29th June 2016
Four losses in a row once again this year. Overall it was a better performance but for a short 10 min period we let in 3 tries to go from leading the game to being 14 points behind. Finals berth is now looking almost impossible with 8 more wins out of 9 games to qualify for the finals and a tough road ahead.
Congratulations to John Sutton who becoms the first South Sydney Rabbitohs player to play 250 first grade games. John is also our last 3 grade South Sydney player, and has never player for the Bears.
Congratulations to Ed Murphy and Tautalatasi Tasi who became the 1124th and 1125th first grade players, with their debut against Penrith.
A number of players have come across in pre-Jun 30 transfers with Joe Burgess becoming the 1123rd first grade player and Welham who has come across in U20s
Contract terminations continue to be a blight on the game. Lately players are using the 3 strikes and your out, clause to switch clubs early. This has all been brought about by the movement of the Rd13 / July 1 contract start signing date back to November 1, where players are signing a year in advance for a opposing club. We need to stop the situation where a opposing club benefits and his current club has insuffient time to source a replacement. So if a player is terminated by a club for breach of contract, the NRL should not register the player until his contract term has concluded. Rather than allowing a pre-Jun 30 transfer to occur.
Round 16 - Stat Attack
Statistically it was a better game. Completion rates improved to 80% from 73% this week. Errors dropped to 7 from 12 last week. We gave away 8 penalities compared to 10 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle improved to average level of 32.6m from 45.9m last week. Our missed tackles improved to 20 missed tackles from 25 last week. Opposition offloads dropped to 11 from 5 last week.
Looking at our left side defence -JBurgess-Inglis-Walker-Sutton (0-2-2-0) dropped to 4 from 3 missed tackles last week. On the right side AGray-Murphy-Keary-Turner (2-3-5-1) dropped to 11 from 9 missed tackles last week.
Our go forward this week improved to 1363m. Walker made 10+m per run. Sam Burgess, Brown, Sutton, Inglis, Johnston and Walker making 100+m in the match. With Sam Burgess making 200+m. Defensively McInnes was our best in the tackling raking up 42 tackles. With McInnes, Sutton, Clark, Tyrrell, Tasi, Siolo, Joe Burgess not missing a tackle.