Round 9 Review: Breaking Down The Hammer Try, Knights Kick Return & Raiders Chaos

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Magic Round is a win for everybody.

It’s one of the best weekends you can ever experience live as a footy fan, and for those stuck at home, we’re the beneficiaries of a better production than usual. The extra angles available make breaking down plays a lot easier this week.

What's to come this week:

• Big Takeaway From the Week: That Hammer Try

• Quick Play-the-Balls

  • State of Origin

  • Painfully Predictable

  • Knights Returning

• Setting Up For A Shot: Bulldogs Wrapping

• Raiders Putting Themselves In Position

Big Takeaway From the Week: That Hammer Try

Tackle one can make or break a set of six. First up here, we’re breaking down what makes for the biggest talking point of the week.

While it’s not part of a win, I wanted to dive into Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow’s try against the Sydney Roosters on Saturday night.

The try itself is a banger and will feature on highlight reels for weeks to come. However, it’s in the setup from a scrum start where we can nerd out and get an idea of how they’ve drawn things up during the week.

It starts with a scrum on the tram line - not overly common for this field position. It’s there for a reason, though. Isaiya Katoa drops one under before Tom Gilbert takes a carry and makes a line straight for Naufahu White and Siua Wong.

The Dolphins are fanned out to the right side and look ready to shift the ball. Tabuai-Fidow is in a typical position behind the ruck that looks like he will take the ball from Katoa out the back of a lead. However, as Sean O’Sullivan jumps out from dummy half, Katoa drops under and Tabuai-Fidow sweeps into the space behind the ruck and into the backfield.

The reverse angle provides more detail on the picture the defence is seeing and how the Dolphins moved the line to create a mismatch.

The Dolphins put four down the shortside, which the Roosters will always match for numbers from there with six on the longside. With leads on either side of the C defender and Katoa starting wide, the Dolphins create space back through the ruck on the switch despite the markers splitting.

The A defender, when seeing O’Sullivan jump from dummy half, knows he’s trying to get across him. That puts pressure on the first marker to close the space back inside.

You can see when O’Sullivan drops Katoa back under that the two markers and A on the shortside are all turned in following the ball.

With Katoa able to get across the first marker and into the second, the Dolphins have created their mismatch.

Engaging Wong earlier forced Spencer Leniu to fill up down the shortside, and when he’s faced with Kodi Nikorima and already off-balance, it’s a simple run and pass to Tabuai-Fidow in space.

Lovely, lovely footy.

It’s clever, well-constructed and puts the Dolphins’ best players in their most dangerous positions.

Now we look to see how the opposition defence game plans for the action, and what the Dolphins now do to counter it.

Quick Play-the-Balls

We’re generating momentum through the middle of the article with a couple of quick carries.

State of Origin

Again with the nice camera angle, I wanted to highlight Tarryn Aiken’s involvement here² .

We’ve seen a lot of players used size, strength and speed to dominate the women’s game physically in recent years, but Aiken is among the highest IQ players in the game right now. She’s not only quick with the ability to pass at speed, but she knows who to get at in the line and when.

This is a prime example of demanding early ball to skip outside the four-in defender to engage three and pass her centre through the gap.

Painfully Predictable

It pains me to do this two weeks in a row, but this is the state we’re in with the gross over-influence of officials. Going from a record 18 sin bins last week to six this week perfectly captures the reactive nature of the decision makers. As always, it’s painfully predictable, too.

“We won’t see half as many sin bins in Round 9, particularly with State of Origin around the corner.” - Round 8 Review

Who knows what will happen this week after the Ronaldo Mulitalo and Bailey Simonsson shocker¹ on Friday night?

The over-explanation of decisions from the Bunker has been creeping in since last year.

The decision to call Simmonson’s contest for the ball a tackle in the air is the sort that will inspire change. Still, it’s frustrating that, like last week, these issues are obvious before they become headlines.

That’s enough ref chat from me for a while…

Knights Returning

The Newcastle Knights finally found something with the ball in Round 9.

Sure, they faced a South Sydney Rabbitohs side decimated by injuries, but they scored repatable tries they can take into the rest of the NRL season.

This one isn’t only repatable, it’s something the Knights have had in their bag for a while.

Where a lot of centres will track back behind the ball and look to open up the field on the second carry through the middle, Bradman Bests tracks the sideline. If the kick chase isn’t up to it, he’s ready to pounce.

They pulled off a similar action against the Wests Tigers in Round 10 last year, too.

We can’t call Round 9 an end to Newcastle’s issues with the ball just yet. However, another strong showing against the Gold Coast Titans side struggling to defend could act as a turning point to their season.

Setting Up For A Shot: Bulldogs Wrapping

Teams play to points with the following tackle in mind. Here, I’m touching on something to watch next week as we try to keep ahead of things happening on the field.

We rarely go a week without looking too deeply into scrums. This Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs attacking scrum didn’t even come off, but it’s worth keeping an eye on in the weeks to come.

The Bulldogs spread three down the left and two on the right with Connor Tracey floating around the back of the scrum. Teams defend these Tracey roles differently. The Titans chose not to follow him and instead presented a four-two split.

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