16th May 2018
Souths took on the high flying competition leaders Dragon team and for 68 minutes held them to zero with a very strong defensive display. Only a try from a Souths attacking error allowed them to open their account. With Sam Burgess abck and assisted by Murray and Clark helped plug the middle in a defnsive display that has everyone talking. Its now off to Townsville for a clash of styles against the 2017 runners up, who banked on size for their campaign. Battle for the Top 4 is hotting up with only a points differential keeping Souths out. We still need 7 more wins to make the finals.
Twins powering
Tom and George have been a revelation in 2017. The new expansive game Souths are playing has greatly assisted the middle men. It has spread defenders and opening up space for Tome and George to capitalise. Stats are showing a increase their personal go forward, which is greatly assiting the team.
Curtis Returns
A blast from the past returned to Bears camp this week. Curtis Johnston left to try his luck in the Qld Cup but has returned to the Bears after a mini injury crisis in the backline. Curtis is strong running left winger who will now get a opportunity to complete playing 100 graee games for the Bears.
Girls draw
After the bye, our W-NSWRLteam took the opportunity to give a number of players a rest on Mothers Day. Maddie Studdon was given the captaincy reigns. We fielded a team with many new faces or fringe players. After being on top for almot the whole game, a late try almost saw the girls lose the game. The girls now move into their rep season.
Heffron Development begins
It been a long time coming but council approval was obtained during the past week and contruction work will get underway. Its good to see the first signs of contruction with the site being cleared as the site prepares for its first major foundation work. We will monitor its progress with much interest.
Round 10 - Stat Attack
Statistically a drop from last week against better opposition Completion rates dropped to 73% from 94% last week. Errors increased to 14 from 5 last week. With Walker making a unchariactistic 6 errors. We gave away 8 penalties up from 6 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle dropped to a average level of 31.4m from 23.1m last week. Our missed tackles dropped to very poor level of 37 from 30 missed tackles last week. Opposition offloads increased to 15 from 8 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - Hunt-Inglis-Walker-Sutton/SBurgess (1-2-3-4) was steady at 10 missed tackles again this week. On the right side Graham-Gagai-Reynolds-Crichton (1-4-1-2) was steady at 8 missed tackles again this week. Ruck defence TBurgess/Tatola-Cook-GBurgess/Clark-SBurgess/Murray (3-2-5-7) was dropped to 17 from 10 last week.
Our go forward this week dropped to 1594m from 1824m last week. Crichton, Sutton, Tom Burgess, George Burgess, Inglis and Graham made 10+m per run. Crichton, Sam Burgess, Sutton, Hunt, Gagai and Graham making 100+m in the match. Defensively Cook was our best in the tackling raking up 43 tackles. No one didn't miss a tackle.