South Sydney have nobody to blame for their belting at the hands of Manly

LAST week South Sydney could claim the Bunker robbed them of victory. This week they have nobody to blame but themselves.

South Sydney's John Sutton spitting after a Manly try during the South Sydney v Manly rugby league game at Allianz Stadium, Sydney. Picture: Brett Costello

REFEREES, surely, will be lining up to bag South Sydney.

For the Bunnies reckon The Bunker is bad?

C’mon.

At least that disaster only costs $2 million annually.

But to put an NRL team in the paddock -- it’s three times as much plus change.

And, yes, of course we’re taking the you-know-what.

For undoubtedly Souths were robbed last week against Brisbane.

And courtesy of two deadest clangers.

But this time?

Manly ripped South Sydney apart.

It was them who were ugly.

Bunkeresque, even.

So bad coach Michael Maguire could only lament afterwards: “We need to have a good hard look at ourselves”.

When pressed, he continued: “our defence, it didn’t show up tonight.

“We needed to get our bodies in front, squeeze the ball, all those things -- but we didn’t.”

And so, the Manly offloads started to come.

Indeed, in a game when the Sea Eagles scored nine tries, and the Bunnies missed 30 tackles, it was still those 19 offloads which proved most telling.

“And we were aware they were coming,’’ Maguire continued. “Because that’s their game.

Souths were never in the match.

“Everyone can tell you how Manly play; they play with their offloads, with young Api Koroisau and (Tom) Trbojevic going off the back of that.

“But we allowed way too many offloads, and easy ones, which allowed Manly to play.”

And didn’t they do that?

But still, as much as the Sea Eagles were spectacular, so the Bunnies were terrible.

More than their fifth loss in six weeks, this was an effort that went against everything on which Souths is built.

A performance best highlighted by that giant hand which, belonging to Manly prop Brenton Lawrence, embedded itself deep into the chest of Bunnies halfback Adam Reynolds as he charged towards the tryline for the first try.

Where do Souths go from here?

Time of death: 11 minutes.

Indeed, no matter what the Redfern boys attempted at their old Moore park stomping ground, they simply couldn’t get it right.

They dropped balls, missed tackles, blundered. And all that in the first 20 minutes.

Where was the team from a week back? Who knew?

But not at Allianz Stadium.

“We didn’t live up to our standards,” skipper Sam Burgess conceded. “We’ll have to look at ourselves and start over defensively because that just wasn’t good enough.”

And as for what he said to his troops as the points piled up?

“We let six tries in the first half,’’ he shrugged. “There isn’t much you can say after the second or third. You’ve said everything.”

Indeed, the more the tries piled up in the second half, the greater that line of Souths fans heading for the exits.

By the finish, not enough of them left to even boo the referees.