23rd May 2018
What a dramatic end to a game. Souths dominated early but when reduced to 15 men, after losing AJ and Sam Burgess, struggled to contain a fast finishing Cowboys outfit. But Souths never gave up. In a last despeate ply the found a way to get hold of the ball off a drop out, and were able to work thei way up field to be in position for a last second field goal, when a offside penalty was awarded to win the game after the bell After a dramatic weekend of results, Souths have moved into the Top 4 outright. Now for a trip over the ditch, as this weekend sees all of the Top 4 teams playing each other. We still need 6 more wins to make the finals.
GI back to fullback
When AJ went off with a hamstring strain Souths needed to do a reshuffle. It a emergency call, GI was asked to go back to his old fullback role. His first game since having his knee injury. It worked wonders as GI slotted back into his fullback role and was at his attacking best. He made a number of long breaks that had the opposition guessing.
Curtis Hattrick
It was only a week back and already Curtis has slotted stright backinto his point scoring best. He scored a hatrick out wide but his 3 tries and Hawkins double still weren't good enough on the day.
Preece Hattrick
After leaving the Souths system Kurtis Preece came back with Willie Peters. On the weekend Preece who has been playing a leading role in the 20s bagged 3 ties also in a game the Bears lead early but couldn't hang on.
Carney signing fallout
What a week it has been offield at "feeder" system management levels. During the week there have been strong rumours that the Bears had signed Todd Carney, only to see Souths distance themselves publically from any involvement and to not support the move. This has placed signficant strain the Souths-Norths feeder relationship that s contracted for the 2018-19 seasons. So much so, there has been communications with Souths Juniors and Cabramatta to fill the void in 2019. While Norths are looking at linking up with Easts after their falling out with Wyong.
Round 11 - Stat Attack
Statistically it was a poor game on the back of a ordinary second half. Completion rates improved to 74% from 73% last week. Errors dropped to 12 from 14 last week. We gave away 10 penalties up from 8 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle dropped to a very poor level of 43.1m from 31.4m last week. Our missed tackles impoved to good level of 23 from 37 missed tackles last week. Opposition offloads dropped to 4 from 15 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - Hunt-Inglis/Doueihi-Walker-Sutton (0-1-0-0) was improved to 1 from 10 missed tackles last week. On the right side Graham-Gagai-Reynolds-Crichton (2-3-2-1) was steady at 8 missed tackles again this week. Ruck defence TBurgess/Tatola-Cook-GBurgess/Clark-SBurgess/Murray (2-2-2-2) was improved to 8 from 17 last week.
Our go forward this week dropped to 1185m from 1594m last week. Cook, Hunt and Inglis made 10+m per run. Inglis and Hunt making 100+m in the match. Defensively Cook was our best in the tackling raking up 47 tackles. Tom Burgess, Sutton, Murray, Doueihi, Walker, Hunt and Johnston didn't miss a tackle.