested me was the 32-all draw between Manly and Newcastle.
Manly have scored plenty of points this year but they’ve also conceded plenty, and that’s a concern. Even when they beat Parramatta it was 34-30.
When it comes to the end of the season, I reckon we’ll see the best defensive sides at the top of the ladder, and Manly will need to address this urgently.
They can certainly attack, but that’s only half the job.
They’re in the top four at the moment, but I think that flatters them slightly. I’ve got them making the eight at the end of the season, but I think the top four might be a stretch.
They’ll lose some key players around State of Origin time, so they might struggle through that period.
Manly plays Penrith and Melbourne the next two weeks, so things might be a bit clearer after that.
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