2nd September 2015
It was a poor day in the office as Souths sufferred their worst ever defeat under Michael Maguire. Everything they tried to do backfired and while dominating the early part of the game were down 3 tries to nil. Souths crashed out of the Top 4 and are now running 7th but will need results to go their way to finish any higher on the table.
Just when we need to get all hands back on deck for the finals injuries look like they may cruel our season. With Aaron Gray, Inglis and now Sutton injured this was made worse when Luke got suspended. Our depth is now being tested.
The regular season of NSW Cup is now over and its time for NSW Cup finals. The Bears are now back in the finals after a very good second half of the season on the back of new halve comination Cody Walker and Darren Nicholls. Focusing on youth looks like it will provide longer term benefits with players liek Musgrove, Suamamoa, Crichton and Gosiewski showing the abilities at this next level, with Clayton Williams snapping at their heals.
Finally after 10 losses many of them narrow losses our U20s outfit finally put it together to win a game. Pity it will be to no avail as other results meant that they wrapped up the wooden spoon a week early.
There is a huge way of discontent brewing over the way NSW lower grade structure is being proposed by the ARLC strategic committee. There is a push to include Fiji and 2 new NSW country teams and have all NSW Cup teams not to be aligned with NRL clubs. With the proposal to abolise NYC this is causing a real issue in NSW with there being too big a gap between U18's 9 round comp and NSW Cup.
The real answer going forward is National Reserve Grade and National U20s played on match day with NRL and then the proposed ARLC structure will work.
Statistically Round 25 were poor this week. Completion rates dropped to a very poor 68% this week. Errors increased to 12 from 8 last week. We gave away 4 penalities again this week. Souths Effective 1st tackle dropped to a very poor level at 42.0m from 31.1m last week. With the second half our second worst all year at 52.4m. Our missed tackles were increased to 39 missed tackles from 35 last week. Which is our worst all year. Opposition offloads decreased to 9 this week from 13 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - Reddy-Goodwin-Keary-Sutton (2-1-3-1) was steady on 7 missed tackles this week. On the right side Johnston-Auva'a-Reynolds-Stewart (0-2-4-2) were decreased to 8 missed tackles from 14 last week. With Reynolds very poor this week.
Our go forward dropped this week to 1307m this week. Luke, Sutton and Dylan Walker lead the way in making 10+m per hitup. With Tom Burgess, Clark and Dylan Walker making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively Stewart was our best in the tackling raking up 41 tackles. With Turner, Clark, Grant and Johnston not missing a tackle.
Signing off for another week - the midweek Cyber View from the Hill