12th September 2018
It was a great game of rugby league to watch as a neutral. The game lead see-sawed 5 times during the course of the match. Souths attack was first class in being able to put 28 points on Melbourne in Melbourne. But on the back of a 10 min sin bin and concussion to Crichton, Souths defense struggled to contain Melbourne at critical moments in the game. Playing a 15 man bench added to the fatigue factor here Souths let in a try in the last 5 minutes in each half. But the chance is now over and now its knockout for all finalists. Now for our first ever Semi-Final clash against the new merged entity.
Murray a inspiration
Cameron Murray continues to be one of the players of the season and his try with 9 minutes on the clock looked set to be Souths first down in Melbourne. He continues to produce a super effort when needed.
Offield Drama
Seems there has been a acusation of a offfield social media incident from May while the team was in New Zealand. This is a unwanted distraction on the eve of a major finals match.
Big Venues for Big Games
The NRL needs to get smarter in its allocation of finals games when two Sydney teams are competing. The old SFS stadium is too small, when two rivals meet in a finals match. The a capacity of 45,000 of which 10,000 are reserved for SFS/SCG members, Preminary Finals match's in Sydney should always be held at Stadium Australia when two Sydney teams are playing as they should marketed as 60-70k event matches
Preliminary Semi-Final - Stat Attack
Statistically it was a rocks and diamonds game Completion improved to 81% from 79% last week. Errors improved to 7 from 8 last week. We gave away 6 penalties again this week. Souths Effective 1st tackle improved to a good level of 28.3m from 18.0m last week. Our missed tackles dropped to a very poor level of 36 missed tackles from 13 last week. Opposition offloads dropped to 6 from 3 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - Jennings-Inglis-Walker-Sutton (0-0-2-0) was improved to 2 from 4 missed tackles last week. On the right side Graham-Gagai-Reynolds-Crichton/Murray (3-5-4-6) was dropped to 18 from 4 missed tackles last week week. Ruck defence TBurgess-Cook-GBurgess/Clark-SBurgess/Murray (1-3-2-6) was dropped to 12 from 5 missed tackles last week.
Our go forward dropped to 1520m from 2197m last week. George Burgess and Murray made 10+m per run. Sam Burgess, Sutton, Murray, Jennings, Inglis, Walker and Graham making 100+m in the match. Defensively Sam Burgess was our best in the tackling raking up 38 tackles. Murray, Clark, Inglis, Jennings and Alex Johnston didn't miss a tackle.