29th March 2017
It was easy points through our inexperianced right side that made life extremely tough for us agaiinst the competition leaders. Once the Roosters got to a 14 point lead they then focused on stopping us from scoring to win the game in heavy conditions. Our right side depth is being tested in our injury and suspension crisis.
After a few games in Bears colours it was good to see Tom Burgess return to first grade with a strong performance.
While First Grade struggles, Reserve Grade feeder team the North Sydney Bears are off to a flyer winning from 4 from 4 to be co-leaders of the competition.
Our U20s team have won thier first match in style smashing the Roosters. They are taking time to establish combinations but there positive signs within this team for the future.
During the week the RLIF announce that 8 quarter finalists would obtain automatic qualification for the RLWC2021 competition. While there is no argument that the big 3 should auto qualify, we should only consider the top 4 as auto qualifying. We are taking away from making the RLWC Qualifier process a quality TV product We need to evolve to a qualifying process where all "qualifying" countries that meet the basic RL criteria are all given a fair opportunity to participate.
Round 4 - Stat Attack
Statistically good bar some soft tries Completion rates were improved to a average level of 75% from 63% last week. Errors were steady at 14 this week. We gave away 4 penalities up from 7 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle improved into a good level of 26.0m from 29.9m last week. Our missed tackles dropped into average level of 25 missed tackles from 23 last week. Opposition offloads increased to 11 from 8 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - Goodwin-Jennings-Walker-Sutton (0-3-1-1) was improved to 5 from 10 missed tackles last week. On the right side Mociedreke-Talakai-Reynolds-Turner (2-3-3-1) was dropped to 9 from 5 missed tackles last week. Ruck defence TBurgess/Musgrove-Farah/Cook-Clark/Rochow-SBurgess/Crichton (4-3-3-2) dropped to 12 from 7 missed tackles last week.
Our go forward this week improved to 1634m from 1344m. Farah, Cook, Rochow made 10+m per run. Musgrove, Rochow, Tom Burgess, Johnston, Walker, Goodwin, Jennings, Mociedreke making 100+m in the match. Defensively Farah was our best in the tackling raking up 38 tackles. With only Goodwin not missing a tackle.