Street Corner

by JV Souths Blog
16/05/2010

As the season continued we then traveled to another one of our home grounds at the picturesque Blue Tongue stadium, a stones throw away from the now infamous Iguanas club on the Central Coast, facing a Newcastle Knights team keen to impress. The game started off with Newcastle scoring the first four pointer and my wife Pippa losing confidence in her “Red and Green Conversion”. After this first initial blow, however, Nathan ‘I can catch it’ (and score it!) Merritt fed by Isaac Luke responded with a four pointer converted by Luke shortly after. A solid effort by the team resulted in South Sydney commanding the game from this point on and resulted in a double for Nathan Merritt and Beau ‘you are a’ Champion scoring his seventh try in just four games.

In a tough game where the Knights were keen to score an upset, our forwards led the charge and were backed up by a solid, but not outstanding result to earn two points with a 28 – 10 result. Although not our finest performance, Coach John Lang was impressed with our defence (however I had to explain what this really meant to Pippa). Importantly Isaac Luke was impressive in directing traffic around our big forwards, giving our backs the confidence that they could grind out a win against a tenacious Newcastle team.

I was particularly impressed that Dave ‘the biggest man I’ve seen on television’ Taylor showed a little David Beckham skill in kicking the ball forward for a Fetuli Talanoa try late in the piece. It wasn’t until Pippa and I were having a dip at Bondi Beach and I pointed out Fetuli in the water that I thought we may have a true South’s convert on our hands; thanks Fetuli for that extra motivation in my cause!

Round 6 saw us travel to Homebush for an away clash against my mother’s’ team the mighty Eels. Perhaps with a little too much confidence from our last two wins, I was confident in the $20 wager I had with a Parramatta fan at work. In a competition that can change week by week Souths were flat from the outset. It was a game that was as exciting as waiting for a filling at the dentist, schoolboy errors plagued both teams. Unfortunately the games lackluster flow was overshadowed by some referee decisions later criticised by both teams which saw Nathan Cayless being sin binned in the 64th minute for a strip, followed closely by Champion being sent for a rest a few minutes later for a so called ‘high’ tackle. This seemed to rattle Souths more than Paramatta with Luke Burt scoring resulting in the wind being taken out of our sails and Parra the winners 22 – 8.

My faith in the season somewhat dinted, Pippa wasn’t sure we were onto a winner, and the Bunnies had to go back to the drawing board if we were to be any match to that mob from Canberra the next week, especially away from home.