NRL 2021: Wayne Bennett ready to back Rabbitoh rookie Blake Taaffe to handle Cleary bombs
He’s yet to make a final call but Wayne Bennett is leaning toward toward one particular option as Latrell Mitchell’s fullback replacement for Saturday’s blockbuster final against Penrith.
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Wayne Bennett is ready to roll the dice and back South Sydney young gun Blake Taaffe to stand up to an anticipated Nathan Cleary bombing onslaught in Saturday’s blockbuster NRL final against Penrith.
While Bennett is yet to make the final call on who will wear the No 1 jumper in Latrell Mitchell’s absence, the master coach is leaning towards giving Taaffe another crack despite his somewhat nervous performance in the final round win over St George Illawarra.
By no means was Taaffe poor against the Dragons and he’s certainly seen as a player with huge potential.
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But there were a few worrying signs that the lack of football he has played in recent times makes it a potentially dangerous gamble throwing him in against the might of the Panthers and, in particular, Cleary’s phenomenal kicking game in such a high stakes match.
Bennett does have other options that he was still weighing up on Sunday, which include moving Cody Walker and starting Benji Marshall at five-eighth.
Alex Johnston is also a more than capable fullback but Bennett is extremely reluctant to shift Johnston from the left wing where he has scored 27 tries so far this season.
Bennett is also extremely cautious about tampering with the halves partnership of Walker and Adam Reynolds.
Benji’s experience and class was on show in the win over the Dragons where he produced a standout performance to guide the young Rabbitohs to victory in the absence of so many senior players.
But the reluctance to weaken a strength points to Taaffe getting the call up when the team is named on Tuesday.
Internally, another other factor in Taaffe’s favour is that the 22-year-old is an extremely popular member among the squad.
Bennett believes that could inspire them all to lift to try and help the youngster handle what is arguably the toughest challenge for any fullback in this game, defusing Cleary’s towering kicks.
Cleary had a field day in his most recent clash against the Rabbitohs when poor Josh Mansour had a horror night.
Cleary would have no doubt seen Taaffe drop one cold against the Dragons which was a kick that didn’t come from the same stratosphere as the rainmakers Cleary puts up.
Taaffe also got pushed off in an attempted tackle on Mikaele Ravalawa while some of his wayward shots at goal looked to be burdened by nerves.
But Bennett put a lot of it down to the lack of football he’s played over the last two years, and he’s confident the youngster will be much better for the run.
Any way you look at it the Rabbitohs are going to be worse off not having Latrell, that’s just the reality no one can ignore.
But Bennett said after Saturday game that whoever gets the call up will do so knowing the coach believes they can do the job.
This is where Bennett’s own experience comes into play.
Last year Bennett backed Corey Allan to cover at fullback when he lost Latrell to injury late in the season and most thought the Rabbitohs hopes went with him.
Yet the Bunnies ended up going down in a close preliminary final loss to the Panthers.
And one thing Bennett firmly believes is that Souths are a better overall team this year, regardless of who is wearing the No 1 jumper.
Rabbitohs rookies star as life without Latrell begins
South Sydney unleashed their next generation of stars in style against the Dragons with fullback Blake Taaffe in a solid audition to replace the suspended Latrell Mitchell in the finals series.
Mitchell is irreplaceable, but Taaffe did a mostly classy job in the 20-16 win over the fast finishing St George Illawarra on the Sunshine Coast. Veteran Benji Marshall left the field in the second half with an ankle injury with early reports suggesting it was of a minor nature. Marshall’s exit coincided with a stunning comeback by the Dragons after trailing 20-0.
Rabbitohs coach Wayne Bennett has a big call to make on which way he decides to go at fullback against Penrith in week one of the finals after Nathan Cleary bombarded the back three with towering kicks in the Panthers most recent 25-12 win. Taaffe made a strong case to be the man.
“My challenge is to make the right decision and the best decision for the team,” Bennett said.
“[Taaffe] is a football player. There are a lot of qualities he’s got and he just needs to play. I am sure he will be better next week. If he goes back there I will be confident he can handle [Cleary’s bombs]. I am not confident he won’t be playing there.
“There are a couple of things I liked tonight [about Taaffe] and a couple of things I didn’t but a lot of these young guys have played six or eight games in the last two years . He is only going to get better.”
FAB FUTURE
Life after Adam Reynolds certainly looks promising with 21-year-old debutant Ilias kicking for himself to score the opening try. The former Wests Tiger was slick early and his partnership with good mate Mamouzelos gave Souths spark with big gun spine members Cody Walker, Reynolds and Damien Cook all rested.
Mamouzelos tackled everything that moved and breathed in a red and white jersey and had clocked a stunning 31 tackles by half-time with none missed.
