It would be interesting to know the reasoning for some of the selections for this game.
Leuluai wasn't terrible last night and his defense was good to see; but the combination of
Johnson and Leuluai seemed like to halves organising a side of the field each. Whereas last week with a makeshift lineup
Johnson and Robson combined really well I thought. Instead of looking like two guys organising their own side of the field it looked like they were working together as there were some nice shifts from one side of the field to the other when the space was out wide.
Then there is fullback. When
Roger Tuivasa-Sheck went down Lolohea was the logical replacement unless they decided to persevere with him at 6. But when he was injured
Fusitua was a revelation as his replacement.
I'd love to know how much the coaching staff debated these options as the spine against the Dragons although not being what they wanted on paper worked really well. The easy option once Leuluai and Lolohea were available was to select the players in the positions they did which they probably feel is their strongest line up. We seem to feel Leuluai needs to be in the side despite not playing enough football. Did what we see from him before his injury deserve to replace Robson after his performance against the Dragons?
I thought our passing reverted to clunky inaccurate ball which demanded a lot of extra effort from the receiver to catch that ball behind your back or aimed at your head.
That micro skills issue, then saw our set moves stuffed....as each player in the link was out of time with the rest, quite often that meant that the last pass option was not there.....in which case the movement would end with someone being forced to take the tackle.
They were trying, and they tried to play set plays at speed....but if your marquee half has inconsistent micro skills (still talking ball movement here) and so are prone to passing some crooked lines, interspersed with some lazer like genius balls....then it puts even more pressure on the other half to be a precision passer.
That's just passing.
Kicking we see the same issue, and to my way of thinking it is no longer acceptable to buy budget Stand offs like Robson and TL.
Unless you are prepared to admit
Johnson is incomplete, while also being an icing on the cake game winning genius....then the Warriors will never wake up to need to actually employ a half who will need to be just as expensive ala Cronk/Foran level of Star.
The third option is they bite the bullet, flick
Johnson and purchase a functional pair of halves that can fluidly move the ball in a structured way and thereby use the entire squads strengths as a unit.
That will taste like sick to many, but I see the Warriors inconsistencies as being born out of a NZ league system that develops incomplete players with flair....they thereby need people to be their 'foils' to make up for their weaknesses. This foil thinking would need an unlimited Salary cap ala the Kiwis, to be a feasible way of balancing out a Warriors side.
The next dire area that has imbalanced the Warriors, is what I will call defensive foils for our locally developed edge players.
So where we have 'only try's they can score' outside backs.....we again are forced to look at defensive foils to compensate for incomplete skill sets. So again we are looking at salary cap blowing signings like a Whare or a Lyon (actually needed both to cover for the type we have on our right and left).
Blake Ayshford is a fluke. Another astute gamble ala Maloney, an example where the Warriors rolled the dice and got what they speculated on.
At the same time so called low risk expensive investment in the hooking position,and fb...raises questions around whether we got bang for our buck there.
Comparing Tevanga and
Fusitua to Luke and
Roger Tuivasa-Sheck....you would have to say resounding No .....we didn't win on the Recruitment roulette table in 2016.
Excuse the ran t and let me be the first to admit hindsight is 20/20 but....
The money in some of these guys is interesting. I don't know the correct figures but at a guess:
Hurrell 500k (replacement Ayshford).
Roger Tuivasa-Sheck 800k (replacements
Fusitua, Lolohea, Wells)
Vatuvei 450 k (replacements Allwood,
Fusitua, Wells, Kata).
Matulino 700k ( Replacement Sipley).
Luke 700k (Tevanga Leuluai)
Now these figures are guesses as I said which include third party agreements.
I'm sure Mt Welly will dispute those figures (good...a correction will still be significant money to support this,argument).
Throw in
Johnson who will be on as much as
Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, and Mannering 700k + Hoffman's 650.....and you have the seeds of an Ill culture, since our senior players.....for the longest time....have been our most inconsistent.... Our most needing of a 'foil' ( some hard working fkwit most likely transplanted from the Storm ) who is meant to join the Circus and somehow transform it to a Military elite culture single handed (sorry folks, Kevin Campion is a War general in a thousand).
In Summary, the reserve grade coach, and the jnrs coach, at the Warriors needs to be a big name with a solid record of man management and skills development. These are not Cap restricted expenses. Eric needs to encourage his buddies to pay the money to get the like of
Kearney and Clearly/Anderson here as under coaches (Kidwell is another)......they also need to accept that fan disenchantment no longer deamads they Roll out the Warriors players who are protected species.
Half the total cap is being wasted.
If you flicked all of our 'great team on paper' roster tomorrow, you could buy any Super massive Prop you wanted, two functional smart halves, two super centers, and use the depth players to roll out a gutsy eighty minute NRL team worth watching.
