“It’s obviously different, the way we want to attack. It’s also very different to the way that I’m used to at the Reds,” McDermott said.
“We play a very expansive game and Joe’s plan for us is pretty narrow.
“When we’re narrow, that’s the width we want to attack, so it’s very direct and a skilful game plan at the line.
“But our adjustment period is probably not quite where we need it to be in regards to how we play as Super Rugby teams and how we want to play here, because it’s very different to how every Super Rugby team plays.
“I think that’s what we’re seeing at the moment, we’re slow to react a little bit at the moment and it’s hurting us in key moments. But there’s a definite plan in place and the boys are trying really hard to nail that plan. But we’ve got a little bit of work to do on how it looks and how we can make it look in a game.”
“I think a lot of our energy is being zapped out of our attack,” McDermott said.
“We’re struggling to hold the ball for multi phase and cut teams apart with our attack, particularly in phase play.
“We’ve put a little bit of time and effort into our attack for the past couple of weeks to try to make sure that we’re not just giving teams the ball because we’re kicking the ball away quite a bit because our attack isn’t doing exactly what we’ve said we’re going to do.
“We can try to regain a little bit more energy by investing a little bit more time in our attack, particularly at the breakdown, where we’ve been losing a lot of ball there and had quite a few skill errors.
“It was tough conditions in Perth, but we can look after the ball a little bit more rather than resort to kicking it away, I think that’ll go a long way into our attack as well as our energy.”
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