The Rabbitohs march on to the Preliminary Final after downing the Parramatta Eels 38-24 at Bankwest Stadium tonight!
STOP GUTHO
Clinton Gutherson ran riot in that first half scoring two tries and setting up the third all within a 20-minute period. He found great success via the Eels’ left edge and his support play was impressive, running for a total of 210 metres. The message at half time would have been “stop Gutho” as he was very quiet upon resumption and as a result the Rabbitohs dictated the game to come back and win!
COMETH THE HOUR, COMETH THE YOUNG SUPERSTAR
Jaxson Paulo was impressive in only his second finals appearance! The youngster bagged a double while running for 223 metres! The clutch play came when he decided to leave his wing to risk it all for the intercept and didn’t it pay off?! The Rabbitohs registered their 15th intercept, leading the league by an impressive four intercepts!
KEEP RUNNING COOKIE
The best chance the Rabbitohs had to regain momentum was through flat-and-fast play led by the dummy-half running of Damien Cook. Damien Cook continued where he left off last week, running for 101 metres and making 47 tackles while Reed Mahoney only ran for three metres but made 37 tackles.
Cookie sparked the attack for Reyno when the Captain dummied and sliced through to find a Souths Juniors combination in Campbell Graham and Cameron Murray - A game-changing play!
SOUTHS MAKING METRES
Despite Parra and Souths having the same amount of possession and sets of six during the game, the Rabbitohs out-ran the Eels 1,820 metres to 1,511 metres during the game. This was sparked by the amount of line breaks Souths registered (almost double) due to the second-phase football they generated.
KICK YOUR GOALS
We saw how crucial it is to have an ‘automatic’ goal-kicker, by that we mean the fact that Adam Reynolds is almost guaranteed to kick any goal within 20 metres of the posts. The Eels on the other hand failed to do so through Mitchell Moses who missed a point-blank penalty kick which would have squared the game up at 18-all.
Rather than square the game up, the ball ricocheted off the up-right which resulted in Souths going 70 metres to widen their lead to six points and then eight (through the conversion of Adam Reynolds) which not only shifted momentum, but just about sealed victory for Souths.
