20th April 2016
Not a good start on our Queensland 2 game road trip. We have to address our ruck defense woes. We are struggling to adjust to the 6 interchange rule change and injuries in our propr stocks has not helped either. But the biggest concern is our slump in defence. We have now allowed three 40 point drubbings in 10 games our worst since 2006. Only plus is that are still in 8 and players are starting to come back from injury. Still 10 more wins to qualify for the finals.
A very solid return by Adam Reynolds which has been good to see.
On the weekend former U16/18 player Patrice Siolo got his sniff of first grade with the Rabbitohs when he was brought up to Townsville as 19th man.
Our U20s put in a solid effort and came away with a great away win against one of best teams in the U20s.
A heartbreak extra time loss by our U18s team. But at least they get a chance to fight another day. This was always the concern by playing too many easy games during the season.
Its rep weekend time once again. But once again we get the situation of Islander players opting to play for Australian teams. This is impacting the development of the international game. Also we really need to move any Australian test matches to after SOO, which means post season. The natural build up test forball continues to be indermined by playing this test so early in the season.
Round 7 - Stat Attack
Statistically we again continue to have a defensive problems around the ruck. Completion rates dropped to 74% from 79% this week. Errors increased to 11 from 9 last week. We gave away 4 penalities compared to 3 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle improved to a very poor level at 40.8m from 30.1m last week. Our missed tackles improved to 21 missed tackles from 35 last week. Opposition offloads dropped to 4 from 9 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - Goodwin-Auvaa-Keary-Grevsmuhl (3-1-3-1) dropped to 8 from 6 missed tackles last week. On the right side AGray-HHunt-Reynolds-KTurner (1-1-0-0) improved to 2 missed tackles from 7 last week.
Our go forward this week dropped to 1169m. The worst all year. Dave Tyrrell, Brown, Inglis, Aaron Gray, Keary and Reynolds made 10+m per hitup. With Sam Burgess and George Burgess making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively McInnes was our best in the tackling raking up 51 tackles. With Tyrrell, Turner, Clark, Brown, George Burgess and Reynolds not missing a tackle.