Opposition gameplan against us

[Vasco]

May work against a roosters side with nine players out. Not when we are at full strength. There won't be embarrassing breaks through the middle like we have seen recently.

Having said that, Joey is a worry. Not having Cronk next to him makes a big difference.

Having Aubo next to him didn't seem to help either.

[Fairfax]

Manu has got to worry about Hutch and Flanno inside him this week. Last week we lost a half in the game. He's had a different winger outside him... the side looks out of sorts defensively because our structure has not been stable... every week it is a different side since our bad run of injuries. Stability will help.

[GrubBER]

Hey lads, awesome win tonight by our boys! So many positives to take out of it however I just wanted to point out a potential negative. Over the last few weeks it has become apparent how opposition teams gameplan against us, through shifting the ball side to side in the early tackles and get our line moving side to side. Feels like every game I am watching I see teams moving us around early and trying to pounce on our defence out wide, which leads to mini breaks and what not. Obviously this is a credit to our middles and show that opposition teams feel like they won't be able to take us down the middle and roll our pack so they feel their best opportunity against us is to spread the ball. Obviously we trust in Robbo to combat this game plan as he is the best defensive coach in the NRL...

Thats because our outside backs & whole backrow is out injured so other coaches will try expose this by testing our shifting defense

[Arties Pie]

We really miss Cordners and Angus's defensive work, Tupouniua in attack is a weapon but defensively is a liability his reads are laughable at times.

[zac]

we'll be looking to tighten up our defence from here on in. would be good to have the best defensive record in the comp over the next 5 games. would be good to keep the opps to 0 in a few halves.

[ROC181]

Manu is still young in comparison to JMoz and he also has Flanno next to him who is still learning and inside him it's whoever is available and on Saturday it was Butcher...Lam wasn't any better against the Storm either and Joey hasn't got the confidence he had when a Cronk was next to him. It's very unsettled at the moment but when Angus comes back, hopefully he can settle things down the right side.

But on how the opposition is trying to beat us, well if the opposition is good, like a Storm or raiders, they tried to bash us through the middle and have done so successfully. This is probably why we have copped so many injuries especially against the storm when overall they took out 8 players in 2 games. I don't think we can match the storm on brutal and somehow questionable tactics in defence. Our forward pack aren't as big as theirs. They are also quick of the line in defence, which most teams can't keep that up for 80 mins, the Storm and raiders can. Let's hope Sonny's skills can bring some nice offloads to cross over for more tries like that magic one to Maloney in the GF!