by Paul Cook –

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SOUTHERN DISTRICTS 23 (Waldo Wessels, Marcus Carbone tries;
Matt Teki 2 cons, 3 pens) defeated MANLY 17 (Sireli Tagicakibau,
Jerome Vaii, Matt Lucas tries; Sam Lane con) HT 17-0
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Southern Districts built up a healthy first half lead before holding off a Manly fightback in the second half to get their season off to the best possible start. (read the full match report here) Rugby News got the reactions from both camps at full-time…

Southern Districts head coach Matt Barr:

“I’m really happy with the start to the season. Manly won their first 10 games last year, so we knew they’d come out hard and try to get off to a winning start and build on that confidence. Our goal was to match their traditional physicality and certainly for the most part, I think we did that. I thought our forwards did really well getting a bit of a bend in the line and getting some front-foot ball and that laid the platform for us.

“I was a bit worried at half-time and I thought we’d left quite a number of opportunities out there in that first half that might come back to bite us, and when they scored those couple of tries early on in the second half I thought it wasn’t going to be enough. But there were a lot of new guys out there, we had four new guys to the club, one making his starting debut, and these structures and combinations take time so I was really happy with the boys, they showed a lot of character.

“It was a tough second half in terms of our limited opportunities with the ball but the boys got stuck in and we came up with those couple of really good plays where we kept the ball in hand, worked our way down there and finally got some territory on the back of some really good, strong carries and good support play and managed to get a few penalties. I thought Mitch Walton and Chris Nay played a very smart kicking game into the breeze in the second half and really managed it well, and obviously defence is a big aspect of the game and we’ve done a lot of work on that and got our reward.

“It was pretty basic out there and there weren’t too many tricks going on and that was deliberate, we wanted to do the little things well and our game will evolve over the coming weeks. There were some really pleasing things in there for us but we need to work a little bit more on our combinations and our shape but as I said, our game will evolve over the next few weeks and we’ll work on a few options in various parts of the field. It was a gutsy win and we’ll get a lot out of that. We’ve just got to stay grounded and remember that it’s a long year.”

Prop Jerome Vaai was on the scoresheet for the Marlins – Photo: Adam MacDonald

Manly head coach Damien Cummins:

“I don’t think there was a heap of positives to take them from that to be honest – I think we won all our lineouts! We were soft, defensively we were soft and our game management was poor. It was all about position and possession today, simplicity and clarity around what we’re doing and we lacked that. I don’t know if we did too much through the week but the boys were up for it and fell flat.

“The last three games we’ve played in a breeze, every team running with the wind ended up with negative points and the team running into it were dominating the halves. But at one stage in the first half it was 3-0 and you’re thinking that’s pretty good, and when they went 10-0 up I was thinking ‘I’d take that at half-time’ considering we’d had no ball. I reckon we controlled that first half for about three minutes, had that one opportunity with Richard Hooper that didn’t come to anything, then in the second half, they only had a few minutes with the ball but when they did they got the two penalties that proved to be the difference.

“You can go mentally soft when you’re with the wind, we didn’t do that in the second half, we just didn’t make good decisions at times, but to Souths credit, they were up for it. They were the better side, they had more energy when we were flagging, they were better in defence and they carried harder. Obviously, we’ve got a target on our backs this year with being grand finalists last time out, Souths have been a very strong club across the last five years and they’ve got pride in who they are and they wanted to get off to a good start playing on their own ground in the first game of the season and they did.

“It’s round one and we lost by six points, it’s not like we were done by 40. We had a meeting at the start of the week where we spoke about not being where we needed to be but that we can build into that and losing in round one really gives you a kick up the backside.”

New skipper Marcus Carbone enjoyed a winning start – Photo: SPA Images

Southern Districts captain Marcus Carbone:

“I went into the toss hoping to go against the wind but we lost it so our game plan was to capitalise on that, play it down their end and then work really hard in the second half to try and compensate for that disadvantage. You always get a bit worried when they start clawing back on the scoreboard but we went back to our structures, came together and had a chat about our mindset and about getting back down their end of the field, not so much about scoring tries but just defending and staying in their half.

“At the end of last season, we lost a lot of blokes to Super Rugby so we’ve got some new combinations we’re working with and some young and enthusiastic colts coming up and I was very impressed with the way we performed. We’re really strong with our structures this year, we’ve worked really hard at that and on our shape. We’ve got a couple of new players and they’re really driving hard to keep those standards and keep that shape and I guess it comes down to the effort from the boys, they put in a hundred percent for 80 minutes and I was very proud of them.

“To be honest, I’ve never beaten Manly before in any grade so, to captain the side and win on our home field down here at Forshaw in front of our families and supporters, is a great feeling. It’s definitely a confidence boost going ahead for the season. We have high expectations and we’re just going to keep driving those each week.”