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Round 13 - Rabbitohs vs Broncos: Friday 7th August 7:55pm @ANZ Stadium

callmack1

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Staff member
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11,696
Indigenous Round with Cody Walker and Josh Addo-Carr: https://www.rabbitohs.com.au/news/2020/08/06/indigenous-round-with-cody-walker-and-josh-addo-carr/

From Zero Tackle,

Seibold and Demetriou to resume feud in coaching debut

Rugby league has been robbed of its next chapter in its biggest personal feud, with Wayne Bennett forced into two weeks isolation following a COVID-bubble breach on Wednesday.

But despite the master coach’s absence at ANZ Stadium, there’ll be plenty of animosity in the coaching box.

Whilst it has already been announced by South Sydney that Jason Demetriou will take the head coaching role in 2022 following the end of Bennett’s contract, he will make his coaching debut 19 months before scheduled, given the top job for tonight’s clash.

The assistant coach amassed 267 games as a player over a 13 year career in England, despite being born in Sydney.

He’s coached the Keighley Cougars in England, won 40 of his 51 games at the helm with the Northern Pride, has been Wayne’s assistant for four years, and yeah, he’s not a fan of Anthony Seibold.

While the epicentre of the feud lies between Anthony Seibold and Wayne Bennett, Demetriou has been dragged through the middle by Seibold, and he’ll be ready to put ‘Seibs’ to the sword in his NRL head coaching debut.

The fuse was lit in late 2018, when Brisbane Broncos CEO Paul White sacked Demetriou, Brisbane’s assistant coach at the time, because he ‘didn’t fit into Anthony Seibold’s plans’.

Seibold pulled three members of the Rabbitohs’ coaching staff away with him at the end of 2018, meaning Demetriou got the chop alongside Jeremy Hickmans, Scott Barker and Tannath Scott at the club.

Wayne didn’t bring a single staff member across with him. He eventually signed Demetriou after he’d been sacked from his duties at Red Hill, but believed it wasn’t fair for him to rip the staff apart.

“When I was interviewed for the job for 2020, Shane Richardson told me that I couldn’t bring staff with me. He said they have a wonderful staff here and they are all contracted and I said that is fine, I don’t want someone losing their job because I am turning up” Wayne said at the time.

And while that fuse was lit mostly behind doors, it blew up in August last year, with Demetriou calling out Seibold’s attacking structures after Seibold said ‘not much changed about Souths’ attack since Wayne took over’.

“Teams worked his style out. Last year (in 2018), in 160 minutes of football under Seibold in the finals, his Souths team managed one try. On the biggest stage in the biggest games, their attack fell down. They scored one try against the Dragons and none against the Roosters.

“The teams at the business end of the season shut down any attacking threat Souths had under Seibold. They went from the best attacking team in the comp to a team that couldn’t score points when it mattered”.

Since those comments from Demetriou, Seibold has played one finals match – a 58-0 loss to Parramatta last year. Which means, across Seibold’s last three finals games, his side’s have combined for one singular try.

Seibold fired back at Demetriou, declaring the assistant coach was ‘dirty’ he didn’t get the Brisbane head coaching role, and his attention to detail was ‘probably why he wasn’t a head coach in the NRL’.

Well Seibs, now he is.

Wayne and Jason have a handy lead over Seibold, winning four against him, and tasting defeat just once – Round 2 this season.

While Bennett will allow Demetriou to coach without interruption tonight and give him the reins over the next fortnight, it is expected that the pair will exchange daily video calls to allow a synergetic fortnight in terms of the side’s training.

Brisbane will have a virtually full-strength pack against the Rabbitohs, who lost Jaydn Su’A at the judiciary on Tuesday night, and are already without Ethan Lowe, Tom Amone and Hame Sele in the forwards, the latter being given a three-year extension last week.

While Seibold is the most experienced of the pair, Demetriou handles a lot of South Sydney’s hands-on coaching as well as the majority of their attacking structures, and will be ready for a baptism of fire into the NRL tonight.
 

blue bags

First Grade
Messages
7,897
bunnies.jpg
 

Morehead St

Juniors
Messages
111
Are there any stats on the number of tries we let in by outside backs angling in to shut down an attack, only to see a failure? It seems 2-3 tries per game are given away by this tactic. Is there a reason for it that is not immediately obvious, please? Thanks.
 

