NRL 2022: The Tackle Round 1 —Biggest issue facing every NRL team
Cronulla are in for a big season, but their finals cause would be enhanced if Nicho Hynes ran the ball a lot more. Paul Crawley tackles the biggest issue facing every NRL team.
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BRONCOS
Handing Kevvie Walters a contract extension before the season kicks off at least gives the coach and the club clarity on the direction they’re heading. Now the trick will be getting some wins to make sure it doesn’t blow up in their face.
And while we are still to see what difference Adam Reynolds will make when he finally takes the field, what we learned from trial form is that without the veteran playmaker you still wouldn’t back the Broncos to play finals footy this year.
So Reynolds’ fitness will be paramount. The more time he spends on the field obviously the better the team will go. The chief concern is the veteran halfback’s ageing body coupled with South Sydney’s decision to only offer their beloved former skipper a one-year deal.
It was always going to be a gamble signing a player who turns 32 this year to a monster three-year deal. Time will tell if it is the Rabbitohs or the Broncos who got this decision right.
RAIDERS
It’s critical for Ricky Stuart that Josh Hodgson and Jack Wighton are on the same page, especially now Jamal Fogarty is sidelined for up to four months (knee). It wasn’t that the players were at war last year but there was just so much angst in the wake of the George Williams fallout that the body language off the field was reflected on it.
Now it looks as though young Brad Schneider will get first crack at filling Fogarty’s void and from what we’ve seen so far the young playmaker looks a promising talent, with a good kicking game and solid defence.
But it will be up to Wighton and particularly Hodgson to take charge. When Hodgson is at his best he is still up with the game’s elite dummy halves. The worry is when he tries too hard it can leave those around him confused, especially Wighton.
BULLDOGS
Everyone knows the Bulldogs need to dramatically improve their discipline, that goes without saying.
And while the other focus all pre-season has been on who will end up as Matt Burton’s halves partner, I think the bigger issue will be if Matt Dufty has a good season.
What we know about the halves debate is that regardless of who partners Burton it is not going to immediately fix the Bulldogs’ problems.
But the more Dufty gets his hands on the ball the better chance the Bulldogs will at least have of scoring more points. Everyone knows Dufty can be a rocks and diamonds type player, and it’s almost always his defence that lets him down. What can’t be disputed is that when he is on, he is a match winner.
SHARKS
How could you not be impressed with what you saw from the Sharks in their final trial against Canterbury?
You could just see a change of mentality and it had the fingerprints of both Craig Fizgibbon and Dale Finucane all over it.
And while Nicho Hynes was also impressive, I agreed with Hynes’ post-match self-assessment that he needs to run the ball more. I just worry Hynes is a natural fullback or a running five-eighth, and he may get bogged down attempting to be the on field conductor.
TITANS
Justin Holbrook was a couple of bad decisions away from getting this team into week two of the finals last year, and I have no doubt the Titans can improve with the development of Jayden Campbell and Toby Sexton.
What we don’t know yet is how moving AJ Brimson into the halves permanently is going to impact him. I think Brimson will be a sensation because of his speed, it just might take some time to settle in. Of course, everyone wants to see the Titans get more bang for their buck out of David Fifita, but it’s the job of the coach and the playmakers to put in place a plan to make that happen.
SEA EAGLES
After their disastrous start last year (where they lost their opening four games while conceding 156 points to 34), Des Hasler has obviously put a huge focus on starting fast by making sure his top players got plenty of trial time.
Now we get to see how they aim up against the reigning premiers in round one.
Last year the Sea Eagles went the entire season without beating any of the teams that ultimately finished in the top four. And as phenomenal as Tom Trbojevic was, the slur they couldn’t shake was that when you close Turbo down, it essentially puts the entire team to bed. Only his teammates — starting with Daly Cherry-Evans — can change that theory.
STORM
It will be interesting to watch how Cameron Munster grows from everything that went on in his world last year. Craig Bellamy said recently Munster’s stint in rehab was “the best thing that ever happened to him”.
