30th March 2016
After losing all 5 day turnarounds in 2015 Souths once again lost. We continued to provide field position through dropped balls and penalities. Under the new interchange rules, doing this in the first 30 min of the game is having a big effect on the defending team. After leading the competetion we have now dropped to 7th and in a dog fight to maintain a top 8 position. Still 11 more wins to qualify for the finals.
Michael Oldfield became our 1118th First Grade Rabbitoh player on the weekend.After a hesitant start after returningfrom the ESL he finished with a try on Souths debut.
After returning back into the Souths system Patrice Siolo has been impressive in his defensive work rate in the left second row position.
U18s captain Cameron Murray has pushed his way up into the U20s starting side after 2 games on the U20s bench. He is performing very solidly and it will be interesting ifhe returns to the U18s finals series in a few weeks.
Our U16s put on a cricket score in their win over the Liverpool based South-West Sydney Academy. Savage bagging 3 tries in their 72 point win. Whileour differential is good we are still 3 points out of the 8 with two rounds to play.
After a few weeks of the bunker vido referee process, its interesting to sit back and do a review. Deciisions seem to be working quicker, but we started seeing some take just as long as before when the decision was inconclusive from a video perspective. But one thing we do need to introduce is a soccer style offline line. This can be used to check if players are onside when a kick occurs or in the defensive line.
Round 4 - Stat Attack
Statistically again we had a horror first half but improved in the second. Completion rates dropped to 74% from 81% this week. Errors increasing to 10 from 9 last week. We gave away 4 penalities compared to 14 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle improved but was still at a poor level at 36.5m from 39.8m last week. With a horrid first half of 49.6m once again. Our missed tackles dropped to 21 missed tackles from 16 last week. Opposition offloads increased to 9 from 8 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - AGray-Goodwin-CWalker-KTurner (0-2-3-1) increased to 6 from 1 missed tackles last week. On the right side Oldfield-HHunt-Keary-Carter/Auvaa (2-0-2-3) improved to 7 missed tackles from 8 last week.
Our go forward was steady this week at 1335m. Tyrrell and Walker made 10+m per hitup. With Grevsmuhl, Brown, Inglis, Hymel Hunt and Walker making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively Brown was our best in the tackling raking up 42 tackles. With McInnes, Clark, Aaron Gray and Hymel Hunt not missing a tackle.