If your NRL team is ever ahead by anything between 14 and 24 points by half-time or in and around that, I strongly advise you not to start texting your mates who support the opposition to gloat about the impending victory!
Don't start sending them messages about how your half is โcontrolling the game' and โrunning the show' too quickly.
Don't post on social media with the same sentiments, either.
Because 80 minutes is a long time to play a game โ of any kind!
The teams that โmanage' the vast majority of the game tend to win it comfortably!
Your teams' halves are in control of how your team manages the game, that's why commentators have introduced the phrase โgame management' into their weekly narrative.
Read the rest of this series
- Part 1
- Part 2
- Completing five from five attacking sets
- Playing to a clear plan, directed entirely by the halves
- Playing to โedges' in good ball (The Red Zone on TV)
- Using their creative talents at the right time (playing โwhat was in front' of them, late in the tackle count)
Nathan Cleary, Mitchell Moses, Daly Cherry-Evans and Jerome Hughes are four of the absolute best, Isaiya Katoa, Luke Metcalfe, Nicho Hynes and Toby Sexton are growing into this elite category week by week.
If your halves, or the team as a whole, take their collective โeyes off the ball' so to speak, or the opposition come back to you in a more organised and motivated fashion, the chances are that the game will swing hugely in the second half.
Although it is common to blame halves, it is also the symptoms of the โmodern' game, with six-again penalties and shot clocks and the like that cause momentum that it is overwhelming, regularly given as the explanation.
Yet the issue of games ebbing and flowing has been in the game since 1908!
The most common changing of the guard in a game has often happened after approximately ten or twenty minutes of a game. Coaches often make their first interchanges in and around the twenty minutes mark, too.
Up to this point, teams have either shared the initiative, or one team has taken it all for themselves and wrestled control of the game.
This section of the game is now the key phase that needs to be navigated to close the first half out. It is then all repeated in the second half.
As proof this changing of the momentum has existed before 2025, I take you back to the 2012 Parramatta Eels.
Back then, I was commissioned to write a detailed analytical report on their 2012 travails with a view to suggesting improvements for the following season.
To pinpoint the birth of their problems, I wrote in the report that they were present in their team from the first round of the 2012 premiership!
It also shows why the halves are not always to blame for a team losing its way!
To prove my point, I went into some severe detail about what I found in the opening exchanges of the Round 2 match against the New Zealand Warriors. You can watch it here.
After exactly 7 minutes and 30 seconds of play, the Eels were 8 points to nil ahead after scoring two tries.
They would go on to lose the game 22-14.
They got off to a great start in the game by doing the following:
Chris Sandow was at half and Ben Roberts was at five-eighth.
Then, from 9 minutes 57 seconds, the rot started to set in.
Joseph Paulo (playing in the second-row) executes a short pass to a team-mate almost exactly on the centre spot of the field. It was on the second-tackle of the set.
It's a poorly executed pass, in a style known as a โtip-on' in the game. It puts the oncoming runner, prop Tim Mannah, in a tight spot. Others may label this as a โhospital pass'!
As Mannah catches the ball, he is simultaneously tackled, so he chooses to attempt to offload the ball. There is, however, only a split second for Mannah to make that choice.
The offload is poor, goes to ground and the opposition gains possession.
The Warriors now have their first real attacking chance of the game, needing only to travel just over fifty metres with six tackles up their sleeves.
Parramatta have given the Warriors a field-position gift, and it has cost them an extra four tackles in possession because they lost the ball on tackle two.
By 10 minutes and 32 seconds, Parramatta have conceded a third tackle penalty whilst defending!
The Eels originally gave the Warriors only fifty-six metres to travel in six tackles. After three of them were completed without troubling the scorers, the Warriors were then gifted a further six attempts at scoring with only sixteen metres to travel to the try line.
By 11 minutes and 35 seconds, the Warriors scored their first try.
In the space of 1 minute and 38 seconds, (so almost two minutes) the landscape of the game changed dramatically, or, to coin a commentary phrase the pendulum had swung.
The Eels failed to sustain pressure against the opposition and they gave the Warriors an opportunity to get back into the game.
It was a problem that was to plague them all through this game and this was a huge period of play in the context of it.
What was obvious from the period of play we studied, is that they got carried away with their early success and thought they could โchance their arm' more.
Instead of continuing what they had been doing, they started to overplay their hand.
Maybe the half Sandow didn't guide the team through the game properly, as some of the great game-managers listed earlier do, or the team had no idea of how to control the phases of the game.
What is certain is that, it's easier to blame and drop the halves from the team, than it is to drop the other twelve on the field or sack the coach! (Sorry, Newcastle fans!)
Early in any game, ideally you want to see your team keeping things as simple as possible. If they're keeping play nice and direct, with a maximum of one or two passes from the play-the-ball and kicking deep on the last tackle to force the opposition backwards, then your team is starting well.
Once settled into the contest, your team might throw in a combination set types; either taking on the opposition directly or moving them laterally across the field.
The good game-managing halves then know how to control the ensuing โtemperature' of the game as it unfolds.
If your team has been under defensive pressure for say, twelve or eighteen tackles in defence, they won't be taking risks in the next set they have with the ball. They will just instruct the team to carry the ball out relatively slowly to regroup, then kick the ball in order to roll into touch down the opposite end of the field.
A good game managing half might instruct their team-mates to get up slower to play the ball during a set like this and, after the kick, jog or walk to the scrum, in order to get breath back as a group.
In another scenario, your team doesn't need to force the play too hard if they're ahead twelve or more ahead on the scoreboard. They just need to relax (relatively) in possession and frustrate their opponents, backing it up with strong, energetic and disciplined defence.
The chances are, that opponent will eventually crack and give the game momentum back to you.
It's very hard to maintain a high tempo type of football for a full game and this is how this can be managed while still maintaining control of the scoreboard.
Good halves know they must focus โon the moment' during every play in the game, whilst they are also aware of the bigger picture of the game situation.
If the team plays simply for two to five sets, that is often enough to force the opposition into errors and for it to lead to points scored.
Most sports fixtures are lost by someone making a mistake and an opponent capitalizing on it, rather than won by someone doing something amazing to break open the opposition.
Take a look out for this each weekend.
