Gotcha wrote:
He missed 5 tackles, following on from 6 missed tackles against Wigan. He would be better off making 22 tackles and missing non.
148 metres is a commendable effort. Although when you take off the two passes that put him clean through gaps from his team mates, and then deduct 2 carries, his metres per carry is again very low.
All that said, but for the defence I thought he had a good game on Friday. But you would have to be pretty biased to not see there is a major problem with his tackling technique at the moment.
Well Ablett is top of the missed tackle league at Leeds with Sinfield 2nd. If you are putting in a regular high number of tackles per game it is likely you will also have a higher number of misses too. It is no coincidence that our top tacklers Delaney, JP, Ablett and in most seasons JJB are also first up on a kick chase when missed tackles can often occur and they are more often first in to the tackle or make one on one tackles...and so also have a higher chance of a miss being awarded when a colleague gets the tackle stat for a player they have half stopped.
To suggest we would be better off if these same top tacklers made fewer tackles to avoid their misses assumes a) all the missed tackles were crucial and b) that someone else will undertake to make those newly discarded tackles that often really are crucial.
Why should you want to denigrate JJB's 148 metres? He was backing up and in the right position to go through the gap, as he often does, which is technically good. He makes enough of the hard yards as it is so why does this bit of good decision making not count?
A player of JJB's experience over 1000's of successful tackles knows all about tackling technique. It is not something you forget. I re1peat IMO his timing and full match fitness have not fully recovered since his in jury layoff as was JP's and McGuire's.