Playmaker James Maloney exposed as weak link in Sydney Roosters armour

SAM Thaiday’s search and destroy mission against James Maloney in State of Origin last year exposed the five-eighth as the weak link.

ROOSTERS V PANTHERS

SAM Thaiday’s search and destroy mission against James Maloney in State of Origin last year exposed the Sydney Roosters five-eighth as the weak link that North Queensland must exploit in Friday’s NRL semi-final.

If the Cowboys are to keep their premiership dreams alive tonight they must find a way to break down the best defensive outfit of the past two seasons.

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Maloney is the man with the target on his head. He has the highest missed tackle rate in the team and is flanked by Boyd Cordner and Michael Jennings, who also rate highly for missed tackles compared to their teammates.

Between the three of them they average 6.4 missed tackles per game, with half of them coming from Maloney.

Roosters v Cowboys stats.

That channel is where suspended Tariq Sims would have been running his damaging lines and do not be surprised if the Cowboys direct lock Jason Taumalolo down that path in Sims’ absence.

Taumalolo has been the Cowboys leading forward this year with a team-high 78 tackle busts and could create havoc by targeting that edge of the Roosters defence.

It is a constant in most of the Roosters’ losses this year, with Maloney averaging 20.1 tackles in their nine defeats, four more than his season average.

The Roosters’ far left side has conceded 21 tries this year, ranked 10th in the NRL, while the Cowboys have scored 26 times down that channel to be fourth best in the competition.

Former Broncos skipper Gorden Tallis believes the Cowboys need to dominate the Roosters big men in the middle before they can turn their attention to punching holes through the little men.

James Maloney leaves the field injured.

“The forwards have to lay the platform,” Tallis said. “They have to play the exact same way as they did last week. That is the only way to beat the Roosters.

“To get at the little guys the defence has to be going backwards and the only way to do that is from the big forwards laying that platform.”

The most important element for the Cowboys is to starve the Roosters of possession.

Every loss this year has come when the Roosters have only had the ball 48 per cent of the time or less. They have never lost a game when enjoying an equal or greater share of possession.

The Cowboys on the other hand have only won one game from eight when they’ve had less than 50 per cent possession.

That means the Cowboys need to keep their error rate down and completions high.

North Queensland have never lost a game when they’ve completed 30 sets and last week’s 72 per cent completion rate against Brisbane is the worst ratio the Cowboys have won a game with this season.

Discipline is also key, the Cowboys have not won a penalty count in their last four trips to Sydney and the Roosters are the most penalised team in the NRL.

Cowboys coach Paul Green has kept the pressure off his team this week, by putting the focus on the judiciary inconsistency that rubbed out Sims. It was $10,000 well spent.

Roosters coach Trent Robinson has tried to adopt a similar diversion tactic, taking umbrage at a “disrespectful” front page article by the Townsville Bulletin newspaper that put skipper Anthony Minichiello’s head on a roasted chicken under a headline “Cook the Chooks’’.

“There’s been a bit of talk about disrespect in the last week,” Robinson said.

“Nothing to do with the Cowboys, but the way they’ve built the game up there, they are having a go at Mini.

“They’ve got him done up as a chook on the front page of their paper, a guy that’s just played 300 games and is about to retire.’’

If the Roosters lose tonight they join Wayne Bennett’s 2009 St George Illawarra side as just the second minor premiers since the top eight was introduced in 1999 to be tossed out of the finals with consecutive defeats.

They would also replicate the poor title defence by Melbourne last year when as reigning champs they too were bundled out of the finals without a win in two games.