19th August 2015
what a powrful display by the Souths pack to stop Nth Qld and remind everyone that we are ready for this year title campaign. It was our first win up in Townsville for 7 years and our biggest ever up in Townsville. That means we have now qualified for the finals and can now focus on a Top 4 birth with 2 more wins out of 3 required. Now for a Grand Final rematch with the Dogs who are desperate to make 8th spot.
Its been almost a year but two significant contributers to Souths powerful display were Auva'a and Turner. Their power and size and freshness is a much needed boost coming into the end of the season.
Another win for the Bears and they are almost into the NSW Cup Top 8 just 1 win out of 2 games required.
Joel Reddy sent a timely reminder to everyone that he can still cut it with a great display and bagging 3 tries for the Bears.
A farce is the only way to describe the goings on this week since the adjustments to the shoulder charge rule adjustments. The MRC decided to charge 6 payers for shoulder chargers including 2 Souths players. The farce comes from the fact that "bracing" yourslf for impact with no forward "charge" movement is now considered a shoulder charge. 3 players took on the NRL and MRC at the judicary and all three successfully challenged their Grade 1 shoulder charges. The MRC continues to be a blight on the game with inapprpriate charging of players. Players who should be charged are not getting charged and causing knee jerk reactions from NRL management. While others get charged and get put in a position of having to accept incorrect charging so they can get a 25% early plea discount, and suffer loading at their next offence.
Statistically Round 23 stats improved this week. Completion rates improved to 85% this week. Errors decreased to 6 from 13 last week. We gave away 10 penalities again this week. Souths Effective 1st tackle improved to a average level at 34.7m from 45.0m last week. Our missed tackles were increased to 35 missed tackles from 34 last week. Which is still very poor. Opposition offloads increased to 9 this week from 8 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - Goodwin-Auvaa-Keary-Sutton/McQueen (2-3-5-2) increased this week to 12 from 4 missed tackles last week. On the right side Johnston-DWalker-Reynolds-Turner (1-4-3-1) were decreased to 9 missed tackles from 14 last week.
Our go forward increased this week to 1363m this week. Luke, Turner, Carter and Reynolds lead the way in making 10+m per hitup. With Tom Burgess, George Burgess, Grant, Luke, McQueen and Inglis and Johnston making more that 100+m in the match. Only one forward making 100+m again this week. Defensively Turner was our best in the tackling raking up 44 tackles. With Sutton amd Grant not missing a tackle.
Signing off for another week - the midweek Cyber View from the Hill