“I thought they were good. The key part was Benji controlling a lot of things and helping those boys,” Bennett said of his young brigade.
The short-term is what Bennett is most concerned about now, so all eyes were on Taaffe and how he handled the gig,
Bennett played Taaffe at fullback in two previous games this year when Mitchell was absent but wanted another look before deciding who should replace the NSW Origin star.
TAAFFE WATCH
The positional play of Taaffe was spot on and he played with confidence and composure. He chimed in to throw the final pass in a left-side raid to put Taane Milne over and as the second half unfolded he showcased some great link play on the right side. It was no frills and no fuss, but Bennett will want the custodian in the finals to do their job like Corey Allan did for him last year when Mitchell was injured. Taaffe did drop one bomb, but got his hands on the footy soon after to put the error behind him.
MASTER BENJI
Bennett didn’t need reminding, but if he decides to send Walker back to fullback like he did earlier in the season then he can count on Marshall, if he’s fit, to do the job at five-eighth. The veteran’s kicking game, and in particularly his high bombs, were inch perfect and gave the Dragons back three nightmares. His control gave tyro Ilias the confidence to back himself on a night he will never forget.
Bennett was proud of his side’s effort to get through the season with just four losses.
“They have had a wonderful season,” Bennett said.
“To think we have only lost four games in the season. It is certainly the best season I have coached. I believe we have got a better team each year I have been here.”
THE BBQ THAT ENDED DRAGONS SEASON
—Fatima Kdouh
It’s the BBQ that skewered St George Illawarra’s season.
Their 20-16 loss to the South Sydney Rabbitohs was the Dragons’ eight straight defeat since 13 players violated the NRL Covid rules to have a team barbecue at prop Paul Vaughan’s house in early July.
The NRL punished the players with 20 games worth of suspensions and whacked them with $305,000 in fines and Vaughan had his contract torn up.
Dragons fans were punished with another season, the third in a row, without a place in the finals series.
Regardless of how the Dragons try to spin the fallout from the BBQ in the club’s inevitable end of season review, it was a defining moment of their season.
Veteran forward Josh McGuire uire said the players who attended, including the likes Norman, Gerard Beale, Jack Bird, Jack de Belin and Zac Lomax, believed if ‘ kept it within the team it wasn’t going to be a big deal’.
Try telling that to passionate, sometimes unforgiving, Dragons who again miss out on September, again.
Worryingly, rather than take the chance to end their season on a high against a makeshift Rabbitohs outfit minus eight regular first graders, the Dragons didn’t turn up for the first half.
Anthony Griffin’s men lacked energy and looked to already have one eye on Mad Monday.
They made fundamental errors and their back three struggled when veteran South Sydney playmaker peppered the back three.
It took 34 minutes last night for the Dragons to get a single set within South Sydney’s attacking zone. But outgoing marquee playmaker Corey Norman was not able to fire a single shot that challenged the Rabbitohs defence. Norman didn’t necessarily do anything wrong, but faced with an inexperienced opposition it was his chance to pick Wayne Bennett’s side apart.
With the game in the balance, four points behind on the scoreboard and 20 seconds on the clock, Norman spilt the ball cold. In a moment, for Norman that perfectly encapsulates his time at the club.
Griffin made what appeared to be a peculiar call to bench rising playmaker Jayden Sullivan, who was playing in the nine jumper, for loan player Freddy Lussick. Sitting down Norman and injecting Sullivan at seven to give him a chance, in only his fifth game of the year, to try and spark the Dragons to life seemed like the better choice. Sullivan made his way back in the field in the second half but again from dummy half.
In a bright spot for the Red V, dynamo fullback Tyrell Sloan, the rookie likely to succeed Matt Dufty in the no.1 jumper, bounced back from two early errors to score a double, taking his tally to six tries from five games.
RABBITOHS SHOW FANS GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE
—Nick Campton
Their side might be days away from another finals campaign, but South Sydney fans will get an early look at their long-term future against St George Illawarra on Saturday night.
With Rabbitohs stars Cody Walker, Adam Reynolds and Damien Cook all putting their feet up and Latrell Mitchell suspended, rookies Blake Taaffe, Lachlan Ilias and Peter Mamouzelos will play first grade together for the first time.
Their appearance comes as South Sydney enter one final premiership tilt with their departing captain in Reynolds, and coaching kingpin in Wayne Bennett.
They will also go head-to-head with the Dragons’ own star junior combination of Tyrell Sloan, Junior Amone and Jayden Sullivan.
Taaffe, Ilias and Mamouzelos already know each other’s game inside and out after their combined to steer the Rabbitohs to a Jersey Flegg premiership in 2019.
“The whole group was really close, but Blake and Lachlan were the key connectors. They were good kids, very popular, and they drove the standards on and off the field,” said Ben Rogers, who coached the 2019 side to their grand final win over Canberra.
