5th September 2017
So the season ended with Souths 6 points adrift of the finals as our slide from the heights of 2012-14 continued. No doubt injuries have played a big part. With over 17 players out injured from our final games on the weekend impacting our lower grade significantly. But Souths management have decided that a change is needed and that has resulted in a change of first grade coach as we work on stopping our slide down the ladder. Madge was so much a part of our success in 2014 but has struggled to adapt and lift the playing group after that success. But last weeks record loss to Melbourne was unacceptable and seems to have been the final straw.
2017 has also seen the end of two long serving players Bryson Goodwin and Dave Tyrrell. Bryson had been with Souths for 5 seasons and Dave Tyrrell 9 seasons. Both will be missed. All the best for your future.
Injuries have decimated the Bears team on the eve of the finals. They battled on but were outclassed in the preliminary semi-final. The bowed out, but their fringe reserve grade players weren't ready for the rigors of a resrve grade final campaign.
What a hard luck story for our U20s. The Top 8 has finished much higher than it has for many a year. They ended up equal eigth but missed out on for and against by just 2 tries. It was a great effort by the team to be co-leaders of a comp from Rd10 to Rd26. But the poor start to season came back to bite them when they needed it at the death.
I can't beleive the regular season has come to a end and we still hav't got confirmation of the 2018 salary cap. With teh RLPA now stalling of signing off on the latest agreement. We have seen U23s Reserve Grade and now U20s suffer beacuse of the new found desire of the elite players for a final pay day. Today the game has unpredicended amounts of money. Yest it was only 10-15 years ago when all clubs could afford to run squads of 60 plus players. Today all we hear is that clubs cannot afford it.
Round 26 - Stat Attack
Statistically we returned to a average style game. Completion rates improved to 76% from 74% last week. Errors were increased to 11 from 9 last week. We gave away 5 penalities down from 9 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle improved to a average level of 31.4m from 53.3m last week. Our missed tackles improved to a good level of 23 missed tackles from 49 last week. Opposition offloads were steady at 10 again week.
Looking at our left side defence - Jennings-TFuimaono-Walker-Sutton (0-1-1-0) improved to 2 from 18 missed tackles last week. On the right side Graham-Goodwin-Kelly-Turner/Talakai (0-4-3-3) was improved to 10 from 13 missed tackles last week. Ruck defence TBurgess/Britt-Farah-GBurgess/Clark/Tyrrell-Murray (5-0-1-3) was improved to 9 from 16 missed tackles last week.
Our go forward this week was improved to 1505m from 1072m last week. Farah, George Burgess, Turner, Britt, Cook an Graham made 10+m per run. Tom Burgess, Sutton, Murray, Clark, Cook, Jennings, Tyrell Fuimaono and Graham making 100+m in the match. Defensively Murray was our best in the tackling raking up 37 tackles. Farah, George Burgess, Sutton, Clark, Talakai, Jennings and Graham not missing a tackle.