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Message: [QUOTE="BroncsFan, post: 3247664, member: 9052"] On the knights I just get the feeling that O'Brien is getting a little Seiboldy. He seems set on wanting to have a very structured attack, but every move he makes in someway stifles what Ponga can do with the ball. A couple years back he moved Ponga to 6 and had him on the left. Pearce running the middle and whoever it was at the time playing fullback. Ponga's a left footer and works well with whoever is put outside him so why not... except it plants him on one side of the field and allows the defence to load up on him. So no questions for the defence to make and no way for Ponga to exploit a weak defence on the other side of the field. He also has to sit there and wait for Pearce to give him the ball. Then he dumped that move and let Ponga do what he wanted back at fullback, which was successful... until he had another genius idea to keep Ponga at fullback but limit him to the right side of the field with Mann on the left at 6 and Pearce controlling the middle. It made absolutely no sense other than "Pearce defends on the right and I need a 6 on the left so Ponga can take the right". I just don't understand why he wants to limit Ponga to one side of the field... Ponga is like Turbo in that he is potent on either side of the field but he needs to be given the ball and the freedom to pop up wherever... as a coach you should want him everywhere!! The only team that I've seen that really plays as a complete spine completely fluid across the field is souths. Reynolds runs the middle of the field and Cody pops up either side as second receiver with Latrell also able to chime in (although they seem to have shifted to Latrell being more of a focal point this year). They also then have Cook to take advantage of any quick ptb's. It moves away from the garbage split halves and allows the 6 to be a serious second receiving threat... and then adds the fullback (who is basically the modern five eight). Cody is the piece that truly makes that spine though. I'm surprised that more teams haven't tried to copy it... and it was why I was very excited to see Milf pop up on the opposite side of the field in Round 1, because it felt like we might try and use Milf in a way that would seriously compliment what he can do (basically allow him to be a fullback in attacking zones)... but Kevvie appears to have shelved that and told the players to play zero risk conservative football, which is fair enough when players drop the ball cold on simple passes. But getting back to the knights, clearly their biggest issue is finding a 6 that complements the spine... and potentially O'Brien will have to start thinking about finding a 7 as they only extended Pearce for 12 months and he was somewhat on the outer before signing that deal. I think he looks a little lost at the moment and I don't suspect he's a coach that can push a team into a GF at this stage. His first year was all about defence and the knights followed it and played for him, but I think he's dropped that standard somewhat and has decided to focus on getting an attacking structure that he likes. [/QUOTE]

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