8th April 2015
What a horrid act by James Graham resulted in a dramatic ending to the game. It a delibrate ploy Graham lauched himself at Reynolds legs and took out the Souths playmakers legs which resulted in a penalty in front of the posts for Souths to win the game. But what is more disturbing is that we are now without our main playmaker for up to 8 weeks while the incident only resulted in a 1 week penalty for the Bulldogs player.
This could become a habit as Dave Tyrrell was first try scorer in this game. Lets keep it up Super Caveman.
While we lost Reynolds we saw the return of two players for the Bears on the weekend with Tuakafa and Ed Murphy making a return from injury.
Congratulations to our SG Ball U18 boys who once again won on the weekend and moved into the Top 4 and by doing so also secured the finals position with one round remaining.
What a farce the MRC has become. Inconisistency in what gets charged and what doesn't has totally confused the fans. Previously this was headed up by the referees but now its headed up by former players. What is happening is a completely different set of rules are being applied and we need to bring the referees and MRC representatives (former players) on the same page when deciding if a incident should be charged ad the grading. Some weeks we see players injuries taken into account other times it is not. I beleive the MRC is a extension of the Video Refereeing process and should be headed up by the Referees with refrees and former players working together to decide on the gradings.
Statistically Round 5 was a improvement on last week. Completion rates were steady at 78% this week. Errors improved to 11 from 14 last week. We also improved only giving away 7 penalities this week compared to 9 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle for the improved slightly to 37.6m from 40.2 last week. We however missed 33 tackles which is in the poor range but improved in only allowing 11 opposition offloads compared to 13 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - Johnston-Goodwin-Keary/Inglis-McQueen (0-2-4-2) decreased this week to 8 from 9 missed tackles last week. On the right side Reddy-Millard-Reynolds-Stewart/Lowe (3-2-2-4) increased to 11 from 6 missed tackles last week.
Our go forward improved back to good levels at 1378m this week. Johnston, Stewart, Reynolds, Inglis and Grevsmuhl lead the way in making 10+m per hitup. With George Burgss, Grevsmuhl, Tom Burgess, Johnston and Inglis making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively George Burgess and Lowe was our best in the tackling raking up 36 tackles. With Clark, Grant, Lowe and Johnston not missing a tackle.
Signing off for another week - the midweek Cyber View from the Hill