What a game coming up. Its the undefeated South Sydney Rabbitohs verses the undefeated 2012 Premiers Melbourne. Its a mouth watering game that could be a Grand Final preview. Souths had to come from behind to secure the win against The Warriors. After leading well in the first half, Souths had a period where they once again let in tries and in this weeks case they gave away the lead. But they had the mental strength and match winner in George Burgess to regain the lead and bring the game home. Thats now 5 from 5 and still the best start to a season since 1971.
Congratulations to Greg Inglis who scored his 100th FG try on the weekend.
It was great to see 3 grades playing back to back at the same venue. The first time in 5 and half years. It also saw the return of Beau Champion in reserve grade with the Bears. He had a solid 60 min game setting up 2 tries.
Congratulations to our U16 Harold Matts team who secured the U16 Minor premiership for the second year in succession. Our U18 team was also up there coming in 2nd. Now for week 1 of the finals this weekend. Good luck boys.
The NRL has proposed under the extreme situation that players 16-25 become free agents in a draft to address issues that may occur with a club who is caught in ASADA drugs investigation. As a fan I cannot accept that the my club would lose players to sure up a drug cheating club. Each club works exteremly hard to develop its roster so that it has depth to cover injuries, suspensions, rep duties or poor form of players. To suddently be told that your club will lose that hard faught talent and depth and have to field park footballers and potential impact critical competition points or semi-finals so that a drug cheating club can field a competitive team, is just unacceptable. Clubs today need 30+ players not 25 and in cases in the past needed to source fringe footballers just to field a team on weekends after severe injury tolls and endure the pain that comes with that. I say if a club loses players then they will need to go find replacements from NSW Cup / A-Grade / U20's / U18's etc to fill the gaps across their playing roster. If it comes down to a situation that a club is suspended. Then a trageted expansion club should fill the void with players not suspended becoming free agents and allowed to move across to the expansion club. I am certain the Central Coast Bears or Brisbane Brothers would be ready to fill any void and able to draw upon their local ranks.
Souths energy was tested as the game wore against the Warriors bigger men. Completion rates dropped to 78%. Effective 1st tackle for the match was poor at 35.1m. 12 errors, 26 missed tackles, 19 opposition offloads indicated how we were not dominating the game. Stats were only slightly better than last year. Reynolds was targeted by the Warriors attack making a massive 32 tackles.
Looking at our left side defence - Merritt-Goodwin-Sutton-McQueen (2-2-5-3) increased to 12 from 7 missed tackles. On the right side Everingham-Farrell-Reynolds-Teo (1-1-2-2) improved to 6 from 9 missed tackles.
Our go forward was great this week dropped to 1336m for the match. But was much better than last years 968m. Asotasi and Sam Burgess lead the way in the forwards was the best making 10+m per hitup. With Sam Burgess, Lowe and George Burgess making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively Sam Burgess was our best in the tackling raking up 34 tackles. With Tyrrell, Lima, Lowe, Peats and George Burgess not missing a tackle.