There’s just two rounds remaining in the Shute Shield regular season and very little is separating the top six teams in this year’s first grade competition.
After Saturday’s results, the top six teams have all booked their spots in the playoffs but there is still a lot to play for in the final two rounds.
Just seven competition points separate Easts, Warringah, Randwick, Manly, Norths and Gordon and while we know who we’ll be watching on the opening weekend of this year’s finals series, we don’t know who each team will be playing and where those games will be played.
In a competition as tight as this, the next two rounds are going to be extremely important.
Sydney Uni’s loss to Manly on Saturday means the Students will miss the playoffs for the second straight season.
It’s not where returning coach Todd Louden thought he’d be at this point of the year. But one positive from this season is the emergence of rookie flanker Sam Allsopp.
In his first year in grade, Allsopp has been close to the best player on the park in almost every game he has played this year and looks to have a big future ahead of him.
Everyone loves big men scoring tries but it’s even better when they celebrate.
Big Manly hooker Aaron Blacklock peeled off the back of a maul to score early in his side’s win over Uni on Saturday and continued with a Grade 3 Carry-On, all directly in front of Manly’s perfectly positioned club photographer.
It was a happy homecoming for some at TG Millner over the weekend. Former Woodies legend and now Eastern Suburbs coach Ben Batger returned to the ground he played and coached at for several decades and brought former Woodies Fabian Goodall and Chris Bell with him.
All three returned east with the chocolates after Goodall, in particular, produced his best performance in an Eastern Suburbs jersey.
The defending premiers are looking dangerous, particularly in attack.
When a game opens up, there are few better sides to watch with ball in hand than this current Randwick side and Southern Districts fans saw the best of it in the second half at Forshaw, even if they didn’t want to.
Souths trailed Randwick 14-13 late in the first half before the visitors clicked and put on a show, scoring eight unanswered and converted tries.
When they get going, Randwick are extremely hard to stop at the moment and they may even add Max Jorgensen to their backline at some point in the coming weeks.
