South Sydney’s Harold Matthews (under 16s) and SG Ball (under18s) sides both grabbed wins over the North Sydney Bears at the Simply Energy High Performance Centre, Redfern Oval on Saturday – the Harold Matthews side doing so by a whopping 58-0.
After fighting out a 22-all draw against the Sydney Roosters in Round 1 of the competition, the Jason Peterson coached under 16s were a team on a mission to prove themselves against the North-siders.
“The boys took last week’s draw against the Roosters as a loss,” said Peterson.
“As a result of that, they had a big week at training and went into this game with a ruthless mentality. It’s a credit to how competitive these boys are that they wanted to get out and show what they believe they’re really about.
“Our halves controlled the game with confidence and went a long way to guiding the team around the field, and our forwards laid a good platform.”
In what finished as an eleven-try avalanche in favour of the men in Red and Green, halfback Paul Turner scored four tries – his final effort seeing the play-maker run the length of the field to touch down – while Maila Chan Foon grabbed himself a double. Jensen Taumoepeau kicked seven goals from all angles to round out the scoring. The centre-pairing of Raine Dellow and Taumoepeau also proved strong throughout the match.
But despite the positive signs, Peterson stressed that there is much work to be done ahead of this Saturday’s Round 3 clash against the Tigers.
“There’s always something to work on,” reminded Peterson.
“While the score was favourable to us, there are things that we know we need to do as a team that we’re still in the process of getting right.
“It’s still very early in the season, so right now it’s all about building good habits in the way we play our game and executing our goals strongly each day – the weekend’s game was a step in the right direction.”
Meanwhile, the Club’s Matt King-coached SG Ball side emerged victorious against the Bears by 28-12 in a grinding affair at Redfern.
Josh Cook grabbed himself a try-scoring double in aid of his side, while Mawene Hiroti kicked four goals. Strong performances from Cam Murray, Emre Guler and Phoenix Hunt helped the side’s cause.
In similar fashion to Peterson, King acknowledged that more work was needed by his side to reach their standards.
“We’re happy to get the win, but at times we made things difficult for ourselves,” said King.
“There was a bit too much drop-ball, especially early on. We need to rectify that and start building on the things we work on at training.
“The real test comes this weekend against Balmain for us – they managed a win over Parramatta this past weekend and Parra are always a strong outfit.
“We’ll have a good indication of where we are following this weekend’s game.”
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