A great start on the weekend with a convincing win over reigning premiers the Sydney Roosters. Souths powered over them. But the win has a similar echo to Round 1 2013. Everyone will remeber how they improved over thye course of the year. Its now on to face the Grand Final runners up Manly.
GI returned to ANZ Stadium and did so in style scoring a hat trick of tries and has set the pace in teh NRL try scoring list. And not to be out done our new buy Krisiome Auva'a did the same up at Wyong in NSW Cup.
Adam Reynolds was heavily strapped up for this game but he formed a perfect dynamic duo with Dylan Walker. They both showed up their SOO counterparts. The balance of flare and kicking game worked very well. And then throw in Sutton as a option for good measure.
It was great to see our U20 team snach victory, after almost snaching defeat from victory when they let in 3 late tries. A well rehearsed move did the trick. And it was great to do this to the Roosters for a change.
Hardly a week goes by without Souths setting a membership achievement. Souths this week passed 28,000 members which is more than our 2013 total and well on our way towards our target of 32,000.
A new year begins, with a new set of rules. So we will watch with interest if there are any changes in match day stat trends. Statistically it was a good first hit out with all statistics in the quality zone, with only 19 team missed tackles. Completion rates were good at 80% and but errors were a bit high at 11. Souths Effective 1st tackle for the match good at 29.8m. We made 19 missed tackles which was also good but allowed 8 opposition offloads.
Looking at our left side defence - Tuqiri-Goodwin-Walker-McQueen (0-0-1-5) 6 missed tackles this week. On the right side Merritt-Champion-Reynolds-Teo (0-2-0-1) was very good at 3 missed tackles this week.
Our go forward started the year well at 1405m. McQueen lead the way in the forwards was the best making 10+m per hitup. With George Burgess, Sam Burgess and McQueen making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively Luke was our best in the tackling raking up 28 tackles. With Inglis, Tuqiri, Goodwin, Merritt, Reynolds, Te'o, Sutton, Picker and Tyrrell not missing a tackle.