25th March 2015
Well thats been a great start to 2015. With 3 from 3 and now 15 games undefeated in a row. 6 premiership, 6 9's, the WCC and 2 trials. The road gets tougher this week with our first 5 day turnaround and injuries mounting up but our Back-To-Back campaign remains on track.
Well done to our latest Rabbitohs Tim Grant who came into the team and had a blockbusting game. Then team looked a lot more balance with Grant in there to take some pressure off the Burgess twins.
What terrible news to hear that Dylan Walker has fractured his finger. Just like last year when he damaged his thumb he was a stand out player playing through the pain and scoring two tries.
After a slow start our U18 boys have rallied after the bye week with two wins and have snuck back into the top 8.
Over the first few rounds we have seen the return of Sunday Night Football. It has been great to be able to have games in this time slot. We really need to get rid of Monday Night Football and replace with Sunday Night Football.
Statistically Round 3 was a mix bag compared to round 2. Completion rates dropped to a poor level of 66% from 77% last week. Errors dropped to a very poor level at 16 from 9 last week. Our worst all year. We gave away on 9 penalities this week a drop from 9 penalties last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle for the match improved to at 30.9m from 35.7m last week. We made 16 missed tackles back in the very good range and we only allowed 9 opposition offloads.
Looking at our left side defence - Johnston-Goodwin-Keary-McQueen (0-1-2-2) decreased this week with 5 from 8 missed tackles last week. On the right side Reddy-Walker-Reynolds-Stewart (0-0-2-1) decreased to 3 from 6 missed tackles last week.
Our go forward improved again to 1531m this week. Goodwin, Walker, Luke and Tom Burgess lead the way in making 10+m per hitup. With Inglis, George Burgess, Tom Burgess, Walker, Goodwin, Luke, Grant and Clark making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively Luke was our best in the tackling raking up 39 tackles. With Johnston, Walker, Reddy, George Burgess, Tyrrell, McInnes and Clark not missing a tackle.
Signing off for another week - the midweek Cyber View from the Hill