8th March 2017
After all of the build up, the match was in tatters after only 15 minutes when Greg Inglis suffered a major injury followed very soon after by the concussion of Hymel Hunt. The reshuffle that then occured with Inglis hobbling on the right wing with no lateral movement and Turner at right centre exposed that side of the field and the Tigers exploited that weakness. Now to regroup after losing our captain.
The worst start to season for Greg Inglis ever in his career. Greg did his ACL in his good knee 8 minutes into the game. He bravely played on, even scoring atry. But the doctors confirmed the worst and Greg is now out for 6 months, which is basically the season for Souths. We now need to settle on a new fullback with Alex Johnston getting the first shot.
The big talking point is the drop in form of the Burgess twins, with George playing in the Bears last week and Tom this week. George has been struggling since his hip operation, and also has his wife expecting their first born. Tom is paying penalty for some poor defence last week. But both are international props and are expected to bounce back.
Cruz Topai-Aveai had his frist hitout on the weekend. And his impact was immediate scoring a try and creating another a great play up the middle. I'm looking forward to watching his development through the year.
One thing that came into question this week was the mediacl process around Greg Inglis's injury. Injury occured in the 7th minute of the game but it took Souths officials until the 58th minute, after 2 quick Tigers tries, to take Greg off. Whatever was the real reason, Greg was not good and after he struggled to run off the injury he should have come off or at worst not gone back on after half-time. This delayed replacement decision had us playing with 12 men for over 40 minutes, which you cannot do in the modern game.
Round 1 - Stat Attack
Statistically it was mixed bag. Good in general except for missed tackles. Completion rates were 88% this week. Errors were improved to 5 from 9 last week. We gave away 4 penalities same as last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle dropped into a good level of 28.1m from 35.7m last week. Our missed tackles dropped to a horendous 42 missed tackles from 34 last week. Opposition offloads were increased to 15 from 13 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - Goodwin-Talakai-Walker/Farah-Sutton (2-2-1-2) was improved to 7 from 10 missed tackles last week. On the right side Johnston/Inglis-HHunt/Turner-Kelly-Turner/SBurgess (4-6-2-4) was dropped to 17 from 5 missed tackles last week. Ruck defence Musgrove/TBurgess-Farah/Cook-Tyrrell/Rochow-SBurgess/Clark (7-3-3-3) was dropped to 16 from 13 missed tackles last week.
Our go forward this week dropped to 1432m. Farah, Turner, Cook and Inglis made 10+m per run. Musgrove, Tom Burgess, Sam Burgess, Talakai, Walker and Goodwin making 100+m in the match. Defensively Sutton was our best in the tackling raking up 36 tackles. With only Tyrrell not missing a tackle.