Oh what a night. It was great to get back to the SCG and most pleasing of all Souths returned to the winner circle. THey powered through the forwards in a 2013 typical display. And it was great to have Jason Clark back in the team as a steading influence.
Bob McCarthey, Craig Coleman, Paul Roberts and Eric Simms and many others were on hand to celebrate John Sutton becoming the longest serving South Sydney FG player. With his move mack to 5/8 he lead from the front with a typical great John Sutton performance.
Cameron McInnes beacome the latest debutant this year taking his opportunity with Issac is out injured. He formed a great dynamic duo combination with Koroisau.
Our SG Ball U18 team secured their spot in the U18 finals with a great win over the Dragons.
One thing that has started this week has the been the media build up to SOO. We are still 3 weeks out from City v Country and the media has already bypassed this match which kicks off the representatiev calender. The quicker we move the ANAZC test back after SOO and introduce a Queensland City v Country match the better.
Statistically we improved again this week. We recorded our best effective 1st tackle half of football recording a great 21.2m in the first half. Completion rates were still poor but improved to 67% and errors were again high of 16 and we conceeded 6 penalties. Souths Effective 1st tackle for the match improved to 34.7m. We only 20 missed tackles which was also good but allowed 9 opposition offloads.
Looking at our left side defence - Goodwin-Walker-Sutton-Turner (0-2-3-1) 6 missed tackles same as last week. On the right side Merritt-Reddy-Reynolds-Teo (0-0-2-2) was steady at 4 missed tackles this week.
Our go forward was great at 1496m. Koroisau and McInnes lead the way in the forwards was the best making 10+m per run. With Sam, George, Luke Burgess and McQueen making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively Sam Burgess was our best in the tackling raking up 37 tackles. With Goodwin, Reddy, Merritt, Tyrrell and Clark not missing a tackle.