Souths recorded their 3rd win over St George-Illawarra in season 2014. This is the first time this hs occurred against the new merged entity in a season. Again this game looked to have impacted by the winter dew. With this good win Souths have also moved back into the Top 4 for the first time this season.
Issac Luke made a welcome return to first grade this week and you see the immediate impact he mad imrpoving our ruck go forward.
Its only his second hit out in first grade and already we saw the impact he contribute to the team. Some strong runs with three tries being scored immediately after one of his hitups as he sucked in defenders.
Irae Simone continues to impress in his games at U20's. Last weekend he passed the 100 points for the season after scoring a try and 2 goals. The first for any oneone across the 5 grades.
State of Origin this year has risen another level and was a brutal contest with a significant number of players forced out with injury for their club commitments. Time we seriously start looking at playing SOO on stand alone representative weekends and start protecting the players.
Statistically again we were able to control the game on the back of forward power. Many errors this week were attacking errors rather then errors in our own half. Completion rates however was poor at 66% but we made a poor 14 errors but only conceeded 2 penalties our best result so far this year. Souths Effective 1st tackle for the match was vastly improved at 27.9m our best so far this year. Missed tackles were improved at 11 missed tackles this week. And we allowed reduced our opposition offloads back to 9.
Looking at our left side defence - Reddy-Auva'a-Sutton-Turner (0-0-0-1) was outstanding at 1 missed tackle. On the right side Merritt-Walker-Reynolds-Teo (1-1-0-1) also improved to 3 missed tackles this week.
Our go forward improved to almost our best for the year at 1480m. Inglis, Reddy, Walker and Teo leading the way in the go forward all making 10+m per run. With George, Sam, Tom Burgess, Inglis, Auva'a and Walker making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively Sam Burgess was our best in the tackling raking up 39 tackles. With Reddy, Auva'a, Sutton, Reynolds, Luke, Koroisau, Clark and McQueen not missing a tackle.