By MARK CASHMAN

The drums have been beating about power of the Southern Districts scrum for some weeks and the evidence was there for all to see in the Rebels’ 49-24 win over the Hunter Wildfires on Saturday.

Souths were awarded two penalty tries on top of the five that they scored in a more conventional manner and the bonus point victory keeps them in touch with the top six.

They sit in seventh spot on 30 points just one point shy of Eastern Suburbs (31 points) who are in sixth position and face Northern Suburbs, Manly and West Harbour in the final three rounds before finals.

Christian Kagiassis was the pick of the home side according to Souths coach Todd Louden, making the most of his move to flyhalf by taking the ball to the line strongly and kicking well out of hand.

Not far behind ‘Kagi’ was Nathan Lawson who continues to come to grips with the channels at 134 while Samu Malola was busy at No.8.

“Yeah those penalty tries on either side of halftime were handy,” Louden said.

“I’ve never watched a Wildfires game where they have lied down and that was certainly the case on Saturday. They compete for everything.

“They tried to slow down the tempo of the game at scrum time and when their guys were down getting attention so I must say it wasn’t really a spectacle of any magnitude.

“But if you look at things through the prism of all the injuries that we have had we came away feeling good about ourselves.”

Louden said they had not discounted playing finals footy this year.

“If I’m being honest our focus has to be on 2021,” Louden said. “But we’re going to fight all the way to the end.

“The injuries have meant we have not been able to play the sort of footy we would have liked but the up side is that we will have a large group of guys who have been blooded at Shute Shield level.”

Before the game Wildfires coach Scott Coleman was looking forward to seeing how centre Chase Hicks managed his Shute Shield debut.but a head knock early saw him come off at halftime.

“If you take out the two penalty tries – they deserved those, their scrum is the best in the comp – they didn’t have to work hard for their tries. They literally beat us on defence,” Coleman told the Newcastle Herald.

“The boys were pretty down on themselves and believe it is one that got away. We can’t keep giving away cheap possession.”

The was some joy for the bus trip on the way home though with the reserve grade side winning 7-0 and the colts breaking through for their first win of the season with a 22-7 victory.

SOUTHERN DISTRICTS 49 (Zak Hickey, Nathan Lawson 2, Deon Evans-Ao, Brandon Finnegan tries, 2 penalty tries; Christian Kagiassis 5 conversions) d HUNTER WILDFIRES 24 (Brendan Holliday, Hamish McKie, Nimilote Qio, Taylor Acheson tries; Holliday 2 conversions) at Forshaw Rugby Park.

IMAGE: STEWART HAZELL / HUNTER WILDFIRES