Rugby League Coaching Manuals

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By Gary Roberts RLCM - It is said to be a game of two halves and, yes, it was, but unfortunately for Wests Tigers, they lost the first half quite miserably. It is hard to imagine how a top NRL team could play so terribly in that first 40 minutes at Skilled Park on the Gold Coast before 26,103 fans, many of them Wests Tigers' supporters.
 

They really never recovered from this error two minutes into the game until the second half came around. Coach Sheens intimated that he gave them a good rousing at the halftime break.

Out of the first 15 Sets of the game, the West Tigers had the ball five times in Sets 2, 4, 5, 7 and 15, but they Knocked the Ball On in four of those Sets giving easy ball and field position to the Titans.

During this period, the Titans scored 12 points and they had the ball for 10 Sets, seven of them consecutive sets from Set 8 to Set 14.

Wests Tigers only had the ball on another 11 occasions during this first half. They gave away one penalty whilst in possession and two when not in possession and they did not gain a back to back Set.

They constantly compounded their problem by being unable to get the ball to a positive position on the field to set up a pressure kick to cause problems for the Titans. Thus the Titans were able to play the majority or have their 5th tackle options in the first 40 minutes in the Wests Tigers' half of the field.

The score only being 13 - Nil at halftime is a credit to the Wests Tigers' defence because with so much field position and possession it would be expected for the Titans to be further in front at the halftime mark.
Wests Tigers got their game together in the second stanza but were unable peg back the lead they gave away in the first 40 minutes.

Of the first half performance, Tim Sheens said, "We do not want to have a first half like that again. We did everything wrong and it burnt up a lot of energy.

"It [the first half] was a frustrating performance; we did not get into our rhythm.

"We had no ball and a poor completion rate. What could go wrong did go wrong."

Robbie Farah concurred, "We could not have played any worse. We dropped ball and gave the Titans ‘piggybacks' out of their own half with penalties."