Rabbit57

Juniors
Messages
170
In the first 5 minutes Brisbane showed that have a roster to beat us by 30. But our guys showed that team will always beat individual brilliance. That’s what we have to do for the whole 80 minutes every week to compete with the top teams. Brisbane’s lack of coaching was clear tonight.
 

Mr Spock!

Referee
Messages
22,502
In the first 5 minutes Brisbane showed that have a roster to beat us by 30. But our guys showed that team will always beat individual brilliance. That’s what we have to do for the whole 80 minutes every week to compete with the top teams. Brisbane’s lack of coaching was clear tonight.
We were awful.
 

BotanyBorn&Bred

Juniors
Messages
1,937
Very good win by Souths, a clinical performance, not flash, controlled the ball, the short kicking game giving them a ton of repeat sets, IMO probably the best 80min performance so far.

Gagai's D on Staggs and Fifita was great, basically blocked them out of the game. The bench was very good, Koloamatungi is looking to be a very good player. Would have liked to see the ball go to the left side a bit more, but a W is a W. On to the Cowboys now.....
 
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callmack1

Moderator
Staff member
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11,696
Yeeeeew!! What a feeling to get the win in such a big, important game. Beating Seibold and the Broncos makes it all the more sweeter! Was a pretty good performance tonight, prehaps our most consistent game across the full 80 minutes. I thought we were clinical and played well without being great. Feels like we were in second gear a little bit and we just did enough to win. Still, I guess that's all we had to do.

Attack wasn't as good as last week but I still thought it was very decent tonight. Once again, the forwards were brilliant and we had no issues pouring through that middle third and making meters. They really stood up our pack and they outplayed a bigger Broncos pack. As I said just before we were very clinical. A seriously impressive completion rate considering the conditions and stuff happened off the back off that. Yes, there was some soft tries that we scored but we did get a couple of beauties. I really enjoyed the movement in Gags' try. However, I still feel that our attack needs work because even tonight, we struggled to score/create at times against a poor Broncos side. So yea, there is still plenty of room for improvement attacking the line.

I was happy with defence as a whole. I know Fifita got that one try but over all, I thought we did a really good job of containing Fifita and Haas. That was impressive. We also managed to turn them away a number of times throughout the game which was pleasing. I feel that we need to be better diciplined in defence though as we gave away a lot of six-agains.

Mitchell: Latrell was brilliant tonight. 1 try assist, 1 line break assist, 1 line break, 5 tackle busts and just over 200 meters. Highly involved and had some great touches off the back of backline sweeps. He's showing a great skill set there as again tonight we saw his ability to hold a pass as well as his ability to shovel it on quickly. It was also good to see him have a break away run and also to see him pushing in and around the ruck a bit more.

Johnston: I thought AJ was a little bit quiet actually. Not bad by any stretch, just not as involved as normal. He had some solid hit ups and was safe under the high ball but that was about it. To be fair, he didn't see a lot of ball tonight though.

Graham: Cammy was good. We seemed to go right more tonight and that certainly benefitted him. He looked very dangerous a lot of the times he touched the ball in a good attacking posititon and he threatened to cut them open a number of times. On top of this, his hit ups coming out of our own end were strong. I still think he's lost a little bit of his defensive mojo though as he still made some poor decisions in that game. Hopefully he rediscovers it soon.

Gagai: Gags was really good. Very strong runs all night, looked super elusive and almost broke thougn a couple of times. Great fifnish for his early try in the corner and as I mentioned earlier, I was really impressed with him defensively. Gosh, he did a great job for most of the game at keeping Fifita quiet which is no mean feat.

Paulo: Jaxson had a good game. He was nice and solid and did his job really. A beutiful kick in betweem defenders legs for Reyno's try. Good stuff Jaxson.

Walker: Obviously didn't hit the highs of last week but he certainly didn't let anyone down tonight. He didn't fade in and out of the game and a lot of the good stuff we did had his fingerprints all over it. Looked dangerous and was creating opportunities. His leap up play in Gagai's try was great. I was also very impressed with his kicking game, both short and long. I know he missed a tackjle that lead to a conceded try but for the most part, he did well to contain Fifita too.

