13th May 2015
It was vitally important to get that win on the weekend to maintain our contact with teh Top 4 teams. In what will now be a very tough road through the SOO period and with Souths in a injury crisis, we are still 8 wins away from qualifying for the finals in 2015 and a long road ahead.
Sutton left early in the game with a severe eye poke and was rushed to hospital for urgent checks. Luckly it was not as bad as first thought (8 week injury) and he was subsequently cleared. However Adam Reynolds was not as lucky, fracturing his thumb at around the 20 minute mark. He is now out for 6 to 8 weeks once again. At least this will allow his knee to properly heal.
In a see-sawing match our U20's playing held on to win at Redfern in a important win to stay in contention for a final 8 spot.
Congratulations to our U18's who worked their way up into the Grand Final but were not able to win it in the end. The team were U16 grand finalists two years ago and continue to impress. Expect to see a few of the team step up in the coming weeks.
In the modern day of Rugby League we still have the horrid 5 day turnaround. As Souths now travel for a huge game in Melbourne. The NRL need to abolish MNF and return insist that all games have a 6 day turnaround minimum. This will also end the crazy 10 day turnarounds as well.
Statistically Round 9 stats after the rep weekend off were much better. Completion rates were back up to 89% this week. Errors dropped again to 4 from 14 last week. We gave away 6 penalities this week compared to 9 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle for the improved to 32.4m from 36.1m last week. Our missed tackles dropped to 24 missed tackles from 32 last week. But with all the improvements we allowed 18 opposition offloads compared to 3 last week. Our worst all season.
Looking at our left side defence - AGray-Goodwin-Keary-Sutton/Grevsmuhl (1-1-5-4) increased this week to 11 from 9 missed tackles last week. On the right side Johnston-Walker-Reynolds-McQueen (1-1-2-2) improved to 6 from 10 missed tackles last week.
Our go forward was dropped this week to 1271m this week. Sutton, McQueen, Grevsmuhl, Goodwin, Johnston, Keary and Reynolds lead the way in making 10+m per hitup. With Lowe, George Burgess, Grevsmuhl, Grant, Tom Burgess and Inglis making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively Lowe was our best in the tackling raking up 39 tackles. With George Burgess, McInnes, Sutton, Grant and Inglis not missing a tackle.
Signing off for another week - the midweek Cyber View from the Hill