Phil Gould says South Sydney are exhausted and have over-achieved
Phil Gould isn’t going to win any fans in South Sydney after claiming the Rabbitohs are burnt out and can thank the sin bin for their place in the NRL preliminary final against Canberra.
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Premiership-winning coach Phil Gould has declared South Sydney are “running on empty” ahead of their grand final qualifier against the Raiders — the biggest NRL match played in Canberra.
Described by club officials as the most significant home game in their 37-year history, every corporate box at GIO Stadium has been sold out, while 27,500 tickets for the preliminary final on Friday night are expected to be gone within 48 hours of being placed on sale on Monday.
The Rabbitohs have earned the right to tackle the rested Raiders after ending Manly’s season 34-26 on Friday night at ANZ Stadium.
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But according to Gould — a former Rabbitohs player — Wayne Bennett’s Bunnies will limp down the Hume Highway needing a major overhaul in the next five days to advance to their first grand final since winning the 2014 premiership.
“(Souths) haven’t really impressed me as a top-four team all year and I still think they’ve done extremely well,’’ Gould told Macquarie Sports radio on Saturday. “I think they’ve over-achieved to get this far.
“The South Sydney side right at the moment, I think they’re just about exhausted.
“I think they’re running on empty. A few of their player look as though they’ve had enough and a couple of others are underdone.
“They did in fact beat Canberra in Canberra earlier this year in round 10, they beat them 16-12 down there, which will give them some hope.
“But they conceded five tries (against Manly), they were aided by a 9-3 penalty count and of course Manly were down to 12 men twice in the second half.
“Their (Souths) defence is a major issue. I honesty think without the sin bin and without the second sin bin, if (Jake) Trbojevic stays on the field I think Manly hang on and win.
“I thought they (Manly) were on top at that stage and Souths were going to battle to get out of it.’’
On Sunday, senior Rabbitohs players Cody Walker and Damien Cook made the case for why they will travel to Canberra with internal belief and confidence.
“If I agreed with those (Gould’s) comments, I wouldn’t have turned up to play,’’ Walker said.
“We’ve got the belief in this side and the group of boys we have that we’re 80 minutes away from a grand final.
“But what’s in front of us is the 80 minutes and we can’t look too further than that.
“We understand we need to be better and it starts this week on Monday at training.’’
Cook added: “We’ve just got to learn from (Manly) and get our defence right, knowing that we do have points in the back-end.
“Before the Brisbane game (round 23) we weren’t going right as a team, but we just turned it on that day.
“[Saturday] night it was a bit 50-50. We got out to an early lead and we let them back in because of our errors and our penalties.
“So against Canberra, we won’t be able to give them good field position because they’ve got too many points in them.’’
While the Rabbitohs were victorious in the two sides only meeting this year, both teams will field vastly different line-ups.
In round 10, the Rabbitohs were without Alex Johnston, Adam Doueihi and James Roberts while the Raiders were without Aidan Sezer, John Bateman, Joey Leilua, Jordan Rapana and Joey Tapine.