Was wanting to talk about Will Kennedy, this is, I stress , my opinion and could be totally wrong. But to me there is an obvious comparison physically , to another fullback, David Peachey of course. But here is the thing, Peachey was like Greg Inglis how his balance was such a beautiful thing to watch, how both players used their long arms to swat away would-be tacklers, and maintain such a fluid motion and seemingly glide across the turf.
I think William does possess that capacity , I just haven't seen him use it with regularity, maybe he is still growing into that particular skill.
So to the men of culture on this forum, I want to ask , do we think he is reading the offence well enough from the fullback position, maybe again I need to be educated;
But doesn't the fullback , like a quarterback on the defensive side, call plays, like read what the offense is doing and call out structures/instructions to his team mates?
To me, and again this is just my opinion, Will just seems to be late, like a full step behind, to the man scoring, like when I look at " brighteyes" from Broncos or Edwards from Penrith, they are there full bodied and right on time to stop scores, even tho in my opinion , brighteyes, seems to get away with shoulder charges, well they would be called under any other circumstances, I believe.
So yes I would like to get the esteemed gentlemen of culture on this forum to enlighten me what is the deal with Will?
My understanding is there are two general methods of fullback defending a backline play against your tryline
We'll call them spread and trail, not sure those are the best names necessarily, or names an NRL team would use
Spread: fullback expects your defensive system to leave the opposition winger unmarked, that is his man. This is created because the opp fullback also is involved in the play, they may be defended by your centre or winger, leaving a opposition winger open.
Your fullback busts arse along the line to get to his man. Then often shoulder charges him because that seems to be allowed in that circumstance most of the time.
Trail: fullback tracks the ball more at a 'slower' pace, he is watching for a kick or pass back inside to adjust for, or to be a second/third man into a straightened runner to help hold them up. Because he is working to protect against a straighter play, or play back on the inside, he gets to the unmarked winger slower.
(edit: this method protects on the inside which gives your line more confidence to slide ("If I get caught flat footed by runner our FB will be there straight away to help") and forces teams to make more high speed passes which can cause errors)
Of course a fullback can always mix and match these choices, especially if he has the pace off the mark to switch from trail into cover with the right visual cue/read. To be able to effectively do this midplay though is really top top acceleration - your brighteyes probably has it.
We seem to prefer to use trail a lot of the time, Will unfortunately not great at assisting with holding up but I do think he is getting better. Also not great at using his weight against decent sized wingers so no particular reason that system would work better.
Runners like Nikora destroy spread fullbacks because they can't react in time to the runner angled back in. Even when he scored on the weekend CNK got a lot on him but Nikora caught him just off balance enough he fought through it.
Teams with good clean spread (which we also have thanks to Will and Moylan in particular, and Talakai tap ons) will often go around trail fullbacks and put the winger in.
Being able to threaten the spread or the straight/unders runner at a high level gets the fullback second guessing and being able to read what they do and make the correct pass lets you beat them. We are excellent at that - good teams just don't let us do it as much as we want to.
You may also see a team play short two or three times then spread it and score and some people might complain why did we waste time going short when we can obviously score out wide? Well we have suckered the fullback into expecting trail is needed with the intention to switch our point of attack on him - it was easy to score out wide
because we went short those first few times.
Or vs Warriors if I remember order of things correctly they managed to use spread defence to stop both Ronnie and Sione scoring but then Nikora back on the inside worked, cutting through line and catching CNK off balance.
Will is definitely not a significant physical threat but his ball playing and reading of cues to make offensive decisions is very high level.
