16th March 2011
Defence ?
2011 is underway and so far in our 3 outings against NRL teams we have let in 32, 42 and now 40. We need to improve out defence if we are going to play any part in the finals in 2011. A big factor in this is ball control when improved in the second half saw us come from behind and almost snatch a victory.
Injuries Not Again
Just when we looked forward to a great season with our full strength squad on the paddock, injuries have struck to impact our season. Geddes out for the season, Lowe re-breaking his toe 12 weeks and Burgess injuring his shoulder again 4 weeks. This on top of Mundine and Reynolds out for extended periods from the trials.
Roberts Triple
What a great start in the U20's but James Roberts. He scored 3 tries and two were crutial to us wining the game. He won't stay in U20's for the long the way he is going.
14th Men on The Field
How can the NRL and Souths allow this event to still happen. The NRL put a system in place to make sure this would never happen again yet The NRL interchange official, who's only job is to make sure it does not happen failed, to do his job properly accepting McPherson's interchange even though 2 interchanges were just made. The NRL officials need to wear a lot of the blame for what happened here.
Round 1 Stat Attack
Missed tackles and errors were way too high at 45 and 16. These should be down under 20 and 10 and this comes through in a poor completion rate for the game of 58% compared to 80% that we should be at Meters gained by the team is also poor at only 1074 compared to the 1200-1300 that we should be making.
While our kicking game was pretty good this week, we went through long periods where we did not kick as we were maiing too many errors. This is shown by the horrendous effective 1st tackle averaging 50.7m during the 1st half. The effective 1st tackles are the 1st tackle in a set of six after a dropped ball (not zero tackle) or after a scrum, 20m tap. Which is advanced down field if you give away a penalty. Basically we invited the opposition to play the game in our half.
The other thing the stats highlights is the volume of turnover the Roosters gave us. Basically they played poorly but we played worse. Overall our forwards need to improve, they contributed to most of the missed tackles and dropped balls.
On the positive side, when we stopped dropping the ball we brought the effective 1st tackles back to a normal 32.4m and of course got back into the game Ben Ross also had a good game making 80m in 41min (or what would have been 150+m if he played 80min) And Luke Stuart was once again our best overall forward, no missed tackles no errors and a solid 103m for his 51 min
Signing off for another week - the midweek Cyber View from the Hill