Quote ="Rooster Booster"Thanks for posting that link. Nice to see Danny Orr leads with 24 try assists. And Dorn is in 5th with 16. And Chad Randall leads the way in scoots (342).
Anyway that aside. Are people not aware of scoot sets to get out of trouble? Are you not aware that there are calls for such a thing? Where the backs come in and scoot out of dummy half for most of a set? Sounds like Sharp did this a lot on top of his Kick returns. As a back he'd potentially be involved in hit ups from scrums and the odd offering of a hit up in GP. Apart from that, statistically I would suggest that he may have got a fair chunk of metres from his 14 clean breaks. Couldn't help but notice too that Sharp of his 460 carries, 73 would have been scoots.
I think to point out Sharp's metres and carries and suggest forwards aren't doing something or he is being misused in some is a bit off the mark TBH.
The top 5 leading ball carriers in the NRL are, 1 Sailor 389. 2 Sam Perrett 383. Kurt Gidley 379. Jarryd Hayne 378. 5. Anthony Laffranchi 373.
In the NRL only 2 of the top 13 players making the most metres are forwards. In fact Billy Slater who was 8th got almost exactly half of his metres form kick returns.'"
I don't think looking simply at the stats gives the true picture, nobody really seems to object to using Sharp as a kick returner, or against an unready defensive line, the issue is having him effectively take hit up after hit up into a set defence because we don't have enough grunt. Using Sharp in the middle of the field to make 5m from a slow tap penalty, or a hit-up which should go to a prop is the issue.
There's a lack of grunt, especially since Temata got injured, Temata is a bit of an unsung hero in our pack, people don't notice what he does, but they notice some of what goes when he doesn't play. Heckenberg and Haggerty have both had injury problems which means neither were up to the peak of their performance (Heckenberg has struggled for a couple of seasons now). Ward is solid, but is not as athletic as LMS or Temata, and lacks the brute power of Haggerty. And BM's thing for hard grafting back-row forwards is a mixed blessing, Williamson, Robinson and Purdham are all intelligent ball handlers and defensively very capable, but Purdham is the only one who really seems to have an attacking edge, and none of them are going to drive us down the field with raw aggression, so we end up having Will Sharp taking hit-ups to nowhere down the middle of the field.
