20th May 2015
It was always going to be tough to win in Melbourne but without Reynolds doubly so. And that's how it played out as we continued with another loss in our hoodoo venue Melbourne. But it what was pleasing was the improved second half defence recently. Just 4 points in the lass 3 games.
John Olive moved a step closer to a first grade debut after he was named 19th man. Not long now.
Daryl Millard had a strong game as a makshift fullback and help the Bears who are running last at the moment in a great win over the NSW Cup premiers Penrith. Only way is up.
Damon Goolagong continues to score tries in his debut season for Souths he has scored 7 tries so far.
With all of the changes to the concussion rule, it has become apparant that this is becoming the new issue for the game. With players going down a lot for head knocks. This is being a deliberate tactic or a tactic to stop the stagger so a player does not get removed from the game. In either respect it is making the game a lot slower lately.
Statistically Round 10 stats again were genrally good. Completion rates dropped to 79% this week. Errors increased to 9 from 4 last week. We gave away 8 penalities this week compared to 6 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle droppd to to 37.1m from 32.4m last week. Our missed tackles dropped to 22 missed tackles from 24 last week. With a big improvement with 2 opposition offloads compared to 18 last week. Our worst all season.
Looking at our left side defence - AGray-Goodwin-Sutton-Grevsmuhl (2-1-1-2) improved this week to 6 from 11 missed tackles last week. On the right side Johnston-Walker-Keary-McQueen (1-0-2-1) improved to 4 from 6 missed tackles last week.
Our go forward was dropped this week to 1237m this week. Tom Burgess and Brown lead the way in making 10+m per hitup. With McQueen, Walker and Inglis making more that 100+m in the match. With only one forward making 100m. Defensively Lowe was our best in the tackling raking up 37 tackles. With McInnes, Tyrrell, Luke, Brown, Grant and Walker not missing a tackle.
Signing off for another week - the midweek Cyber View from the Hill