The Oldest Rat
Peter Burge (5)
I watched Wests V Souths on the weekend. Actually the two teams were quite even throughout and it was a fine contest, Souths won the match and deserved to win. Oh what Wests would do for a front row. The Wests scrum was just demolished and that stuffed up the rest of the team. Even from my vantage position from the side line I could see discrepancies in technical ability with the Wests front row, especially our tighthead packing with a rounded back with his hips higher than his shoulders at every scrum, I'll bet he was sore at the end of the game. That was the difference between the sides Souths had a superior scrum and set piece. Wests need to recruit some fat boys that can technically scrum properly. It makes me very sad and upset to see tighheads given away and that happened more than once, poor Tim Smith had a torrid day trying to get ball out to his fly half. This really affected his game and he threw some pretty wild ball under extreme pressure, which then put pressure on the rest of the backline. I don't think that Wests were ever able to get the ball out to the wing along the backline at any time during the game to attack. Good work from FB Byron Hutchison he played well and should be on the verge of selection at the end of the year in the third tier comp.