From what I saw this year, what I would be concentrating on is our defence around the ruck - especially close to our line. Far too many tries and line breaks were made in this area. Closely related to this is the amount of metres we allow the opposition to get in a set of six. Far too often we allow a team to get easily out of their red zone into a postion where they can get away a kick that gives us posession too close to our own try line.
Secondly, we need to dominate posession more. This, of course, means eliminating errors but also making the most of the posession we get. For instance, we were one of the worst teams at earning a repeat set of six by tackling our opponents in goal. We tend to just blaze away and try and score a try and when that fails we throw up a "hail mary" kick and hope for the best. Need to make smarter use of the grubber into the in goal to get the ball back.
Last point, I want to see our fowards dominate the opposition more, physically. Snowden is becoming a line breaker and, of course, Gallen is always hard to handle but other than that we don't seem to have the "hitting" power we had in 2008. Look at the teams who are succeeding in the finals at the moment - they are all doing it from forwards who are dominating their opposition. Brisbanes win against the Goons is a classic example; pure power hitting.
Don't panic too much about "flashy backlines". Get the defence and the go forward right and the attack will look after itself. Look at the Dogs backline - ElMasri, Idris, Goodwin, Patten, Kimmorley - good players but hardly what you would call "dynamic" or "exciting". The fact is, they get the job done on the back of a dominant forward pack.
