Rabbitohs 0 Warriors 66
SOUTH Sydney players were in tears in the dressing-room and the captain, coach and chief executive issued public apologies after the Rabbitohs were skinned alive by New Zealand Warriors yesterday.
That won't make the 66-0 flogging any easier for Souths fans, but at least they can be aware the players were hurting.
There were, however, no excuses for the magnitude of the defeat - the biggest in the club's history, creeping past the 62-0 massacre by Sydney Roosters in 1996 - and Rabbitohs coach Shaun McRae didn't try to portray the performance in any better light than it deserved.
"We were pulverised," McRae said. "Pretty soft in all departments today. Absolutely decimated. We trained well all week, we were right to go, but we just folded. I'm at a loss to explain what happened.
"The fans deserve an apology and I'll do that now. I'll make an apology for the coaching staff and the players. These players got booed off the field and that's right. I don't offer any excuses. That was poor. That was dreadful and they have got a public apology from me and the captain."
The captain - prop Peter Cusack - sat alongside McRae at the post-match media conference at the time and, clearly exhausted, he nodded and squeezed out a raspy-voiced "yeah" when McRae looked to him for confirmation.
Rabbitohs chief executive Shane Richardson agreed that the fans who did turn up at Telstra Stadium - the crowd was 6597 - deserved way better, saying: "It was awful. There's no doubt about that. I apologise for our performance. But that's why we're trying to go forward and get better [by improving the playing roster for next year]."
McRae addressed the team immediately after the game, saying later: "I said to the players, 'You need to remember this. Take a photo of the scoreboard or keep a copy of the tape. Don't click your fingers and think it will just go away.' It was done in a calm way. Yelling and screaming doesn't get you anywhere."
An insider told the Herald the full effect of what had just happened on the field hit the players while McRae was speaking to them and that some of them quietly shed tears.
Speaking later, John Sutton, the club's young five-eighth and vice-captain, was red-eyed and struggling to hold his emotions together as he detailed his disappointment.
"We were shocking today," Sutton said. "We got beat all over the park. We didn't go out there ready to play. It was a crap performance from us. That's up there with the worst I've been involved with, ever."
hmmm... makes sense now why DKOR is such a sook.. it's part of their culture..