Reynolds: Had a very shaky start but managed to move past that and have a great game after that. He linked up with the rest of the spine pretty well and created some chances at times. The big highlight was his kicking game though. It was absolutley incredible and he pretty much dictated terms with it. He just had it on a string and in the end, I think we ended up with four line drop outs forced. That is a lot of pressure kicking. Great anticipation for his try off the kick as well.

Tatola: Another really good game from Junior and his consistent run continues. In wet conditions up against Brisbane, he had to be one of the players to lift and his did that. He ran hard and fought hard for every meter and for every second in the play-the-ball. He really laid a great platform tonight.

Cook: Wasn't bad. I thought his sevice was good, looked dangerous when he ran the ball and he took his opportunities to run well. He did still have a few silly plays near the line in attack but they were few and far between which is good. Once again he was exceptional in defence.

Burgess: Similar to Tatola, he put in the kind of performance we have come to expect. Barnstorming runs all over the place and he just didn't seem to stop pushing himself thoughout the game. Great to see him get a meat pie too, much deserved.

Murray: Had a really good game out on that edge actually. He was still heavily involved and he had some great runs followed by that signature fast play-the-ball. He just did not stop all night too, it was flat out. Great stuff.

Sironen: Bayley was very quiet tonight so I don't have much to say. He did have the odd good run but that was about it.

Knight: Came into the starting side late and he was great! Hard, aggressive running, a high work rate and he was even popping beautiful offloads away.

Nicholls: Fantastic game from Marky! In fact, I'm gonna say almost career best game. His impact off the bench was great. Good to see him get a meat pie also, he was pretty happy about it haha.

Johns: Came on late so wasn't able to do a lot.

Mago: Awesome game from him, he was a bundle of enegry his whole stint and he got through a mountain of work. It was quality work too in the form of big run after big run.

Koloamatangi: I'd make the same comments about Keon as I did about Mago. Both were great. Honestly, our bench was incredible tonight and it made a huge difference.

So yea, we weren't perfect and still have a lot work on but for now, I'm gonna enjoy a pretty solid win against an arch rival!!
 

Rabbits20

Immortal
Messages
41,661
Wwooooohhhhoooooo sucked in Seibs yeeeeaaaahhhhh!!!

Very very happy with that.

Adam Reynolds my man of match.

OH SOUTH SYDNEY IS WONNNNDDDEEERRRFFFUUULLLLLLL IS WWWWOOOONNNDDDEEERRRFFFUUULLLL!!!

GLORY GLORY TO SOUTH SYDNEY SOUTH SYDNEY MMMAAARRRRCCCHHHEEESSSS ON!!!

WWWOOOOHHHHHOOOOOO....



The Nicholls try and Latrell long run had the Souths faithful jumping up and down including myself out at ANZ.

Our bench was magnificent. Koloa, Nicholls and Mago wow they really stepped up and had great energy and will to win!

Latrell had his best game at the back. Paulo did lots of good things, Gagai was great in D.

Reyno his kicking game and pressure was so on song.

Loved Knight, Tom and Juniors games as well.
 

Travitoh

First Grade
Messages
5,185
Nope.

The game was dreadful.

As was broncos defence.

Awful is a bit over the top but i do agree that the result was more down to Brisbane being poor than Souths being great. Saying that though, Souths had the game under control by half time and apart from Fifita's early try, were never threatened by Brisbane.

It's the same story that we've experienced all season. Souths are better than the teams below them but not as good as those above.

And that's fine. A mid-table finish in a transition year is a good result. It means the team aren't that far away from possibly contending again.
 

Mr Spock!

Referee
Messages
22,502
Awful is a bit over the top but i do agree that the result was more down to Brisbane being poor than Souths being great. Saying that though, Souths had the game under control by half time and apart from Fifita's early try, were never threatened by Brisbane.

It's the same story that we've experienced all season. Souths are better than the teams below them but not as good as those above.

And that's fine. A mid-table finish in a transition year is a good result. It means the team aren't that far away from possibly contending again.
Not over the top. The tries we scored were from fragile Brisbane defence.

How many times did Damien Cook get tackled running backwards from dummy half?

And good luck giving any other team as many repeat sets as we did.

What exactly are we transitioning to?
 
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