NRL 2026 Four Point Focus: How The Roosters Exploit Kick Pressure From Marker

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The Four Point Focus breaks down a try from every round of the 2025 NRL season, highlighting the context, shape, trigger and the lessons learned. It’s viewed with an eye on 2026 as we look for trends, breakout players and hints of what might be to come next season.

This is an off-season series for Premium subscribers who choose to support my work over the break.

Point 1 - The Context

As is so often the case when the NRL hastily makes changes to rules and interpretations, players and coaches are quick to find the loophole. The 2026 season saw some strange interpretations of players being tackled in the air.

Combine that with what appears to be a trend in how the Sydney Roosters preview the opposition, and we get Billy Smith leaping over the top of Reece Walsh to score a beauty in Round 6³ .

Point 2 - The Shape

As was the case in Round 1 of this off-season series, we’re not using the traditional ‘shape’ term here. Rather, highlighting the formation on both sides of the ball leading to points.

The try in question in Round 6 comes from a play-the-ball outside the tap line. It’s not an ideal place to end a set for a kicker. It leaves the attacking team with only one real option and gives the defensive side a clear hint at who will be kicking. In theory, it makes it easier for the kick pressure to get off to the kicker.

However, as we saw in this case, when that kick pressure is a little bit too eager, it makes things easy for the kick chase.

The pressure from marker is often a tendency from a particular player or within a team’s kick pressure plan. It must be something the Roosters look for in how they preview teams as they game-planned for it in Week 1 of the 2019 NRL Finals against James Roberts and the South Sydney Rabbitohs¹ .

Roberts backs his speed to fly out from marker, but with Luke Keary and James Tedesco in his pocket, Cooper Cronk turned it inside for Mitch Aubusson to score.

Every team has different approaches to their kick pressure. While getting to the kicker from marker is often the shortest path to pressure, it comes at a cost.

Point 3 - The Trigger

There are rules in the game to stop players from escorting others off the ball, but it’s common practice to at least make things more difficult; provide some sort of roadblock for the kick chase to work around. The NRL wouldn’t have changed the rules around field goals if a static player in the line didn’t offer some sort of advantage.

In this case, Kotoni Staggs flying out from marker provides Billy Smith with a free passage down the field to chase the kick as Adam Reynolds (from second marker) is left to block two Roosters players on his own.

Smith doesn’t have to navigate his way around a player on his way to the ball. Instead, he can keep his eyes up and time his run to perfection. The option to turn the ball in and run is on offer here, too.

Like Roberts did in the earlier example when the Roosters ran the ball, the trigger comes from that overzealous marker. Just as I suspect the Roosters planned it in 2019, you can see Smith primed and ready to chase early.

Point 4 - The Lesson

I’ve covered the importance of a kick chase before but also touched on the disruptors.

“The Storm disrupt a kick chase better than any team. Keep an eye on how difficult they make things for opposing players to get up the field in a line this week and beyond.”

The kick is different to what we saw with Smith, but the message around disrupting the path for the chaser remains. You can see how Cameron Munster, albeit slightly dodgy, impacts the chase of Liam Martin in this one.

Smith didn’t have such a disruption to deal with. Perhaps the half-second it would take to step around a defender would have been the difference between catching on the run, or pulling up short to tackle Reece Walsh as he hit the ground.

Given the Roosters are regulars in this departement² , I’ll be trying to monitor the teams that pressure kickers as Staggs and Roberts did in these tries, and looking out for the game plan when facing the Roosters throughout the 2026 NRL season.

1  I wish I could remember simple things in life like I can relatively meaningless tries from six years ago…

2  I’m sure I could find others with the time. They’ve been shortside wizards for years and this is just another feature of their attack at its best.

3  I try to embed the full highlights for context, but the NRL has blocked everything to do with sharing the game we love in any way that doesn’t strictly benefit the broadcasters.