25th July 2018
Former 2018 playe Roobie Farah came back to bite us as he lead the Wests-Tigers to end our unbeaten run. The loss spoilt the huge build up that had been occuring off field for John Sutton's 300th. There was potentially too much focus on this major milestone than on the game. It was our first true test in weeks against a potential semi-final level opponent. Still a lot work to do. We still need 3 more wins for a Top 4 finish.
Alex Johnston 100th Game
How time flies. It was midway through 2014 when a young Alex Johnston burst onto the scene and immediately became a try scoring wizard. This wek he celebrates his 100th first grade premiership match and has a great strike rate scoring 77 tries to date. Expecting to see many more to come and well on track to surpase 100 tries in the next few years.
Kennar and Gagan return
After many weeks on the sidelines finally two of backupstars retun back from injury. good to see the troops staring to return as we head into the all importat run into the finals.
Now for the Finals Girls
The girls had the first week off and now are playing in a Top 5 structure major semi-final for the right to be the first team into the grand final. We wish the girls all the best as we are all looking forward to see them through to the Grand Final.
No Sutton Testimonal Farce
There are fundanmental issues around how players like Cameron Smith and John Thurstn can have a salary cap exempt testimonial while 15 year long serving 300 game player the first ever Rabbitoh to do so cannot have one beacuse he was only selected as 18th man for SOO. The NRL has deemed that playing City Originand in the green and gold PMXIII match does count as a representataive match. There needs to be a better way to acknowledge a player, than a NRL driven Testimonial. As the old fashioned Testimonial was about giving a player some retirement cash for life post football. While today's player have earns well in excess of a few million by the time they would be considered for a Testimonial. So retirement money is no longer a requirement. But what is requied is the ability for a club to honor a long serving player without the NRL deciding who qualifies based upon the type of representative jumper he wore. 15 years(2nd most for a Rabbitoh) and 300 games(most for Rabbitoh) in 110 years of Rabbitohs history, easily qualifies fom a South Sydney club perspective.
Round 19 - Stat Attack
Statistically another average game. Completion were steady at 73% again this week. Errors improved to 12 from 13 last week. We gave away 6 penalties down from 7 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle improved but still in a average level of 31.6m from 32.5m last week. Our missed tackles dropped to a poor level of 39 missed tackles from 32 last week. Third worst for the season. Opposition offloads improved to 9 from 21 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - Jennings-Hunt/Doueihi-Walker-Sutton (0-2-4-2) was dropped to 8 from 7 missed tackles last week. On the right side Graham-Gagai-Reynolds-Crichton (2-6-4-3) was dropped to 15 from 8 missed tackles last week. Ruck defence TBurgess/Tatola-Cook-GBurgess/Clark-SBurgess/Murray (6-0-4-6) was was steady at 16 missed tackles again this week.
Our go forward dropped to 1600m from 1930m last week. George Burgess and Jennings made 10+m per run. Sutton, Crichton, Sam Burgess, George Burgess, Cook, Jennings, Alex Johnston and Graham making 100+m in the match. Defensively Sam Burgess was our best in the tackling raking up 43 tackles. Murray, Tatola, Cook, Jennings and Alex Johnston didn't miss a tackle.