15th August 2018
One minute into the game and another backline injury when Alex Johnston went off. When you add this to Inglis, Graham and Jennings and first string replacement Doueihi meant that Souths had second or third string players playing in backline position for 79 minutes of this game against a Top 4 team. Add this to a uncharactistic 5 dropped balls by Sam Burgess killed off Souths hopes in this game. But the team hung in there and only lost by two penalty goals. Now for a trip up to Brisbane to face a desperate Brisbane team trying to hang onto their Top 8 spot. We still need 1 more win for a Top 4 finish. But after a number of results went our way we hang in there in second place.
Burns strong Game
After a strong performance back in Round 13 Braidon Burns was called back into the team, this timefor his first game a left centre in first grade. He had one of his best games for a long while with good runs, and setting up that try for Hunt was magic.
Injuries impact Bears run
With the reserve gradebackline playing first grade, the Bears backline had a U20s/Ron Massey cup feel about it. Coupled with the loss of Sam Johnstone early in the game put the Bear team behind from the start. They struggled to compete with Wentworthville. But after a poor start they stormed home only to run of time. Luckily a few results fell their way so they are still in with a chance of making the Top 8.
Girls lose it at the death
They say history never repeats, but in a match that was almost identifical to the major semi-final, Souths gotoff to lead Mounties game back and then in a arm wrestle it was once again a penalty under the posts in the dying minutes that handed the match to the Mounties. Injuries to our props impacted our go forward and fatiqued our team later in the game. But with fatique being a factor, how much did the excessive traing demands of the new W-NRL comp effect the girls preprations ? In the end in was a good season for the girls winning the minor premiership and falling short by a penalty goal. The girsl did the Souths jersey proud.
Video Referee in Referees Ear
One thing that has comet to light a few weeks back has been how much talk during the match that the video referee is doing through the on field referees ear peice.It has to be a major distractionwhile they are tryingto focus on many items occuring across the field from managing the 10 meters, watching ruck issues, forward passes, offsides etc etc. Fo a video referee to be trying communicate in the middle of all of this cannot be good, unless there is a real issue.
Round 22 - Stat Attack
Statistically another good game, one of our most consistent all year. Completion dropped to 78% from 79% last week. Errors were steady again at 10 this week. We gave away 7 penalties up from 6 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle dropped to a good level of 28.7m from 23.3m last week. Our missed tackles dropped to a very poor level of 36 missed tackles from 30 last week. Opposition offloads dropped to 7 from 17 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - Hunt-Burns-Walker-Sutton (1-2-0-0) was improved to 3 from 6 missed tackles last week. On the right side Kennar-Fuimaono-Reynolds-Crichton (2-3-5-2) was dropped to 12 from 7 missed tackles last week. Ruck defence TBurgess/Tatola-Cook-GBurgess/Clark-SBurgess/Murray (4-0-4-7) was was dropped to 15 from 14 missed tackles last week.
Our go forward improved to 1651m from 1594m last week. Tom Burgess, George Burgess and Clark made 10+m per run. Tom Burgess, Sam Burgess, Crichton, Sutton, George Burgess, Gagai and Burns making 100+m in the match. With Tom Burgess topping 200+m. Defensively Cook was our best in the tackling raking up 40 tackles. Cook, Sutton, Clark, Tatola, Walker and Alex Johnston didn't miss a tackle.