The Roar
The Roar

The Roar

Mike Meehall Wood

Editor

Joined February 2022

1.35m

Views

874

Published

772

Comments

Mike Meehall Wood is a rugby league writer, Celtic supporter and cricket tragic. He has written extensively about rugby league for publications in the UK and Australia, and about sports more widely for Forbes, VICE, LADbible and more.

Published

Comments

Older Submissions

Haha which reporter? 😊

'His best defensive performance in the NRL': How Robbo's tough love led to Sam Walker's tackle perfect night

View Comment
League
 
2d

I’m a small man, Bonza. A small, petty man.

NRL Power Rankings: Up up Cronulla, down, down the Bunnies and bye, bye Parramatta for another year

View Comment
League
 
2w

Cleary loves a kick behind, and often early. Also it’s just really hard to do across 80 minutes and they back themselves to out-grind anyone and go from there.

Holding patterns: How the NRL's best are setting new platforms for their stars to shine

View Comment
League
 
3w

I haven’t watched enough of Leigh to say either way but wouldn’t surprise me. They’ve been great this year by all accounts.

Super League still had a lot of block plays even last year and into the WC…maybe it takes a while for everything to filter through. Saying that, I’d say the biggest change in the Broncos is that Lee Briers is there…

Holding patterns: How the NRL's best are setting new platforms for their stars to shine

View Comment
League
 
3w

You’ve assumed that there was a plan there 😂 I think ‘give it to Dozer’ was a signal that there wasn’t that much thought going into it.

Last year I think I wrote that they were quite into qualitative advantage – defensively certainly, with a more man-oriented style – and tried to line up Lomax into that, but largely they were just lacking all kinds of ideas.

Holding patterns: How the NRL's best are setting new platforms for their stars to shine

View Comment
League
 
3w

My mate (and occasional Roar columnist) Spencer Kassimir has long advocated for a 30/30 to make it a viable play, because the risk/reward in a 20/40 is far too far in the other direction.

Holding patterns: How the NRL's best are setting new platforms for their stars to shine

View Comment
League
 
3w

Think DCE and Brandon Smith are the only two to ever land one (in the NRL at least) and iirc, Cheese didn’t know he’d done it when he did. It was a discussion on a long car ride of journos in the Finals last year and that was as good as we could do.

Holding patterns: How the NRL's best are setting new platforms for their stars to shine

View Comment
League
 
3w

This, but also the instructions on a player level probably aren’t that complicated. They only need to know one or two bits of it. The hard parts are tasked to the best players, who are smart enough to deal with it.

Holding patterns: How the NRL's best are setting new platforms for their stars to shine

View Comment
League
 
3w

No team in the 50s had more than a few standard plays for sure. Video analysis (and full time analysts) changed this totally.

If I had to distill it down to the bare bones, teams are now planning out whole sets to get one move that they’re really good at, with the final part of that move being improvised.

Every team everywhere has pet plays, or a general idea of where they want to attack, but only really elite teams with full backroom staff involvement can get to a level of proficiency to actually make it work.

That’s all new. Previously, they weren’t professional enough, didn’t have the data and video capacity and didn’t attempt anything anywhere near as complex.

Holding patterns: How the NRL's best are setting new platforms for their stars to shine

View Comment
League
 
3w

Eels definitely go hard on isolating players, even more so last year when Ice was still there. Hit a half and offload was a major part of the plan. A lot of the rise of Cartwright and Hopgood (I would say) is because they fulfil a role in a system, see also the relative drop-off in Ice at the Tigers.

It’s a good example of why that can fail too, because without the best two exponents in the backrow and the domination of Paulo and RCG, the fall away is massive. Tbf to Brad, everyone would struggle with 4 of their high-paid on the sidelines.

Holding patterns: How the NRL's best are setting new platforms for their stars to shine

View Comment
League
 
3w

The one who finished in the top ten three times in a row and won the FA Cup?

Sure, he got sacked in the end (they all do, right) but Rodgers was defo a very good PL manager…

What the EPL?!: Ange's big day, Claret blues and trouble at the bottom on opening weekend

View Comment
Football
 
3w

While I do approach Manly games with the same impartial mindset as any team…you’d only have to read the Power Rankings or Tips column to know I’m not exactly neutral on them 😂

If anything, I hold Manly to a higher standard than everyone else…

ANALYSIS: Madcap Manly embrace the chaos to give Panthers a scare - before Crichton leads them to victory

View Comment
League
 
3w

They absolutely do have a stats person in Joel Carbone, but he’s not (as several people have told me at least) in the box on a matchday like everyone else has. He’s a recruitment guy. My guess of why Ricky is the only coach you regularly see on the sideline is this, he might as well be there if they’re not feeding data etc. The last old school guy in that regard.

The Canberra Chameleons: How the Raiders defeated logic - in a tight finish, of course

View Comment
League
 
4w

I certainly am old enough to remember Sticky – we had tapes of Winfield Cup sent over to the UK and I watched them over and over, distinctly remember that Canberra side of the mid-90s. Just too young for his Origin (first I remember was 95) and he didn’t get picked for Kangaroos post-95 World Cup.

