By MARK CASHMAN

If you woke up on Sunday morning and looked at the statistics from Northern Suburbs’ game against Southern Districts at North Sydney Oval on Saturday it would be easy to tick the win box for the Rebels.

Possession went a touch over 70 percent to Souths throughout the 80 minutes and the territory numbers were pretty much the same.

But the scoreline told a vastly different story with the Shoremen getting over the line 23-13 in the end with a scrum that was on its last legs and needing some major attention this week.

Norths played the final 10 minutes with only 13 men and injuries and yellow cards and a blue card to German Haeffeli meant that scrums were uncontested in the final stages.

What those bare stats didn’t show was the effectiveness of the way that Norths went about their work when they did have some ball and field position.

Norths coach Zak Beer told Rugby News that every time that they made their way into Souths’ half they came away with some sort of reward.

That was from two tries and three penalty goals and in the end it was the buffer that was needed to keep Norths winning record intact.

The Rebels were always going to come at Norths at scrum time and with plenty of Super Rugby experience in their front rankers and Blake Schoupp and Conor Young coming along nicely it made a hell of a lot of sense.

The blue card to Haeffeli didn’t help Norths at the end of the game but his back up Jack Brewer who did well against Gordon the week before, pulled out on the morning of the match with gastric.

“In some ways it was something of a perfect storm in terms of our scrum,” Beer said.

“There is work to do there for sure but we came up with some good scrums the week before against Gordon and we have been dominant than last year.

“What did please me was that we were still coming off our line and dominating the collisions even when we were down to 13 men.”

Souths coach Todd Louden said the loss would be a learning experience for a playing group that is struggling for some sort of cohesion.

“I’ve reviewed the game many, many times and we’re just lacking some sort of real cohesion in the backline,” Louden said.

“We were up against a settled and good backline and we’ve just got to get better.

“I said to the guys after the game that we have got a premiership winning scrum and there is a real stingy nature to our defence.

“We can also hang on to the ball for long periods of time and after a tough draw at the front end to the season we will grow and will get better.

“I’m confident that we are headed in the right direction and when our draw eases up we will come together and be a force at the back end of the year.”

Louden is drafting a letter to the Shute Shield referees boss this week addressing a number of his concerns.

“I don’t want it to be interpreted as a whinge but I felt that the scrum is not being managed at all well,” he said.

“You don’t get reward for having as strong set piece and the off side line is not being enforced at all well.

“The beauty of the Shute Shield is that every team plays a slightly different game but the slowing down of things at the breakdown aren’t presenting things in their best light.

“The quality of the comp is underlined by the fact that a bloke like George Worth with 60 plus caps for the Leicester Tigers in the English Premiership didn’t show out at all on Saturday.

“Every game is broadcast now and I feel we all need to get our heads together to come up with some sort of way forward.”

For Souths that road ahead takes them to Chatswood Oval while Norths head too Drummoyne Oval and a rugged hurdle in West Harbour.

IMAGE: MALCOLM CHUCK