18th April 2018
Souths stood up without star Sam Burgess and Cam Murray to put in a performance worthy of the 110 year rivalry with the Tricolours. Fill in lock Jason Clark looked at home in his 150th match and showed he still can add value to this team. But it was the power of Tom and George Burgess who lead the way without brither Sam against the premiership favouites, in a display that made a statement on the new Souths under rookie coach Anthony Seibold.
Greg Inglis has been quiet as he played a cautious comeback this year from his major knee injury. But tonight it was glimpse of the GI of old when he lept high to take abomb and run freely over to score. Opposition better look out.
It was a game where the Bears were playing the high flying Wests and were 18 nil down. But then a comeback started and as the game was on the line in the last 15 min after Tracey went off, it was 18 year old Hawkins who took control kicking a vital goal and getting th team in position before kicking the winning field goal with 40 seconds on the clock. It was a game where he announced he was ready for the next level of reserve grade.
Our U18 9s goirls tried the best but it wasn't good enough to progress into the Top 6 finals round. Injuries hit the girls team hard later in the juniors season. The top try and point scorer was Tatum Allchin who scored 40 points via 10 tries.
The Womens continue to win but they got a scare on the weekend from Cabramatta. It was a tough close game after all of the emotional first few weeks A now for a 110 year re-match Souths v Norths.
This a intersting one. For Rugby league its important to grow the non-contactversion of sport on junior game days so that young mums have the option of their kids being able to choose a contact or non-contact version of Tough Football or League Tag. League Tag has been a huge success. And is having a postive impact on bringing families back to the junior game. But on NRL gameday its being used as a advertising tool, as a fan of 3 games on fan day its a concern that the NRL is turning off the diehard league fans. Fans love to see how they younger players are performing before they play NRL. But Touch Football and and W-NRL do not fill this gap.The NRL lost a large number of lower grade foolowers when they introduced a 45 min pre-game period of warm ups. The introduction of a non-spectator sport will drive away the few fans that were left from the pre-games and incrase the 15 min walk up fan pool. Or worse drive fans away and back into their lounge rooms.
Round 6 - Stat Attack
Statistically it was good performance, on the back of a strong first half. Completion rates improved to 83% from 76% last week. Errors dropped to 8 from 11 last week. We gave away 12 penalties up from 9 penalities last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle improved to a good level of 29.9m from 33.4m last week. Our missed tackles increased to a average level of 29 missed tackles from 24 last week. Opposition offloads were steady at 8 again this week.
Looking at our left side defence - Jennings-Inglis-Walker-Sutton (0-2-2-2) was increase to 6 from 5 missed tackles last week. On the right side Kennar-Gagai-Reynolds-Crichton (2-5-2-3) was dropped to 12 from 7 missed tackles last week. Ruck defence TBurgess/Nicholls-Cook-GBurgess/Tatola-Clark/Turner (5-0-3-3) was steady at 11 again this week.
Our go forward this week improved to 1742m from 1555m last week. Tom Burgess, Cook, George Burgess, Sutton, Clark, Tatola and Gagai made 10+m per run. Tom Burgess, Sutton, George Burgess, Cook, Clark, Tatola, Crichton, Gagai and Inglis making 100+m in the match. Defensively Cook was our best in the tackling raking up 45 tackles. Sutton, Nicholls, Tatola, Doueihi and Johnston not missing a tackle.