9th Jul 2025
Equal Last
Our 6th loss in a row and winless across the 2025 origin period, has seen us crash to equal last in the NRL competition. Our 2025 campaign now requires us to win all games just to make the final 8. As a club we continue to struggle with our reserve grade team in second last and our our U21s also in second last, 2025 is one of our worst seasons in the proud clubs history. The disappointment of another season lost, is a concern as the club struggles to its fans and members. Its now time for a week off while the team re-assess the final third of the season.
Smith Heartbreak
Firstly it was great to see the immediate impact of Brandon Smith on the quality of the team in his return from injury. But alas in the final 5 minutes of the game a heavy tackle and he went down for another knee injury. This time his hurt his MCL muscle in his knee rather than his ACL. We hope for a speedy recovery.
Casey double
Declan Casey a centre who is filling in on the right wing was on the end of some very clever work by Ashton Ward as he scored a double in spectaluar style. He is haveing a steady return from a leg injury but doing everything he can to stay on the field.
Ayache double
It was a disappointing outing by our U21s team, but one player that can hold his head high is lock come hooker Yehya Ayache. On the weekend he scored two tries from dummy half to help a late surge by the team. He is a strong tackler in the middle of the field and has a bright future.
Womens open season with a win
It a bright moment for 2025, our womens team got off to the best start they could by beating last years premiers in the season opener. McGregor is proving a valuable member of the team scoring 10 points for the game and adding some vital organisational skills for the girls. Looking forward to seeing how they go this season.
Origin period disrupts NRL Season too much
Origin is the elephant in the room, when it comes to the NRL season. With 6 weekends of 3 split rounds it impact is just too significant. Players are missing, crowds drop, and the top 8 gets decided. While the benefit is that we can see fringe first grade players, may games become lopsided when they play teams uneffected by origin. As we have 3 split rounds that means we actually have 3 weekends that could be scheduled better to reduce the NRL impact. I beleive we should consider two representative fortnights where no NRL games are played with 4 NRL rounds in between. By playing Origin a Tuesday night you get the same effect as today, but you can then schedule other representative games in this period. Like a 4 nations between Fiji, PNG, Tonga and Samoa. Even a England Pacific Tour New Zealand could be schedule. You have Womens orgin, National Championships maybe even a return of NSW and Queensland City v Country. Rugby League could really build on this if done right.
Round 18 - Stat Attack
Statistically it was a very poor game. Completions improved to 76% from 72% last week. Errors were steady at 14 again this week. We gave away 7 penalties and 1 6-again calls from 8 last week. Souths Effective 1st tackle dropped to a poor level of 36.0m from 35.6m last week. Our missed tackles dropped to a poor level of 36 from 34 last week. Opposition offloads dropped to 6 from 5 last week.
Looking at our left side defence - Tass-Duncan-Wighton-Host (4-2-2-4) dropped to 12 from 5 missed tackles last week. On the right side Munro-Graham-Humphreys-Arrow (3-1-1-3) improved to 8 from 10 last week. Ruck defence Tatola/Moale-Smith/RGray-Koloamatangi/Havili-Hubner/LeBlanc/Koloamatangi (3-4-1-5) improved to 13 from 19 missed tackles last week.
Our go forward dropped to 1309m from 1661m last week. With our props go forward dropped to a very poor level of 349m compared to 351m last week. No one made 10+m per run. Koloamatangi, Duncan, Johnston and Graham made 100+m in the match. Defensively R.Gray was our best in the tackling raking up 42 tackles. Koloamatangi didn't miss a tackle.
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