Souths moved to sole leaders of the NRL compeition table after our victory over Nth Qld and a shock loss by Melbourne on the weekend. This is the first time in 24 years since 1989 that Souths have lead the competition outright and the first time since 1951 that we have lead the competition outright after 9 rounds. It was a game where Nth Qld last years 5th placed team put Souths under early presure but Souths quickly restored order to the games and controlled the rest of the match. The forward clash was great with the Burgess boys taking on the Australian front row pairing. Thats now 20 competition points in the bank wooden spoon avoided and only 5 more wins to guarantee a semifinal spot.

Greg Inglis continues to be the most dominat player in the competition in 2013. He has now moved to outright leader.

Nathan Merritt added another try to his tally. He leads the NRL try scorers in 2013 with 8th season 10 try tally. He is now only 5 tries away from Horder. And joins Bob Fultion in 7th place on teh all time try scorers list.

Mitch Buckett had a field day at NSO in the Bears Reserve Grade demolishion of Manly bagging 3 tries.

I am watching with interest the proposed restructure to the English Super League for season 2014 to accommodate 24 teams. What is being proposed are two divisions of 12 teams. Super League 1 and Super League 2. Two teams will be relegated. Each year initially there will be a 11 round competition where a Top 8/Botton 4 for SL1 will be decided and a Top 4/Bottom 8 for SL2. Then there will be 3 x 8 team competitions home and away for remainder of the year. The middle competition for the bottom 4 SL1 and top 4 SL2 clubs basically becomes and promotion relegation competition for the following year as the Top 4 will be promoted to SL1. It will be interesting to see the effect on crowds and sponsors for teams in the bottom 8 of SL2

Statistically it was a improved effort by Souths but they did drift back into the realms of a poor performance laste in the first half and there were 3 no tries to the opposition. Completion rates was improved this week to 74% and error improved to 13 but will not be good enough against the better teams. Souths Effective 1st tackle for the match improved but was still poor at 35.7m on the back of a poor 40.0m in the second half. 13 missed tackles was the best thus far this season and only 8 opposition offloads meant we closed down a lot of second phase play.

Looking at our left side defence - Merritt-Goodwin-Sutton-McQueen (0-1-1-1) was great again at 3 from 3 missed tackles last week. On the right side Everingham-Champion-Reynolds-Teo (0-1-1-0) was great at 2 from 5 missed tackles last week.

Our go forward was great this week at 1430m for the match. George Burgess and Te'o lead the way in the forwards was the best making 10+m per hitup. With George Burgess, Sam Burgess and Te'o making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively Luke was our best in the tackling raking up 34 tackles. With Luke, Asotasi, Te'o, Sam Burgess, Clark, Merritt and Everingham not missing a tackle.