22nd April 2015
What a attrotious day a Shark Park. It was almost impossible to play this game in 70-80km/h gale force winds. Players coun't see as the rain was stinging their eyes. This game should have been called off with less than 4,000 fans braving the conditions. Our worst crowd since 1998.
It was good to see Dylan and Cody Walker back on the field. It was a important step for Souths to see both playing again. Cody was brought to the club as a fill in for Reynolds and Keary. Now with Reynolds out for a extended period its vitally important that Cody gets game time.
After a number of years of very poor performances Souths decided to promote Ben Gardiner up into Reseve Grade and Bears NSW Cup coaching role, to get our resreve grade structure back on the road again. It turned out to work wonders with the Bears smashing Roosters RG feeder team Wyong.
Well done to both our U18's and U16's team who both won their Preliminary Semi-Finals matchs and progressed to the next round.
I would like to congratulate the Sharks club who provided a live feed of the U20s game. This was a great innovation for those who could not make the game. The NRL should do this more often and broadcast all of the preliminary games in this manner. Now to just add a replay option so we can watch the game after we get home from work.
Statistically Round 7 in galeforce conditions were relatively good. It was another huge defensive effort and for the 3rd week in a row we have had to make 400+ tackles. Completion rates dropped to 78% this week. Errors dropped to 11 from 6 last week. We gave away 7 penalities this week compared to 8 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle for the improved to 35.3 from 39.3m last week. But it was a tale of two halves 49.7m in the first half and then 21.4 in the second. We also missed only 10 tackles which is in the very good range, but allowed 4 opposition offloads compared to 2 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - Johnston-Goodwin-Keary-McQueen (2-0-0-2) decreased this week to 4 from 5 missed tackles last week. On the right side Reddy-Walker-Luke/Inglis-Stewart (0-2-1-2) decreased to 5 from 7 missed tackles last week.
Our go forward was steady this week at 1261m this week. Keary and Brown lead the way in making 10+m per hitup. With Tom Burgess, Inglis, Reddy, George Burgss, Goodwin, and Johnston making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively Stewart was our best in the tackling raking up 59 tackles. With George Burgess, McInnes, Tyrrell, Clark, Inglis, Goodwin, Reddy, Grevsmuhl, Grant and Brown not missing a tackle.
Signing off for another week - the midweek Cyber View from the Hill