NSW Origin coach Brad Fittler said the peeling back of 2021’s controversial six-again rule has gone a long way to reducing the gulf between teams.
The average margin of victory last season exploded to never before seen numbers, with multiple floggings part and parcel of every weekend of footy.
Earlier this week, it was reported that the the floggings had ceased, and we’d had the closest-fought opening three round of a season in the NRL era.
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Last year, many blamed intentionally giving away repeat sets early in the tackle count as a key contributor to teams getting on top, and staying on top – leading to a tweak in 2022 that re-introduced penalties for teams battling out of their own end.
On Nine’s Freddy and the Eighth, Andrew Johns said it had played a part.
“The lower teams in the last couple of years have probably recruited OK, but their younger players are a year older, a year wiser,” he said.
“That penalty inside the 40 for a six-again, I think that’s been a big role.”
Fittler then went on to explain exactly what the six-again had done to NRL games as a contest.
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“That rule he’s talking about allows the good teams to put pressure on the bad teams,” he said.
“At the end of the day, the difference between the good teams and the bad teams is how much pressure you can handle – so what it did, it just allowed the scores to get exaggerated.
“Once the good teams put too much pressure on, the other teams would fall apart. And they could just cheat the rules enough for the other team to fall apart, most of the time.
“In some of those situations they were good teams falling apart as well,” Fittler said, referencing Manly’s finals run where they were beaten by 28 points in week one by Manly, bounced back to pound the Roosters by 36, and then had their season ended by a rampant Rabbitohs in a game that they lost by 20.
“Teams just couldn’t handle too much pressure.”
The Panthers are proving so far in 2022 that it wasn’t just the rules that made them great last season – but Fittler said they gamed the system better than anyone else.
“Penrith last year gave away more of those sets of six-again than any other team, which tells you two things.
“One, they’re down in your end a lot, and the other is they’re happy to give away a couple of those tackles for the sake of just putting a bit more pressure on.”
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