After so many season endin gdisappointments since 2007 against Manly we blew them off the park. The combinations of Keary/reynolds in teh halves and Sutton in teh second row provided a dynamic attack that Manly could not match as we rattled up a 40 nil lead. Now for a week off and Ben Teo will make a timely return. Now lets hope its 3rd time lucky as we once again prepare for the Grand Final qualifier match. But it was not good how we leaked 24 points late in the game.

Adam Reynolds importance to the team was highlighted big time over the last two weeks. We lacked a good kicking game against in the Round 26 game and this game back in a quality manner this week

Alex Johnston bagged another two tries to go to equal top try scorer for the year in the NRL

After a slow start the U20 boys got going a briefly took the lead but it was enough in the end having a narrow loss and bowing out of the semi-final race. The boys had a good season after a slow start and did us all proud.

There was contreversy over playing the Souths v Manly game at the SFS rather than Brookvale Oval. For a few season when the 8 team series was introduced games were played at home venues. But many of these suburban venures cannot hold more that 15-19,000 people so the NRL moved these games back to the bigger venues in Sydney which are the SFS and ANZ Stadium. This was vindicated when a crowd record 25,733 for a Souths v Manly game at the SFS turned up. At Brookvale Oval the ground record is only 20,532 and only 19,785 were allowed in for the similar 2007 Quarter Final before the gates were closed.

Statistically we were strong for 65 min and then let things lip in the last 15 min. Letting in 24 points was not a good way to finish, what was a great game. Completion rates dropped to 77% our error count increased to a poor 12 and we conceeded only 3 penalties. Souths Effective 1st tackle for the match dropped to at 28.2m, on the back of a great 1st half of 19.8m. Missed tackles improved to a great 16 missed tackles this week. And our opposition offloads were still very poor at 11.

Looking at our left side defence - Johnston-Auvaa-Keary-Sutton (1-2-0-0) was improved to 3 missed tackles from 10 last week. On the right side Tuqiri-Walker-Reynolds-Turner (3-3-1-1) dropped to 8 from 9 missed tackles this week.

Our go forward dropped to a poor at 1281m. With Inglis, Johnston, Auva'a and Luke all making 10+m per run. With Inglis, Luke, Sam Burgess, Auva'a and Johnston making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively Turner was our best in the tackling raking up 40 tackles. With Inglis, Keary, Tyrrell, Sutton, Sam Burgess, Clark, McQueen and Luke Burgess not missing a tackle.

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