He’s still terrifying to talk to, and not for the reason you might expect: all I think is “Christ, that’s Ricky Stuart!” Several fairly high profile people in journalism and coaching have told me the same 😂

The Canberra Chameleons: How the Raiders defeated logic - in a tight finish, of course

View Comment
League
 
4w

Seibs said Keppie is back iirc, everyone else done for the year. Morgan Boyle szn.

ANALYSIS: Brown sent off for horror high shot but backline fires Roosters to victory over Manly

View Comment
League
 
Aug

IMHO (as a Manly supporter, not as a journo…) they were on a hiding to nothing without their big men in the middle. As mentioned in the piece, they’re without their best four middles from 5 minutes in – I’m not sure any of the props who played (maybe Bullemor?) are in a best 17.

So much of what we do that is good, especially in getting early ball and playing expansively, comes from that trigger movement from a PTB win in the middle. That’s when Koula and Haumole get involved. Was never on the cards tonight.

Seibs wouldn’t say it in presser (though he went close to) but it’s the truth.

On the PTB speed, Robbo flat out denied that Roosters were laying on the ruck, but everyone knows that they have a lot of form for that (2018/19) and it’s the best way to blunt Manly’s attack. He said that Manly were playing shift plays, which is true, but they only get good shifts if the PTB is fast…I thought the lady protested too much there.

ANALYSIS: Brown sent off for horror high shot but backline fires Roosters to victory over Manly

View Comment
League
 
Aug

No I don’t like him for a hundred reasons, that’s just my best pithy line on him 😂

You can admit it now - if Stuart Broad was an Aussie, he'd be your favourite player

View Comment
Cricket
 
Jul

Oh man, I can’t stand Vaughan…him and Root went to the same school, the difference being that Vaughan paid to go there 😂

You can admit it now - if Stuart Broad was an Aussie, he'd be your favourite player

View Comment
Cricket
 
Jul

Gonna be some brave revalations when you realise how many Aussie cricketers are privately educated…it’s about in line with England these days.

You can admit it now - if Stuart Broad was an Aussie, he'd be your favourite player

View Comment
Cricket
 
Jul

Pythago is in QLD, RLET and me in NSW, others are in NZ and parts unknown so seems unlikely…

Complete nonsense: What are the NRL’s most overrated stats?

View Comment
League
 
Jul

The top 5 for errors is Tigers, Sharks, Roosters, Broncos, Rabbitohs…so absolutely no corrrelation. Roosters made the most in 2018 and 2019 and won the comp, pretty sure Dogs made the least in the year they finished last.

Complete nonsense: What are the NRL’s most overrated stats?

View Comment
League
 
Jul

Yes and no.

It’s just a measure of total metres divided by total sets, which are the two biggest indicative factors in winning, so getting a guide to who is best doing that is pretty useful.

On the other hand, if the other team drops the ball 20m from their own line a lot, you’ll get low metres but (assuming vague attacking competency) probably a lot of points.

Kick metres often have an inverse proportion to ASM because decent teams are far enough up the field via ball progression that they don’t have any need to kick for territory. It’s a limitation of both.

Complete nonsense: What are the NRL’s most overrated stats?

View Comment
League
 
Jul

It’s a FSL one, so I’m not 100% sure how they calculate it, but other providers do ‘pre-assists’ which is a similar thing.

I wrote a whole column once on xT and ‘Packing’, both soccer advanced stats that worked out who was the most effective passer/bypasser of opponents even when they were miles from the outcome of the move.

TC is a little limited too, because it needs a try to happen to exist. Lachy Ilias therefore gets nothing if his winger drops the ball. My suspicion is that a lot of flashy-but-effective players get dudded this way.

In my mind (and this might only be my mind) I think of it like that: in judo, which I did for many years, the key to throwing someone is the moment you break their balance. Thereafter, it’s all a much-practiced technique that pretty much any decent player could do. The hard part is breaking the balance in the first place.

Guys in the middle of the field often ‘break’ the line’s resistance, but they still have to go through all the process to actually score the points, including the inevitable scramble D. We’re yet to come up with a Packing-style stat that recognises this.

Complete nonsense: What are the NRL’s most overrated stats?

View Comment
League
 
Jul

They do that, KRM is a stat. For a while people thought it was the most important one, but then realised it was just that Penrith scored highly at it and Penrith won games, classic fighting the last war stuff.

Run metres are useful for comparing apples to apples – predominantly middle ball-carriers for example – but useless for comparing, say, FBs. Is Latrell worse than Edwards because edwards carries more? They’re not trying to do the same thing…

Same for (say) To’o and Alex Johnston. It’s a question of style before anything. You might say BT is the best yardage winger, or that DE is the best yardage fullback, but that’s about it really.

Complete nonsense: What are the NRL’s most overrated stats?

View Comment
League
 
Jul

Passes per run/set is an interesting stat for some positions (forwards especially) but on a team level it tends to just tell you who plays side to side.

Good teams tend to get wide in a minimum of passes rather than going through six sets of hands, whereas bad teams (again, the Dragons…) go slowly though everyone.

Metres per set would defo be in if I did a ‘stats we don’t rate but should’ piece!

Complete nonsense: What are the NRL’s most overrated stats?

View Comment
League
 
Jul
Older Comments
close