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Message: [QUOTE="BroncsFan, post: 3368240, member: 9052"] I get the sense he may be trying to focus as much as possible on his defence. His defence this year has definitely changed... he's still not perfect but ever since the first half of the titans trial I've noticed a distinct push to be up and in from our edges and getting into the five eight and fullback on the sweep plays. I think the team as a whole have put attack on the back burner for the time being and are focussing on defence, completion rates and grinding out games. Our completions were horrendous in the first half of the dogs game and down around 69% completion, but by the end of the game we were up around 79%... so we must've only made 1-2 errors in the second half, which is a pretty phenomenal turnaround. Eventually the defence and grinding will become second nature and the players won't have to dedicate so much of their attention to it during the game, which will open up their attacking play. At this stage I don't really have any concerns with Staggs ... sure it would be nice if he finished off some of those tries (and I was furious on Sunday when he bombed the Reynolds tunnel ball try)... but on the weekend he might've had 3 try savers that I can think of off the top of my head: 1) Burton hold up over the try line when he looked in for all money, 2) Tackling Nadan from behind about 15m from the try line when he had clear air in front of him and only cover coming across to stop him (might've also had JAC outside him in some space) 3) Shooting out of the line and forcing an error from Burton... Burton had at least a 3v1 outside him and 40m of field to work the overlap if the ball gets out, but you can see the desperation that Staggs puts in to get up in his face to force the error and save a certain try that could've levelled the scores Dogs were going left all day and Staggs was constantly having to make defensive decisions on when to come up on Burton or Dufty to shut it down... that constant thinking and decision making, as well as the effort required to actually make the tackles can fatigue you mentally so when it does come time with the ball in hand Staggs is probably just taking a breather knowing that another defensive effort is coming up soon. He'll get there eventually and if his defence can start to get up near his attack, then he will be a real weapon for us moving forward. [/QUOTE]

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