A titanic battle saw Souths take control and win over the Bulldogs and secure a Top 4 finish. It was a controlled win and a good prepration for the finals. This weekend sees a replay of last years battle for the Minor Premiership with the winner of the Round 26 clash taking the lead and hoping that Manly falter. 3 Top 4 finishes in 3 years has shown the ability of Michael Maguire as a coach.

Sam Burgess stamped his authority as the best English forward in the game once again with a great display this week and getting tries once again against the Bulldogs.

After almost 3 seasons we will play our first game without our halfback Adam Reynolds who is out suspended. Captain Sutton is rushed back to cover. Also Teo is also out for 3 weeks. It going to get tough as we enter the finals.

Our affiliate Reserve Grade club the North Sydney Bears ended a misserable season in last place. They playing group as a whole were just not up to NSW Cup standard and it showed. Better luck next year.

Another win over the weekend has moved our boys into equal 8th with one game to go in a 5 way batle for 2 spots. Lets hope they can win their way through.

To allow for the new Australian Championships, NSW Cup and Qld Cup have finished a week in advance of the NRL season. Both NSW Cup and QLD Cup have 13 teams in their competitions. We seriosuly need to find a way to bring locations like Darwin, Perth, Adelaide, Western Division, Northern Division, North Coast and Riverina into these competitions.

Statistically again a strong game, with our ability to control the game in the second half a telling factor Completion rates dropped to 77% our error count steady at 8 and we conceeded 6 penalties. Souths Effective 1st tackle for the match was much improved at 23.4m. With a great second half at 18.3m. Missed tackles dropped to a poor 27 missed tackles this week. And our opposition offloads improved to 2.

Looking at our left side defence - Johnston-Auvaa-Keary-McQueen (0-2-4-4) dropped to a poor 10 missed tackles from 7 missed tackles last week. On the right side Tuqiri-Walker-Reynolds-Turner (1-2-0-1) improved to 4 from 5 missed tackles this week.

Our go forward was excellent at 1608m, 3rd best this season. With George Burgess, McQueen, Clark and Tuqiri all making 10+m per run. With Sam, George and Tom Burgess, Luke, McQueen, Clark, Inglis and Walker making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively Sam Burgess was our best in the tackling raking up 36 tackles. With Lowe, A.Johnston and Reynolds not missing a tackle.

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