25th February 2015
What more can you say - we are Champions of the World of Rugby League. Fans came from everywhere, Australia/New York/Belgium/Germany/across England, to see the mighty Rabbitohs play. And play they did, with a record breaking win against St Helens in England. It was dominate win that will live long in peoples memory. The boys came to England to win with a great second half domination the ENglish boys did not know what hit them.
After years of rebuilding the boys have taken all before them to hold the following trophies -
Adam is turning into one of the most important factors in the new Rabbitohs. His kicking game just controlled the game against St Helens. And one of the tries he setup for Dylan Walker was gem. Then add his quality goalkicking he looks like havin ga bumper year this year.
Chris Grevsmuhl has had a stelar start to 2015 taking out 3 trophies for Souths and making his representative debut for the Indigenious All Stars and winning that trophy as well.
It was a interesting experiance being in England for the World Club Series and seeing how much it meant to the people of England. It was a opportunity for their club to pit themselves against what the NRL can offer. While the WCC 1st v 1st game is well founded, how do we structure the event so we don't get a AMCO Cup style death a few years down the track.
Key thing for ongoing success is that the best teams from each country should participate. What I would like is a slight adjustment as follows
Where teams are ranked 1,2,3 and 4 and play in a 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 format
The WCC match was played under international rules with 12 interchanges. Statistically it was a good first hit out with all statistics in the quality zone, with only 19 team missed tackles. Completion rates were great at 83% and but errors kept to a minimum at 6. Souths Effective 1st tackle for the match good at 30.2m. We made 18 missed tackles which was also very good and only allowed one opposition offloads.
Looking at our left side defence - Johnston-Goodwin-Keary-Sutton (0-1-3-0) 4 missed tackles this week. On the right side Reddy-Walker-Reynolds-Stewart (0-2-0-1) was very good at 3 missed tackles this week.
Our go forward was low at 1194m in the heavy english conditions. McQueen and Luke lead the way in the forwards was the best making 10+m per hitup. With Tom Burgess, George Burgess and Inglis making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively Clark was our best in the tackling raking up 25 tackles. With Johnston, Reddy, Reynolds, Tyrrell, Stewart, Sutton, Clark and Tom Burgess not missing a tackle.
Signing off for another week - the midweek Cyber View from the Hill