Justin Horo

What's happening through the middle of the field?

Queensland's coaching staff must be loving it because nobody seems to be talking about their biggest strength, their ability to win the ruck and control the tempo of the game through defence.

New South Wales could put an almost endless number of high-quality players in combinations, but until they consistently win the ruck and match Queensland's defensive intensity, they aren't giving themselves the best chance to succeed.

It feels like the discussion keeps focusing on who should be picked rather than the fundamentals that decide these games.

Yeah, it's a great point because I was thinking about it with the defence side of things because I've seen examples.

There are plenty of examples that you can remember where Queensland went the block for block to get to the edge and it's more so… It's a setup.

You're alluding to Luke Keery's video and I don't know if you saw this, Mace, but he's talking about like it doesn't really…

It doesn't really matter about – what was his first thing?

He said, does Lane Martin game three last year?

We had Latrell back for game three last year.

No one's going to come save you.

So here's what it is.

And it's about like the buying from the playing group, the plan that they come up with.

And I felt like he was going to lead towards this but didn't quite say it.

And I said this too within a group chat with mates after game three.

I think right now –

like systems, Penrith, like there's a heavy focus on what they're doing in attack, not enough talk about what they're doing in defence.

So that's why I love this comment from Ash because I think strategically the plan, once you get opportunities –

is just night and day in comparison like when they do get opportunities billy and the plan that they have to execute from game to game is always different like it's it's a different sort of style that pulls the the attack like we talked about the adjustments detail so that's why i think

Right now, for as much as, you know, the criticism that, you know, Laurie's been getting hammered recently so I haven't made a point to put anything around that because he's getting enough probably more so than any of the players right now.