3rd May 2016
Suprisingly it was a strong game statistically but kick defence was very poor letting in 4 tries directly from kicks. But in the end the most telling item is that we let a team that had just been beaten by 60, last week, get to a 20 point start. A Top 4 finish is starting to look impossible as we are now 8 points a drift. Still 10 more wins out of 15 games to qualify for the finals. Its starting to get tough.
Congratulations to all 7 players on th test selections. Greg Inglis once again for Australia and Kirisomi Auva'a on his test debut for Samoa. From Reserve Grade we see Oldfield and Langi again selected for Tonga, Moceidreke and Dokonivalu make thier debuts for Fiji and Miski debuts for Lebanon.
Aaron Gray and Nathan Brown have been awarded for a solid start to teh season with their first senior representative jumpers in the NSW City Origin squad. And Damien Cook has been called in as 18th man for NSW Country.
And finally Cottrell has been rewarded with a call up on the bench for Fiji in his test debut.
Our U18 SG Ball team bowed out after a very strong season in another close final loss. M.Hiroti had the distinction of racking up 150 points for the season. Looking forward to seeing some of the boys stepping up into U20s as the season progresses.
So Parramatta lose 12 compeition points after breaching the $6.1 mil Salary Cap by $570k and stripped of their 2016 9s title, after multiple years of salary cap rorting. This is now the forth Salary Cap issue from the Bulldogs, Warriors and Canberra, all around Third Party agreement issues. But what has the NRL learnt? It is difficult to police the TPA's and we need to allow TPA's as the are real jobs for part-time footballers. But we need a a way monitor TPA's better as there are too many loopholes. We don't want to discourage TPA's, as it bring more money into the game but it is creating a uneven playing field. Salary Cap was brought in to stop clubs going financially bust, but without the penalty of relegation for mismanagement, there isn't a big enough penalty for clubs.
Round 9 - Stat Attack
Statistically it was good game, but we continue to yo-yo this season. Completion rates dropped to 84% from 66% this week. Errors dropped to 5 from 12 last week. We gave away 2 penalities compared to 9 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle improved to a good level at 29.2m from 47.8m last week. Our missed tackles increased to 22 missed tackles from 18 last week. Opposition offloads dropped to 4 from 5 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - Neilsen-Goodwin-Keary-Grevsmuhl (0-0-1-1) improved to 2 from 5 missed tackles last week. On the right side AGray-Auvaa-Reynolds-Turner (2-3-6-1) dropped to 12 missed tackles from 7 last week.
Our go forward this week improved to 1510m. Our 2nd best this year. Brown, George Burgess, Siolo and Inglis made 10+m per hitup. With Sam Burgess, George Burgess, Brown, Tom Burgess, Inglis and Gray making more that 100+m in the match. With Inglis making more than 200+m. Defensively Cook was our best in the tackling raking up 42 tackles. With McInnes, Brown, George Burgess, Siolo, Inglis, Neilsen and Goodwin not missing a tackle.