It's time to see how the game panned out according to the stats with By The Numbers - the Rabbitohs move on to the Semi Finals to take on the Parramatta Eels next week!
A SLOW START
There has been a trend in the first week of finals that the team who starts slow eventually find their groove mid-way through the game then end up winning it. In fact every team that won this weekend were not the first team to score. That was no different today with the Rabbitohs coming back from 14-0 down early to score 46 unanswered points.
It was De Ja Vu from round 10 with the Rabbitohs trailing 20-0 for most of that game but unlike then, they did not wait until the last 15 minutes to make their surge.
COMPLETIONS IMPROVED
The Rabbitohs were riddled with mistakes before they found their mojo and piled on points of their own. They only completed 25% of their sets before they scored their first try and then they proved once they held onto the ball in good field position that their backline would be too strong for the Knights. The first three sets of six in ‘good ball’ led to tries to Allan, Walker and Johnston.
KICK DEFUSALS
The Knights back three weren’t their usual reliable self in the first half and found it extremely difficult to defuse the attacking kicks that went their way. They had a kick defusal rate of just 50% at play’s resumption but this stat drastically improved in the second half led by two great takes from Kalyn Ponga and Edrick Lee. The Rabbitohs were not perfect in that department also, having a kick defusal rate of 8x0%
While the conditions were dry no doubt sun in the eyes would have played a massive factor in that first half.
‘RUN FIRST’ MENTALITY
The Rabbitohs halves have proven that when they are confident, they are running the footy. Both Reynolds and Walker brought their running game today
The Rabbitohs halves ran for a combined total of 187 metres compared to the Knights’ 62 metres. Adam Reynolds was particularly impressive picking his times well between kicking and running - he ran for 86 metres.
FIRST CAREER DOUBLE
Junior Tatola has been mammoth all year, always rolling up the sleeves and getting through the hard yards. Today he picked up his first career double after steaming onto the ball from short range. Junior ran for 120 metres, had five tackle breaks and made 19 tackles with not one missed!
