31st August 2016
Souths have started to hit some form late in season and in doing so scored our biggest win over Newcastle in Newcastle. Its now 3 from 3.It is no co-incidence That the results have come while we play matches with a settled 17 man squad.
Its been over a year but Aaron Gray looks like he has found his position in the team as a left center. His defence has been outstanding and running has been powerful.
The last round and the Bears were denied a position in the final after 2 last minutes controversial referee calls in the last two games that directly denied a win in the last minute of each game. But after a good start to the year the way the team fell away in the second half of the year was disappointing.
Congratulations to Chad O'Donnell on being selected as captain of the u20s team. His abaility in the halves and outstanding goal kicking has been a highlight in a poor year.
Imagine being a player who has just turned 21 like Liam Coleman. Your a potential late bloomer but not ready for Reserve Grade. What do you do ? At the moment the only option is to go and play park football. After being in a professional U20s squad, this is such a poor option for young players who just quit the game instead. Instead we should be trying to work through this development gap in the game and re-establish a U23s or U22s grade.
Round 25 - Stat Attack
Statistically we dropped a notch against weaker opposition. Completion rates dropped to 80% from 83% this week. Errors were increased to 11 from 8 last week. We gave away 9 penalities compared to 4 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle dropped to a average, mn level of 30.0m from 29.5m last week. Our missed tackles dropped to 17 missed tackles from 16 last week. Opposition offloads were improved to 7 from 16 last week.
Looking at our left side defence -JBurgess-AGray-Walker-Sutton (2-1-2-2) was dropped to 7 from 2 missed tackles last week. On the right side Johnston-HHunt-Reynolds-Turner (2-0-2-0) improved to 4 from 5 missed tackles last week. Ruck defence GBurgess/Clark-Cook-TBurgess/Musgrove-SBurgess (2-0-1-1) was good at 4 missed tackles this week.
Our go forward this week improved to 1580m. Tom Burgess, Inglis, Joe Burgess and Johnston made 10+m per run. Tom Burgess, Sam Burgess, Musgrove, Inglis, Johnston and Aaron Gray making 100+m in the match. Defensively Cook was our best in the tackling raking up 38 tackles. With Cook,Brown, Musgrove and Hymel Hunt not missing a tackle.