But Bellamy would have to be still filthy at the way the Storm butchered their chances in that preliminary final loss to Penrith. I know they were incredibly brave after losing Brandon Smith and Christian Welch early, but I still can’t remember a Melbourne team (certainly not in more than a decade) shooting themselves in the foot as badly with Munster and Harry Grant leading the charge.
We won’t know how much the Storm have grown as a team until it gets to the pointy end of the season and it all goes on the line again. Though the early signs with Munster are promising.
KNIGHTS
Adam O’Brien has a tough pack and good outside backs with Dane Gagai potentially one of the buys of the year. But even though Jake Clifford and Adam Clune looked pretty good in the trials, the Knights’ spine is still among the NRL’s most inexperienced. For that reason Kalyn Ponga just has to take ownership.
No one questions Ponga is not up with the game’s best fullbacks. But in the final trial against the Storm he finished (at about the three-quarter mark) with two runs for 21m, two tackles and one missed tackle. Trial or no trial, I can’t imagine James Tedesco or Tom Trbojevic having that lack of input.
WARRIORS
We didn’t see Shaun Johnson in the trials but the Warriors’ star recruit better be ready to hit the ground running. With Roger Tuivasa-Sheck gone, Johnson is going to be under significant pressure to deliver in what is a team with outstanding potential but really lacking that genuine playmaker to guide them around the park.
That organising style has never been Johnson’s greatest strength.
Johnson has also had some serious injuries in recent seasons, playing 10 matches last year and 16 in 2020.
COWBOYS
When you have a middle forward who chews up $1 million of the salary cap and he has a season like Jason Taumalolo did last year, well, it doesn’t come as any great surprise the Cowboys are up among the favourites for the wooden spoon.
If they are going to shock us then they need their highest paid player to get back to playing the type of footy we all know Taumalolo is capable of.
EELS
How could you not like what you saw from the Eels in their thumping trial win over the Panthers? Throw in the fact that they were desperately unlucky not to win that week two final last year against the eventual premiers (with Reed Mahoney injured) and this has the potential to be a drought-breaking year on the horizon.
But the biggest issue is going to be whether they can sustain it for an entire season, especially when there is going to be so much hype and expectation for obvious reasons.
At least they appear to have a team more than capable of determining its own destiny.
PANTHERS
Deserving competition favourites but the biggest thing going against them is history. Before the Roosters in 2018-19, the last team to win back-to-back premierships was the Broncos in the 1990s.
And the Panthers have already discovered that it is extremely difficult to keep a grand final squad together while sticking to a salary cap. Losing Kurt Capewell, Matt Burton, Paul Momirovski and Tyrone May might not seem like the end of the world, but it certainly doesn’t make them a stronger squad. At least not on paper.
RABBITOHS
Jason Demetriou looks to be getting sick and tired of the storyline surrounding young Lachlan Ilias taking over from Adam Reynolds. But Demetriou would do well not to take it to heart because this will be ongoing all season until Souths either go a step further than they did last year, or they don’t. Because it was the club that made the choice to let Reynolds go. Now they have to live with it.
DRAGONS
Anthony Griffin has put together a strong forward pack with good depth and experience. But the big question hanging over the Dragons will be how their promising young backs handle the rigours of a full NRL season once they get through the hype that goes with the early stages of any NRL year.
No doubt these youngsters have outstanding talent but we won’t really know where the Dragons are at until we get through the grind of the Origin period. Traditionally, that’s when the more experienced teams lift heading for the finals, and sometimes the young blokes have had enough.
ROOSTERS
Just about everyone has them up with the competition favourites going on how they hung in last year when so much went against them. But what we don’t know about the Roosters is how Luke Keary will return from his long lay off, and if James Tedesco’s stem cell surgery has any lasting effects.
For all their star power, the fact is last year showed you can’t win the comp unless your best players are fit and firing.
TIGERS
There have been a few changes to the squad and Jackson Hastings showed promising signs in the final trial.
But attitude still needs to be the biggest change at the Tigers this year because last year Michael Maguire’s team leaked almost 30 points a game on average (714 in total), topping it off with an embarrassing 38-0 spanking by the Bulldogs in the final round.
To put that in perspective the Cowboys had the competition’s worst defence (conceding 748) while the Panthers had the best (286), and the Titans the worst of the top eight teams (583).
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