What a great day up in Cairns on the weekend. This was a record win for Souths over Newcastle in what was a dominate display. Our forwards just paved the way with a crushing display, where our backline finished it off. But even though we won by 50 this week were relegated back to second best attacking team in the competition when the Warriors won by 54. We are still 4 points behind leaders Manly but with one more win required to secure a semifinal position.

Alex Johnston after 10 games in the top grade has become the 3rd best ever try scorer after his hatrick on the weekend. He has now scored 14 tries to move up into 2nd on the premiership try scorer list. The best ever was done by 10 players scoring 15 tries the last to do so was back in 1910.

Tom Burgess finally scored his debut try in First Grade when he reached out with one hand to score under the posts. Lets hope he now joins the try scoring battle with his brothers.

Chris McQueen showed some great soccer skills when he kicked a ball of the ground into the waiting arms of Dylan Walker to score a great try. Might get a call up from European soccer clubs.

Now that we move into Friday and Thursday games for the rest of the season, we need to address the all weekend wait for the MRC to issue their penalties. The media have a field day with issues over the weekend and predujce the outcome. If we can have video referees then we should be able to complete a MRC review with 4 hours of the conclusion of the game.

Statistically it was our best game for the year Completion rates were the best this season at 89% our error count was also the best of the season at 4 and we conceeded 6 penalties. With no errors and 100% completions in the first half. Souths Effective 1st tackle for the match improved to 23.1m with the first half being the best all year at 15.9m. Missed tackles dropped again to 18 missed tackles this week. And our opposition offloads dropped back to 7.

Looking at our left side defence - Johnston-Auvaa-Keary-Turner (0-1-3-1) improved to 5 missed tackles from 8 missed tackle last week. On the right side Tuqiri-Walker-Reynolds-Lowe (1-1-2-1) was steady at 5 missed tackles this week.

Our go forward was the second best this year to 1582m. With Johnston, Walker, Tuqiri, Keary and Luke all making 10+m per run. With Tom and George Burgess, Luke, Johnston, Walker, Inglis and Tuqiri making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively Turner was our best in the tackling raking up 28 tackles. With Tyrrell, Picker, Clark, Luke Burgess, Inglis and Johnston not missing a tackle.

Signing off for another week - the midweek Cyber View from the Hill