Jake Clifford

Firstly I'm not complaining about him at this stage of his career...but I have seen some worrying signs about Jake's defensive capability that I reckon need some major improvements over the rest of this year and through the pre-season to get him up to NRL standard.

Over the last several games the stats bear out what I've been seeing/paying attention to, noting he is an 80 minute player:

Game Tackles made Tackles Missed/ineffective
Broncos-----------14---------------------3
Raiders------------23---------------------7
Roosters----------23---------------------6
Storm-------------13---------------------5


My concern is that, he is actually quite a decent sized half back at 184cm and 95 kgs but he seems to have no real effective technique in defence and either misses or is very ineffective, falling off tackles quite easily or allowing easy offloads when he does get a hand on players.

Maybe his junior years hid some of this lack of technique because of his physical size and his attacking ability but he seems to get continually found out several times a game and really needs this to be worked on to improve his overall value to the team and fix this deficit going forward.
 
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His defence stats from the Cowboys looked bad before we signed him, but I've thought he makes the important ones for us so far, so maybe it isn't that big a problem.
It would be nice if he spends the off season doing that wrestling class that Tex Hoy and a few others did last year.
 
Billy said:
His defence stats from the Cowboys looked bad before we signed him, but I've thought he makes the important ones for us so far, so maybe it isn't that big a problem.
It would be nice if he spends the off season doing that wrestling class that Tex Hoy and a few others did last year.
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Takedowns are what he needs. The wrestle is coming out of the game. Will depend on if these rules are here to stay or not. A lot of players can hit but it's the stick we need to work on as a group.
 
Joel said:
Not for the good teams, they wrestle pretty much as much as they want it seems.
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Yeah the storm get away with pretty much anything. I'm talking about grapple strength is what our whole side needs to work on. Try keeping them upright for as long as possible and then take them to ground just before the held call. Hopefully...........
 
Missed tackles is probably the single mos misleading stat in rugby league. Cam Munster averages more misses than Jake per game, averages like the fourth most per game of all the halves in the comp, and I don’t think anyone would seriously suggest he’s not a really good defender.
 
HarVeeGee13 said:
Missed tackles is probably the single mos misleading stat in rugby league. Cam Munster averages more misses than Jake per game, averages like the fourth most per game of all the halves in the comp, and I don’t think anyone would seriously suggest he’s not a really good defender.
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Most of Munsters missed tackles are from the kick chase but Melbourne more often than not have other players there to drop the player shortly after, something we don't do that well
 
Hititup said:
Most of Munsters missed tackles are from the kick chase but Melbourne more often than not have other players there to drop the player shortly after, something we don't do that well
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I think you’ll find that’s what a lot of Jake’s misses are too…
 
It seems to me that most of Cliffords missed tackles are on the Kick chase and if he misses he usually stops them long enough for others to make the tackle ...
Stats can be so miss leading ...Remember Uate one game his stats said no missed tackles but 3 try's were scored down his side trouble was he was so far out of position he couldn't even attempt to tackle the try scorers hence no missed tackle but he let 3 try's in ...Stats can lie big time .
Clifford doesn't miss many when he runs up out of the line to smash the opp half back .
 
Yeah if you run up, knock a guy sideways, and then someone else completes the tackle, that’s a “missed tackle”.

If you let your man stroll right past you without putting a hand on him, that’s not a “missed tackle”.

Definitely a stat you need context for. Plenty of poor defenders have a bad tackle efficiency stat, but plenty of good ones as well. Victor Radley routinely has one of the worst numbers for middle forwards, but who would say he’s a bad defender?
 
Kurt Gidley is the guy I always think about with "missed tackles". He'd literally run past 2 team mates and dive to get a hand on a guy making a line break, and the two guys watching would get nothing and Kurt would get a missed tackle.

But back to Clifford, he doesn't look like a keen defender. He does OK, but could do better. Pearce and Crossland both go a lot harder in defence.
 
Billy said:
But back to Clifford, he doesn't look like a keen defender. He does OK, but could do better. Pearce and Crossland both go a lot harder in defence.
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The reason I flagged this was because I have been intentionally monitoring this over the past several games and the point Billy has flagged is what I see in the missed tackles - it's not about effort plays where he only gets a hand on somebody in a kick chase situation, it is an element of poor technique and of not committing and putting his (relatively big) body on the line in tackles that he could and should make once he gets to the ball carrier.

Anyway, keep an eye out over the next few rounds and judge for yourself...and like I said, I'm not trying to hammer him over it but it is an area he can definitely improve on
 
It's just good to have a player of his style. It feels like forever now we've been looking for someone like him to take pressure off Pearce. Cycled through a million makeshift ball runners with little success. Even back in the day we had troubles finding a good partner for Mullen.
 
I like Clifford, solid performer without being outstanding, plays well/better with Pearce as would most. Not sure how he will go without Pearce long term, like after next year, hopefully 12 months will develop his game further and we will see a better player than the one we have now, who isn’t too bad
 
I like him too Frank...and I'm a big fan 😉 - this is just an area for me that can be improved as part of his all round performance and contribution to the team:cheer:
 
Id like to see some plays developed around Clifford dummying and running at the line in and around their 10m line. He seems a hard bugger to bring down if the first shot doesn't do the job. Has good footwork and balance.

Also, we need to get him kicking the majority of our down field kicks. Pearce took back more of that last game and we suffered for it from kicks that were not high enough, and not spiral bombs, just end over end kicks.

Play to our strengths.
 
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