28th January 2015
Well its time for the first weekend of the season and we kickoff with the second season of the NRL 9's over the ditch in Auckland. And we get a hugh surprise as Matt King comes out of retirement to join the 18 man squad. Welcome back Kingy, hair and all. Madge has selected a interesting mix of experiance and youth to be capatined by Issac Luke for the first time. Good luck to the boys.
This week Adam Reynolds and Luke Keary our halves combination for the finals series extended their stay here at Redfern. They didn't play many games together in 2014 but when they did Souths were on fire. It is looking good for season 2015.
We welcome new CEO John Lee to the Souths front office. He is stepping into big shoes after the departure of Richo. We will need to get our front office in order as Manly have now hired 3 former Souths officials and they are already raiding our player ranks. So first key step is stability as we end the season, address our key signings and under the new Packer-Crowe alignment everyone is hoping for a even bigger future.
Local boy Tom Hughes is the latest junior to get a call up into a FG squad. Tom is a strong fast winger from our U20's team last year and it will be interesting to see how he goes in the 9's.
There are some serious issues out in our affiliated states that the ARLC needs to address. Mid year last year the Northern Territory RL went financially bust and were bailed out. In Perth the NRL did a forced takeover of the WARL. But while all of that was going on Tasmanian RL competition fell over mid competition. After the recent success of getting the competition started and a Storm trial match with a good crowd, this has been a disaster for Rugby League that will take many years to recover from. We need to remember that you represent all of Australia in RL not just the NRL competition.
Signing off for another week - the midweek Cyber View from the Hill