Tuivasa-Sheck hopes to take the middle ground
Warriors captain Roger TuivasaSheck hopes the new rule changes to the NRL will play right into his hands.
The team take on the Dragons in a ‘home’ game at Central Coast Stadium in Gosford today in their first match since the resumption of the competition.
There have been two significant rule changes since the NRL went into hibernation after round two, which are that there’s only one referee on the field and also that for ruck infringements the referee will signal six again for the attacking team, rather than stopping play for a penalty. That could play into the hands of the Warriors’ fullback, who arguably has the best footwork in the NRL, and Tuivasa-Sheck says he’ll look to make runs up the middle against tired forwards, when the ‘six again’ call goes out.
‘‘That was the point we were trying to establish in the first couple of rounds,’’ Tuivasa-Sheck said.
‘‘To find a way for me to be more effective in the middle and with that six again rule, hopefully I can use my footwork around forwards who’ve done back to back tackles.
‘‘I know it’s a tough gig in the middle, but I’m going to try my best to use my speed around the middle, around Wayde [Egan] and Karl [Lawton], our hookers and also our halves.’’
It’s fair to say that the Warriors didn’t have the best of starts to this season, losing to the Knights 20-0, then the Raiders 20-6.
They’ve been tipped to battle it out with the Titans for the wooden spoon over the rest of the season, but Tuivasa-Sheck says they’ve used the down time to analyse where things were going wrong and have a new approach for the remaining 18 games.
‘‘We’re going to try to keep it simple this time round,’’ he said.
‘‘We were pleased with how our pre-season went, we were happy with the combinations we created, but I think when we came out we had a low completion rate and we couldn’t attack the way we wanted to. So it’s about keeping it simple and trying to wear teams down before putting on the big shots.’’
The Warriors have made several changes from the team that lost to the Raiders on the Gold Coast, with one of them being Gerard Beale coming in to play centre, in place of David Fusitu’a.