A solid 80 minutes by the red & green. It's time to take a look at what the stats told us with By the Numbers!
Top of the Line Break Assists
Latrell Mitchell notched up his 14th line break assist to go out-right first in the competition. One of the most gifted catch/passers in the game, Latrell has been outstanding at facilitating the ball in 2020, to give his outside backs space to move.
Mitchell registered his 14th line break assist when he found Dane Gagai in space early on, to cross for the first try of the game. It is a remarkable stat considering Mitchell has only played 11 games.
The Return of Fifita
Arguably the most damaging runner of the football in the competition, the long awaited return of David Fifita was a big talking point during the week. The last time Fifita played was pre-competition restart against none other than the South Sydney Rabbitohs.
On that day David Fifita caused havoc for South Sydney and when he is on, usually the Broncos lift from his energy. We wanted to compare the impact Fifita had in round two against round 13.
Down on ‘Set Restarts’
A common theme we’ve seen this year (given the new rule changes) is whoever leads the ‘set restarts’ usually goes on to win. This makes sense as the more ball you have, the more chance you have at scoring and the more tired opposition defences get. Tonight though South Sydney proved that the ‘old-fashioned’ way is just as effective; kicking to corners, forcing line dropouts and showing steel in defence.
Despite Brisbane leading the ‘set restart’ count 7-5, the Rabbitohs continued to stick to their game plan, and capitalised on the opportunities that presented itself.
Metre-eaters from the bench
A common theme for South Sydney in 2020 has been the distributed workload from the starting forward pack to the interchange bench.
There has only been three times this year where the opposition bench outran South Sydney's bench.
Rather than one or two ‘one-out’ forwards carrying the team, the workload distribution is far more noticeable with the Rabbitohs but that starts from the foundations laid by starting props, Tatola and Burgess who also had outstanding games.
Despite losing an interchange gun like Hame Sele a couple of weeks ago, the Rabbitohs have shown that whoever takes that role will do a job. Souths Junior Keaon Koloamatangi had an outstanding game and so did Mark Nicholls who crossed for a try.
A trip down memory lane
A quirky stat to throw out to you South Sydney die-hards - The last time Ben Te’o played at ANZ Stadium was the 2014 Grand Final. While in different colours tonight it’s always good to see a familiar face from that Premiership-winning side, along with Issac ‘Bully’ Luke!
