frankLauda
Matthew Gidley
Was there a Hollbrook interview also?
Knights Podcasts!
- Thread starter jamesgould
- Start date
HarVeeGee13
Danny 'Bedsy' Buderus
What really stuck out to me there is that a real point of emphasis in Holbrook's philosophy is thinking about what other coaches might do to nullify the threats on his team, and they work on ways to respond to that and get the key strike players involved anyway. Yep. That has been a massive, massive difference this year.
I always felt like AOB was very "this is the system, the system works, if we just execute the system CORRECTLY, good things will happen". Even in our really good attacking season in 2023 with seemingly every player on the team on fire, it's kind of amazing how many times we scored basically the exact same try.
I actually wouldn't say there's been some massive overhaul of shape and structure under Holbrook - obviously with the roster we have, we want to compress the middle, stop defenders for sliding, and exploit the mismatches we have in those wide channels. There's just differences in both philosophy & detail. A lot more "if the defence is giving us this look, we do this" and a willingness to attack even off a lost ruck if the numbers are there. Rather than "get this sort of platform, work to spot A, run shape B if you get a quick ruck, if you do it well enough it can't be stopped".
It's probably correct that *when everything is humming* the AOB model was very very hard to stop, but what about when you're losing the middle? What if your guys are just a bit "off" today? What then? It feels like we've gone from rarely having answers to usually having them. Even in games we've lost.
Might explain the way the team score's so many different tries this year in comparison to previous years. Especially from longer range. Spreading the ball early on both sides, finding the mismatch to make the line break like the Raiders game (Manu, Fletch etc). But then you can't just keep an eye on one gamebreaker because Brown/Sharpe/Ponga etc can also make something out of nothing. Lucas was also on a try scoring run before his injury. You just have to watch out for everyone.
And they're not just because of bad defence at times, it's just forcing the defence to adjust and guess as to who will make the play. Sure sometimes it doesn't always work out and it leads to errors if the passes aren't thrown well enough, but you live with that.
And they're not just because of bad defence at times, it's just forcing the defence to adjust and guess as to who will make the play. Sure sometimes it doesn't always work out and it leads to errors if the passes aren't thrown well enough, but you live with that.
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