17th June 2015
Well after 3 wins Souths cameback to earth in 2015 with our worst ever defeat since Round 7 2012. It was a game where Madge raced back Adam Reynolds from hand injury. However it backfired with Adam struggled in defence. But on the bright side we have the bye this week and are still 2 points outside of the Top 4.
12 months ago John Olive was playing U18s championships and had just been selected in the Australian schoolboys team. On the weekend he became the 1112th Rabbitoh. Watch this space.
The Bears our RG team had a great draw against top of the table Mt Pritchard. It was tough game where Joel Reddy bagged a double. They still remain within contact with the 8 being only 3 points adrift.
Liam Coleman continues to stake a claim in the U20s team. He has played a number of positions and is making hooker his position.
Watching the NSW Country championships, its obvious something needs to change. When Illawarra, Canberra and Newcastle entered the big league it basically ended NSW Country as we used to know it. Its something QLD did well was to integrate with the Brisbane Comp when they made the Qld Cup. This model needs to also occur in NSW all levels U18s U16 and NSW Cup. Where Riverina, Western Division, New England and North Coast need to be represented. Just like Illawarra, Central Coast, Canberra and Newcastle are today. Then just like Perth, we should see Adelaide and Melbourne participate at this 2nd Tier level.
Statistically Round 14 stats showed a very poor effort this week. Completion rates dropped to 75% this week. Errors increased to 12 from 8 last week. We gave away 7 penalities this week compared to 2 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle dropped to a poor 38.5m from 22.0m last week. Our missed tackles jumped to 39 missed tackles from 12 last week, our worst for the year. Opposition offloads improved to 7 this week from 12 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - AGray-Goodwin-Keary-Sutton (2-3-0-2) increased this week to 7 from 1 missed tackles last week. On the right side Olive-DWalker-Reynolds-McQueen (0-2-7-5) was increased to 14 missed tackle this week from 4 last week.
Our go forward dropped this week to 1375m this week. Grevsmuhl, Aaron Gray, Goodwin and Keary lead the way in making 10+m per hitup. With George Burgess, Tom Burgess, Clark, Goodwin, Aaron Gray, Johnston and Dylan Walker making more that 100+m in the match. Defensively Lowe was our best in the tackling raking up 44 tackles. With Lowe, Grevsmuhl, Olive and Keary not missing a tackle.
Signing off for another week - the midweek Cyber View from the Hill