By Dan Walsh
Hunting season. In recent times, less Elmer Fudd, more Steph Curry and a six-inch height difference becoming a cornerstone of NBA tactics when finals roll around.
“Mismatch hunting” has emerged as a simple, but devastating, offensive tactic when elite NBA sides square off – aiming to isolate a small or slow-moving defender and hammering any perceived weakness.
Curry ranks as one of the greatest offensive players of all time and is rarely considered a defensive liability. Until LeBron James – 206 centimetres to Curry’s 188 – makes it a mission to make it a personal match-up in the NBA’s biggest games, and defensive tactics are scrambled accordingly. Often indirectly, the points come.
Sub in a Steeden and swing to the other side of the globe, and despite the homogenisation of wingers and forwards alike tipping the scales well past 100 kilograms, the mismatches – be it through sheer size or between the ears – can still be hunted, isolated and exploited.
The results – as axed Sharks star Matt Moylan can attest after the Warriors bagged six tries targeting his edge – can be beautiful, breathtaking and brutal all in one.
Shaun Johnson v Cronulla’s left edge
Once Cronulla lost regular left-edge back-rower Teig Wilton to injury, the Warriors simply rinsed, repeated, and repeated several more times for good measure by pulling the combination of poor old Moylan, Siosifa Talakai and Wade Graham to pieces.
South Sydney nailed similar plays in round one, but not since Talakai rolled over Manly’s Morgan Harper repeatedly last year has one player been so ruthlessly exploited across 80 minutes.
Much-improved hooker Wayde Egan plays a key role in the Warriors’ multiple right-side raids, jumping out of dummy half and dragging Moylan’s inside man – twice it is Graham – into the middle for their first two tries.
End result, Moylan is left staring down multiple lead runners on either shoulder. He’s effectively double-teamed for the above four-pointer, with Josh Curran hitting one hole and Rocco Berry the other, and Shaun Johnson threading a beautiful ball to beat Moylan and Talakai all ends up.
One 40-20 later, the Warriors run the same play with Addin Fonua-Blake adding an extra 20 kilograms to the equation. Moylan even sees the play coming, and replays show him pointing out the big prop headed his way.
But he’s left sprawling after an attempted one-on-one legs tackle because Egan and Johnson have once again dragged his two inside defenders back towards the ruck.
By the second half, Curran is running at Moylan for fun and twice treats him like a bug on a windshield, shrugging off attempted tackles for a try of his own and another to Dallin Watene-Zelezniak.
Cody Walker v Daly Cherry-Evans
Origin III might have been a dead rubber but Cody Walker’s masterful isolation of Queensland skipper Daly Cherry-Evans was life-giving. And it only lasted for 40 minutes.
Walker had Cherry-Evans in two minds from the Blues’ earliest attacking raid, one veteran half keeping the other guessing and on his heels as Liam Martin is taken to the line in a fifth-minute play that breaks down.
The mismatch in this instance is one of decision-making. Multiple times throughout the first-half in game three, Cherry-Evans is left sitting back as Walker picks, chooses and makes the most of the time Cherry-Evans gives him.
Josh Addo-Carr ends up flying down the left flank in the 14th minute, and again five minutes later for one of the best tries ever scored in a Blues jersey.
Walker has roughly eight metres to work with and Jeremiah Nanai lagging on the inside, while Cherry-Evans sees the threat on his outside and hangs back with Liam Martin, Bradman Best and Addo-Carr all options at the five-eighth’s disposal.
Game over. Same again when Walker sets Best up for his first try of the night.
At half-time, Queensland even switch up their right-side approach and Cherry-Evans is suddenly flying in to cut Walker’s time and space off with some effect – one early pass sails over the sideline and the Maroons stay in the fight.
Cody Walker sets up Bradman Best for a debut Origin try.Credit: NRL
But with the game in the balance at 18-10, and the Blues inside their own half, Cherry-Evans holds and slides in the line once more. Walker picks the momentary lapse and James Tedesco is looping around a Martin decoy, loping away from Cherry-Evans to set up Best’s match winner.
The Roosters middle men
Penrith have found fortune, fun and a combined 78-10 scoreline against the Roosters this season by repeatedly asking their forwards to shift quickly and laterally with changes of angles and inside balls.
Scott Sorensen’s opening try against one of the NRL’s oldest forward packs in round 11 at Penrith – courtesy of three consecutive runs back against the grain and a glorious James Fisher-Harris offload – made for one hell of a blueprint.
Melbourne took the same approach last weekend and threw the NRL’s biggest man at one of the game’s smallest. All 200 centimetres and 115 kilograms of Nelson Asofa-Solomona lines up against opposite Luke Keary – giving away 20 centimetres and 30 kilograms, and that is all that’s needed for one of the simplest tries you’d hope to see.
Jahrome Hughes strolls down a veritable freeway between Keary and Nat Butcher with the game in the balance at the SCG. The Roosters, as has been their way in 2023, get their defensive spacing horribly wrong on their try line.
Lurking out the back is Asofa-Solomona, an understandable distraction for Keary. But just like the Panthers shuffling the Roosters middles every which way in round 11, it’s the two plays beforehand that truly jams them up.
Nathan Brown is involved in back-to-back tackles on first Alec MacDonald, and then Nick Meaney, as he races back inside and leaves Fletcher Baker for dead.
You can throw a bedspread over the three defenders dragged into the play, Butcher has a look, too, and Keary is left with either Hughes or Asofa-Solomona – and comes up with nothing.
Cronulla v Cameron Smith
And with a quick nod to the golden era of Australian cricket and one of the more unsung grand final endurance efforts in history, proof that even a future Immortal can find himself hunted.
While Andrew Fifita’s match-winning try is rightly celebrated as the cornerstone of Cronulla’s thrilling 2016 triumph over Melbourne, lost amid his game-turning performance is the target he nailed squarely to Storm skipper Cameron Smith that night.
Steve Waugh’s indomitable teams always kept either the opposing captain or their best player at the top of their tip sheets, and with the Sharks deploying the same tactic, Smith’s 73 tackles in 80 minutes are still the most ever made by one player in a grand final by a considerable margin.
Cameron Smith’s 73 tackles in the 2016 grand final against Cronulla ranks among the highest individual tackle counts of the NRL era.Credit: Getty
More than half a dozen times, it was Fifita – who at that stage of his career was being compared to Arthur Beetson – making a beeline for Smith, at times even running blatantly sideways just to find the best hooker the game has ever seen.
Even in the 76th minute, with the Sharks holding a slender two-point lead, Smith was being found repeatedly around the ruck by Cronulla ball-carriers and making four consecutive tackles in one set.
Champion that he is, Smith held his own, missing just four tackles and setting up Melbourne’s first try.
But a bobbled kick on the Storm’s try line, a grubber that ran long for seven tackles and obvious fatigue as the Sharks held on late told the tale; even the best can get found out in hunting season.
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