Opinion
A South Sydney Rabbitohs side missing players like Cody Walker, Adam Reynolds, Cameron Murray, Damien Cook, Dane Gagai and obviously Latrell Mitchell through suspension came out on top against a poor St George Illawarra Dragons outfit.
The young Bunnies dominated most of the game but did let in three tries within the final 12 minutes of the game.
Debutant halfback Lachlan Ilias scored a try within his first six minutes of his young career, while the young 20-year-old dummy-half Peter Mamouzelos made a whopping 50 tackles with zero misses.
But the player who Wayne Bennett would’ve had his eyes on is fullback Blake Taaffe. The 19-year-old had a try assist and 96 run metres but did make an error after dropping a kick, which you can’t do in the finals.
I would go with Alex Johnston at fullback in the finals because not only is he a good catcher of the ball, but he has also played fullback on multiple occasions throughout his career. I am not taking anything away from Taaffe but the experience of Johnston will be important, especially against Penrith and Nathan Cleary’s kicking game.
Fill-in captain Mark Nicholls looked very impressive after he ran for over 150 metres and made 32 tackles. Rabbitohs second row forwards Jayden Su’A and Jacob Host combined for 82 tackles and three misses.
Every player in the Rabbitohs back five ran for over 100 metres apart from Taaffe. Centre Braidon Burns ran for the most metres with 219.
Dragons fullback Tyrell Sloan secured a try double, ran for 150 metres, broke five tackles and had one linebreak, while the Dragons bench was pretty poor. No player on the St George Illawarra bench ran for over 100 metres and the Dragons made costly errors, with some of those errors leading to tries.
The Dragons made 12 errors and missed 20 tackles, while the Rabbitohs made seven errors and missed 23 tackles.
Souths won’t need to worry about any of their big-name players who played against the Dragons being suspended as only Tautau Moga was placed on report.
I was really impressed with Campbell Graham’s defence as the talented centre made 23 tackles and only the one miss. These numbers in defence will really give him and the players around him confidence that he is strong in defence.
The Rabbitohs will play the Penrith Panthers next Saturday in Week 1 of the finals, while the Dragons’ 2021 campaign is now officially finished.
The Dragons do, however, look very good for next season with a lot of young players coming through the system.
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