5th April 2017
It was the first time in a long time that all fams and players were glued to the BOM weather channel watching how the Townsville weather pattern would play out. Cycle Debbie was schedule to reach land fall a few days before the game and had Townsville in its sights. Luckily for the folk of Townsville the cyclone diverted south at the last minute. But the distration was sufficient to curtail Souths chances as we we lost our match, but put in a strong effort. But it was again a game of two key missed tackles that lead to Cowboys tries while we missed a key chance.
It had been over 2831 days between NRL matches for Anthony Cherrington. Who put in a strong performance in his debut as the 1133rd FG Rabbitoh. He now needs to work on improving his NRL level match fitness.
It was a nostalgic return to Chatswood Oval for Rugby League. It has been 81 years since a top level rugby league grade match has been played at this old ground. But unluckily for the Bears they were pipped in the last few minutes after missing several chances. But just like North sydney Oval the cricket pitch once again played a big factor in the game.
Its been a tough old season forour first Rabbitohs womens team. After some strong early season performances, hey struggled against the better sides. Injuries were a issue in this new grade as we had many stoppages during 4 x 9 min quarters and players struggled to complete in the 9s format for the extra duration. Which was evident is the volume of score blow outs. But for our girls well done in the first hit out and lets hope they have a strong future.
On Nov 1 2016 the NRL started accepting player contracts for season 2018. The problem was no one knew how the $7 mil salary cap would increase under the new TV deal. 6 months later and we still have no confirmation on what changes will be setup for the 2018 salary cap. Some clubs have left to second guess what the cap will be. It is being reported that some clubs have assumed the cap to $10 mil in 2018 and have signed players accordingly. This week numbers of $8.84 mil have been discussed. This uncertainty is going to cause problems as clubs could be forced to offload players just to fit within the 2018 salary cap, and those offloaded players may not have a ability to obtain contracts as other clubs are max'd out on their salary cap. The NRL needs to sort out this mess urgently before we arive at a situation where the salary cap cannot be inforced.
Round 5 - Stat Attack
Statistically a strong effort but during the back end of the first half the team struggled Completion rates were dropped to a poor level of 74% from 75% last week. Errors were improved at 12 from 14 last week. We gave away 5 penalities up from 4 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle dropped into a poor level of 35.6m from 26.0m last week. Our missed tackles dropped into poor level of 30 missed tackles from 25 last week. Opposition offloads improved to 6 from 11 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - Goodwin-Jennings-Walker-Sutton (1-2-4-1) was dropped to 8 from 5 missed tackles last week. On the right side Burns-Talakai-Reynolds-Turner (1-0-2-2) was improved to 5 from 9 missed tackles last week. Ruck defence TBurgess/Musgrove-Cook/Farah-SBurgess/Cherrington-Crichton/Clark (1-4-4-7) dropped to 16 from 12 missed tackles last week.
Our go forward this week dropped to 1499m from 1634m. Tom Burgess, Sutton, Farah and Talakai made 10+m per run. Sam Burgess, Tom Burgess, Musgrove, Clark, Johnston, Jennings and Talakai making 100+m in the match. Defensively Cook was our best in the tackling raking up 53 tackles. With Talakai, Faraha and Musgrove not missing a tackle.