Five Metre Gap: Round 9 Wrap
Like the way of the five metre gap in defence, looking at the points you may have missed from round nine of the NRL which resumed after the representative break. This edition coming to you from NZ!
The decision to award Shaun Johnson the Golden Boot for 2014 may have been made in December last year but the affirmation to any non-believers must surely have been altered in Brisbane then Sydney over the past fortnight as the Auckland half back steered the Kiwis to a test win and the Warriors to their fourth win of the 2015 season. Significantly Johnson’s rookie teammate Solomone Kata went to school on an error which cost his side a try to score a crucial four-pointer late in the contest. Kata dotted down from a clever Johnson chip to the left wing to cross after he had misjudged his dive not long before when Cronulla’s Jackson Bird did enough to see Kata bounce the ball. Using his angle better on this occasion Kata scored the Warriors’ penultimate try before it was usurped by Andrew Fifita of the Sharks who barged over to score. The remarkable ending was capped when Johnson scythed past the home defenders to score. Two weeks ago Johnson went lateral for no reward late in a game, it has been a hugely improved fortnight in the number seven’s career.
Eels forward Anthony Watmough hasn’t been backward in coming forward about where his side needs to improve and they fell 28-10 to Melbourne on the weekend for their sixth defeat of the season. The former Manly forward, who got the ‘stat assault’ in the lead-up to the game against Melbourne, with several media outlets noting how ineffective Watmough has been with his new side and he wasn’t quite able to come out and quell the crictics at Pirtek Stadium. The veteran forward missed four tackles, as he did in round eight, and ran for only 52 metres for his six runs. Only the now-dumped Chris Sandow has missed more tackles in each of the past two rounds for the Eels. Could some of Watmough’s performance be a factor of just getting used to new teammates? Perhaps. But by this point in the season the 31 year-old needs to be delivering to a higher standard in both defence and attack.
With two big suspensions from the weekend let’s take a look at the impact of the loss of both Konrad Hurrell and Tyrone Peachey for the Warriors and Panthers respectively in coming weeks. After collecting Anthony Tupou, Hurrell will miss three weeks for the New Zealand-based club. In his return to first grade in round nine Hurrell broke two tackles but ran for 107 metres from his 12 runs. However the 23 year-old was even more prolific in round seven when he scored a try as he ran for 195 metres in 12 runs. Key utility player Peachey’s importance was typified after the former Shark score for Penrith in round eight to see off Cronulla. Now banned for the next two games he broke three tackles in the game against Shane Flanagan’s side and he busted two this weekend. Both players have accounted for several errors in recent weeks, hence the reason Hurrell was dumped in round eight, but their dynamism in attack will be tough to substitute.
Often we target the fallout from errors in Five Metre Gap with tries often the result for opposition teams however it was a Roosters mistake, the first one in the game for the home side when they beat the Tigers, which helped them on their way to a 32-4 triumph. After 24 minutes when the home side conceded possession they went on a three-try run in a seven-minute period from the 25th minute to all but seal the game (shout out to Boyd Cordner owners in fantasy). As a side which has often conceded the most penalties in their matches it probably isn’t the first occasion the Rooster have used their own error to sharpen focus during a game.
Staying at Allianz Stadium and if you will indulge me I digress for our normal style for the last tackle this weekend. Five Metre Gap is coming to you this week from a laptop somewhere on New Zealand’s North Island and it was interesting to consume some rugby league via a different TV platform this weekend. On Saturday night I caught the Roosters Tigers match on Te Reo TV (a Maori broadcasting network.) The play by play and special comments are all in Maori dialect with the occasional interspersed ‘refs mic’ coming in to the broadcast. The biggest thing that struck me was how differently names of some Maori and Pacific Island players were made, e.g. Issac Lui, (lower emphasis at the end ‘lee-oo’ but not pronounced ‘Loo-ee’) and Martin Taupau (Tow-pow, ‘tow’ pronounced as in the tow in the word ‘towel’). I’m not expecting all broadcasters to take full Pasifika and Maori language courses but more research needs to be done as players make their way in a club pathway. Between team managers, player managers and media information there is no excuse for getting it wrong. I concede the pronunciation of the Mata’utia brothers has caused confusion but the recently presented varied pronunciations seem to be the expectations that prove the rule.
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Hamish Neal
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