The South Sydney Rabbitohs might very well lose all eight of their opening-round games this season.
That is the sobering truth that faces the Rabbitohs following a defeat to the Brisbane Broncos on Thursday night to begin Round 2, which head coach Jason Demetriou called a “horror show.”
With the exception of a brief spurt in which they scored two tries in the final four minutes of play following halftime, the Rabbitohs were thoroughly outplayed by the Broncos in the first half. They committed about every error in the book.
Following last season’s dismal fadeout, in which the Redfern-based team, beset by off-field upheaval, somehow missed the finals while leading the competition at the end of Round 11, they now find themselves with back-to-back losses to begin the new season. In the process, they became the side that led the competition into the season the longest without participating in knockout rugby league, setting an extremely undesirable record.
A majority, if not all, of that on-field decline was caused by an attitude issue. After 11 games, the Rabbitohs were among the best defensive teams in the league; for the last 16 games of 2023, they were among the worst.
Their defense has only managed to get worse, based on the results of their opening two games, which was a mindset that needed to be changed over the summer.
In the first round, they let up 36 points against the Manly Sea Eagles and, to be honest, looked like they would rather be anywhere else. Last night, they gave up another 28 against the Broncos.
It would be accurate to say that the Broncos left points on the park while never really playing at their best. The team scored 28 points without really trying.Time and time again the Rabbitohs’ defence was slow moving, both in line speed and lateral movement, decision making was atrocious and some of the attempted tackles were what you’d expect to see in the under-10s with arm grabs and reaching efforts that showed off nothing but a team who have played with the motto “we will outscore you” for the last five years.
Of course, the issue with that motto is that South Sydney’s attack was poor on Thursday evening. As mentioned already, they made every error imaginable in the first half of the game, and while it improved marginally after halftime, there were still more moments of madness than greatness.
By the time it was all said and done, the Rabbitohs completed at just 65 per cent, a total of 25 out of 38 sets, coming up with 14 errors and 42 missed tackles.
Those stats, if we are being brutally honest, are more fitting for a team who are going to wind up in the bottom four at the end of the campaign than one who are going to be fighting for a premiership as the Rabbitohs have done in five of the last six seasons.
Maybe an even greater concern for South Sydney is the fact Jason Demetriou seemingly believes there was nothing wrong with the club’s defensive effort throughout the contest, instead blaming errors in attack for their ultimate plight.
“Yeah, I thought it would just really, like I said to the boys in there, I couldn’t fault our defensive effort,” the under pressure coach said during his post-game press conference.
“I thought our defensive effort in the end result was outstanding, but we’re just shooting ourselves in the foot [with errors].
“You know, whether it’s, we can’t feed the scrum properly or first tackle errors, kicking it into our own player, penalties for blocking, just like, it was a horror show of just really little things that just kept putting pressure on ourselves.
“So doing that, we bottle that effort and that desire and tidy up some of that stuff then and see how good this footy team is.
“Because I was really pleased with our toil on defence in particular. We’re asked to do a hell of a lot of it and it was a big improvement from last week.”
They say defence is an attitude, and if the attitude from the top is that the Rabbitohs were strong at that end of the park on Thursday evening, then there is frankly little wonder they collapsed in the fashion they did throughout 2023, and have started 2024 equally as poorly.
However, the Rabbitohs’ issues go beyond defense, mistakes, and attitude.
Obviously, Kai Arrow’s injury hasn’t made things better, but the viewpoint that drove Cameron Murray crazy the previous evening was incorrect.
He was essentially a passenger in the first half, getting just four touches of the ball. He then played significant minutes and was fully burnt out by the time he could influence the game in the middle of the second half.
Because of his perseverance and toughness, Murray rarely shows signs of fatigue on the football field, but last night he did. Weary, strained, and incapable of making the same effect as normal.
A chunk of that came from having to play out of position on the edge, but another chunk came from the ineptitude of his teammates dropping the ball, missing tackles and wondering when it was all going to turn around.
In addition, the choice to have Taane Milne in the team backfired, and Richie Kennar also had an unexpectedly bad game. The Rabbitohs, who will welcome back Jack Wighton next weekend, have a number of injury and suspension concerns pertaining to their outside backs (Campbell Graham’s long-term absence leading the list), but they just weren’t good enough on Thursday night.
Additionally, there is the ongoing choice of Latrell Mitchell at halfback, Cody Walker’s play at five-eighth, and the concerns surrounding him.
Walker is looking like the game is slowly passing him by, and had a poor performance on Thursday, while Mitchell was lazy at times, his game all but summed up when he failed to field a kick on the full which led to one of Brisbane’s late tries.
Ilias is a completely different story, as Dean Hawkins is undoubtedly close to an opportunity, but Mitchell and Walker have the runs on the board to keep getting picked.
The Rabbitohs have undoubtedly had the worst performance of the four teams that traveled thus far, and it is still unclear how the Roosters or Sea Eagles will respond on Sunday afternoon. It must be acknowledged that the trip to and from Las Vegas probably hasn’t helped South Sydney, and that was evident in Brisbane’s performance as well on Thursday.
But to pin everything on Las Vegas would be doing a disservice to the real problems confronting the Redfern-based club.
The problem is that it doesn’t appear like the Rabbitohs will make a difference. As the season gets underway, the team is exhibiting surprisingly little optimism, and their draw isn’t getting any easier.
They play the Sydney Roosters next, and on Friday they take on the Canterbury Bulldogs in their annual Good Friday game. With the New Zealand Warriors, the Cronulla Sharks, a bye, Melbourne Storm (away), and the Penrith Panthers coming up before they have some more games they can win, that one is a must-win.
Without turning things around, the Rabbitohs could well only get past the Bulldogs in that list, leaving them on a hiding to nothing to start the season.
One win from eight, following last season’s collapse, would mean South Sydney would have won 5 of their previous 21 games.
A record like that, for a team with some of the game’s biggest stars, as well as the fact one from eight almost certainly leaves them out of finals contention far too early in the season, would surely leave Demetriou scrambling to keep his job.
Pressure will, either way, reach fever pitch in the coming weeks if South Sydney can’t turn it around, and Demetriou has shown no signs of his team being able to do just that.
Without it, there is a very real world where Demetriou doesn’t see out the season from his Redfern office.
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