Another great day of rugby legue out in the country at Mudgee. Souths put on a dominate display only to let the Dragaons back in with some poor disipline. But once sorted they power to a big second half win where our depth players put in a good display in defence, and secured the Charity Shield for the 7th year in succession. The trials and training is now over and its time to focuson the premiership proper.

Corey Allan bursts into first grade

Corey Allan continues to burst on the scene with his limited exposure to teh top grade. He is the first ever player to play PMI XIII from reserve grade, and now in his biggest match before a full NRL debut he starred with a hattrick of tries. Heis taking every opportunity with both hands and is looking lie he will make his NRL sooner rather than later.

Lowe arrives and impresses

Welcome Ethan Lowe a premiership winner two year ago, has come down and hit the ground running. A second rower, his solid defence was immediately evident in how he closed down any attack on the left side. He will move pretty quickly into our 17 and offers great backup.

French impact from the bench

Our lower grades struggled without our main squad members who played in the Charity Shield or were rested on the bench. But one person who did everything he could from the U20s bench was Matt French who came on scored a try and then setup a second. He came to Souths for a opportunity and is trying to make every post a winner.

Suaalii stars with 4 tries

Joseph Suaali gave one of teh geat captains knocks in this weekends game. He led from behind at fullback, chiming in to back line moves, with his second try a absolute pearler of a inside ball where he ran through traffic to score. But he didnt end there and had a hattrick of tries before halftime. Then late in the game he added to them to record his 4th try and now leads the U16s try scoring list There is a lot to like this player.

Third Party Payments - Way too subjective

Another year and another wave of Salary Cap dramas all around Third Party Player payments. The Sharks tried to setup a Brisbane style structure only to have it knocked back by the NRL. The whole TPA process is just too subjective. You have major supporters who cannot offer TPA's because they are too close to the club they love, while we argue about minor amounts. The biggest concern is how some clubs seem to always have issues, while other clubs have no issue in signing players. From the outsde looking in if feels too subjective. There is something not right about the process, that can exclude vital sponsors offering TPA's, just because of a condition or process.

Charity Shield - Stat Attack

Statistically it was a good game Completion improved to 68% from 54% last week. Errors dropped to 4 from 15 last week. We gave away 12 penalties compared to 1 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle improved to a average level of 31.8m from 43.1m last week. Our missed tackles were at a very good level of 19 missed tackles. Opposition offloads were 10 this week

Looking at our left side defence - Allan/Hiroti-Burns-Walker/Sironen-Sutton/Lowe (1-1-2-2) was 6 missed tackles this week. On the right side Graham/Denniss-Gagai-Tracey-SBurgess/Turner (0-2-4-2) was 8 missed tackles this week. Ruck defence TBurgess/Knight-Cook/McIlwrick-Tatola/Amone-Murray/Kennedy/SBurgess (1-1-2-1) was 5 missed tackles this week.

Our go forward was good at 1412m this week. Tom Burgess, Graham and Sironen made 10+m per run. Tom Burgess, Sam Burgess, Murray, Tatola and Burns making 100+m in the match. Defensively Cook was our best in the tackling raking up 25 tackles. Cook, Sutton, Amone, Kennedy, Turner, Knight, Graham, Denniss and Hiroti didn't miss a tackle.

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