After the Intrust Super Premiership NSW Residents went down to their Queensland counterparts on the weekend, we look back at the previous round of regular competition.
Round 9 was a big one in the Intrust Super Premiership NSW, with players looking to impress in a last-ditch bid for the Residents side named yesterday. Several of those players named impressed in their games, including four players from new ladder leaders the Wyong Roos. Rip Taylor’s men put on an impressive display against an equally-impressive Warriors outfit to deliver the Auckland-based side their first loss of 2017.
Such was the closeness of the contest at Mt Smart Stadium, neither side was a round leader across any of our major statistical category – except lock Paul Carter (197 metres) and winger Johnny Tuivasa-Sheck (179 metres) ran further than any other player in the competition. A number of forwards also cracked the 170-metre mark on the weekend, highlighted by Magpies trio Alex Twal, Marata Niukore and KARI City Origin representative David Gower as the Magpies made it three straight against the Newtown Jets.
That contributed to Wentworthville making more metres than any other team (1,715 metres), while they continued to muscle up in defence with a round-low of 19 missed tackles. The Jets, meanwhile, made a round-high 18 errors along with Illawarra, making any chance of a comeback at Ringrose Park all the more difficult.
When the Wests Tigers met the Knights at Leichhardt Oval, not much was expected from two teams not first considered to be premiership contenders. The Tigers, however, ran rampant; they made a huge nine line-breaks, just 11 combined errors and penalties and limited the Trent Hodkinson-led Knights to just 1,189 metres – the fewest of Round 9.
Fresh off a solid win over Mounties, Illawarra failed to back the performance up on Saturday against North Sydney. The aforementioned error count gifted the Bears a huge 59 per cent share of the ball and they were only forced to make 240 tackles; combined with 45 missed tackles it was a worrying sign for Mat Head’s men heading into the week’s break.
A reasonably high-quality affair saw Mounties just beat the Bulldogs at ANZ Stadium, with Mounties making the most tackles (333) and the Bulldogs kicking further than any other team (575 metres) thanks to a shared workload with the boot. On Sunday, a western derby took place between the Blacktown Workers Sea Eagles and Penrith Panthers, with Penrith prevailing having been helped by 12 penalties against the Sea Eagles.
View the full stats reports from each of the games below - and stay tuned for the Round 7 Team of the Week, to be released on NSWRL.com.au later today.
