I've kept quiet on KC's tenure so far, as I think it takes the best part of a season before you can be confident in judging which things you are seeing from the team are systematic and which are blips or quirks caused by circumstances such as injuries. I'm not going to start jumping on KC's back now, but I am starting to have genuine concerns at shortcomings which seem to be a direct result of the extremely conservative approach to the game we are now taking (I was away for the semi final, so apologies if I'm repeating what others have already said).
Firstly, kicking on tackle 3. I don't have a problem with this if it is done right (it worked a treat for Leeds and Kevin Sinfield in some of those rainy grand finals against us). But to be done right there needs to be an element of on-field thinking about it: if the side isn't gaining ground and the half back gets the ball at first receiver on tackle 3 and notices that there's clear space to kick into and turn the full-back, then fine - kick it. But with us at the moment it's clearly premeditated. When we start a set in our own 30 we already know (and so do our opponents) that we're going to kick on the 3rd/4th. That means that we're not responding to what's in front of us - we're just mindlessly punting it when it gets to the allotted tackle. Thus we see 3rd/4th tackle kicks going straight to the full back (unforgivable - if you sacrifice tackles for a kick it simply has to turn the full back) and even kicks on tackle 3 when we're in the opposition half, FFS.
To make matters worse, 50% of the time we put in one of these early kicks for territory we give away a penalty straight away and the whole exercise becomes completely pointless.
As people have noted, we continually bring the ball back to the middle. We have a big pack, so I can understand the temptation to do this, but if anything our one-dimensional approach is undermining what should be a weekly advantage in the middle of the pitch. Our opposition knows that the ball is going back to the middle most of the time, so it's easy for them to compress their line in anticipation of this.
One advantage of having tall, strong, heavy forwards is that it's difficult for the opposition to wrap up the ball and there are plenty of opportunities for offloads. You only have to watch Leeds to see how damaging this can be. But you can see from the body language of our forwards that offloads are basically the last thing on their mind. They don't look for them at all (unless the game is getting away from us). Again, the knowledge that we won't offload makes it easy for the opposition to pile numbers into the tackle which then restricts our yardage.
I could understand this conservative, pre-programmed approach when we had no half-backs, but there's no need for it at all when we have our first choice 6, 7 and 9 on the pitch, as well as a full back who can play ball a bit. We need to see these players let off the leash and allowed to play what's in front of them. I also understand that our backs aren't up to the standard of those at Leeds, but they're not terrible either - we need to get them in the game, even if it's just to keep the opposition guessing and make a bit more space for our forwards (a bit wrong-way-round, but if it works...). And we need to start looking for offloads. Until we start doing these things we will continue to be depressingly easy to defend against.