“It was like having two more coaches out there every week. That’s been a big part in how they’ve been able to skip through the grades.
“Pete was pretty similar to Damien Cook, he had that ball-playing ability but if he had half a chance, he’d take off in the blink of an eye. He had that ability back then and that’s really working for him when he plays first grade.”
While Mamouzelos debuted earlier this year and Taaffe will replace Mitchell for the rest of the season, the match against the Dragons will mark Ilias’ NRL debut.
Ilias is in the race to replace Reynolds as the Rabbitohs halfback next year, due in no small part to his enormous boot which has always been one of his greatest weapons.
His specialty are the floating bombs that gives opposition fullbacks and wingers nightmares.
“Lachlan Ilias has a very similar kicking game to Adam Reynolds — tactically he’s good, but he can spiral that ball as well that makes it so hard for wingers and fullbacks to catch it.”
“He would wreak havoc by doing that, even if he shanked it I wouldn’t be worried because nobody would catch it. He’d get downhearted but I’d say ‘mate, nobody got near it’ — in a semi-final he put one up from our own half, they let it bounce and it went for a 40/20.”
Rabbitohs winger Jaxson Paulo and Parramatta forward Ky Rodwell, who made his NRL debut on Friday, are two more members of the illustrious side to crack the big time.
But it’s Taaffe who will have to hit the ground running as he steps in for the suspended Mitchell for the remainder of the season.
Rogers, who has since left the Rabbitohs to act as Parramatta’s head of recruitment, has no doubts the 22-year old can fill Mitchell’s enormous shoes.
“The little man in today’s game has grown a leg,” Rogers said.
“He’s got that speed but he’s also got that ability to catch and pass like a half, which is exactly what Souths need when they run those fantastic sweep plays.”
THE SECRET LATRELL ADVICE WHICH REVIVED BUSTED YOUNG GUN
— Nick Walshaw
Somewhere in his bedroom at home, Blake Taaffe keeps an autograph from the man he is now set to replace.
A signed picture he received only a few months ago. Back when he was nursing a left ankle that more than simply being busted, was refusing to heal. Which isn’t how things were supposed to go.
No, when Taaffe initially twisted that ankle in February’s Charity Shield match against St George Illawarra in Mudgee, the diagnosis was for him to miss four, maybe five weeks.
But when those four weeks became six? Then seven, nine, and eventually double digits?
Yeah, it worried the kid.
Not because Taaffe has never experienced setbacks. No, even at 22, the opposite is true.
With that foot simply the latest hurdle for a fella who has always been considered too small, or light, who never made a junior rep team, never got further than the bench for Roosters Jersey Flegg, and who by 19 couldn’t even crack first grade with The Entrance Tigers.
So as for being the man to replace Latrell Mitchell?
Even now Taaffe is almost 20kg too light. That, and 14cm too short.
A fella who only three years ago, as Mitchell was winning premierships, Origins, and fielding $1 million offers, was playing with the North Sydney Bears for free.
Had good reason, too. Nobody else wanted him.
Yet with the battling Bears short on numbers for Jersey Flegg, well, eventually they plucked Taaffe from Central Coast park footy for a contract worth his medical bills and nothing more.
Which put another way, means he joined South Sydney’s feeder club for free.
Which was still only slightly less than the $5000 Taaffe earned a year later when, against all odds, and while working as a carpenter, he helped a South Sydney Jersey Flegg side all the way to a title.
But the start of something big? Not quite.
Instead, come 2020, a little thing called Covid stole almost an entire season from this playmaker who still lives with his grandparents in La Perouse. Then in February this year, it was that twisted ankle which again outed Taaffe for what would eventually be the opening 10 weeks.
Yet even when the kid returned? Covid struck again. It meant that in two years, this young Indigenous livewire has continually been flat out playing not much of anything.
“Which has been tough,” admits mum Dorothy. “And really knocked him about.”
Dad Darren, agrees.
With the former Rabbitohs lower-grader explaining his son “was just so frustrated … he really needed some reassuring that everything was going to be OK”.
Enter Latrell Mitchell.
That Rabbitohs superstar who, you may have heard by now, won’t play again this year after smashing the cheekbone of Joey Manu last weekend so badly the Roosters favourite now boasts three metal plates in his face.
Not for the first time in his life, Mitchell is again the game’s biggest yarn.
Indeed, in the days since said tackle, both Mitchell the man, and his red mist tendencies, have been dissected like some frog in a Year 12 biology class.
Worse, that Manu hit has also proved the catalyst for an ongoing saga that’s seen referee Henry Perenara dropped, Roosters prop Jared Waerea-Hagreaves grilled, coach Trent Robinson lightened of $40,000, the Book of Feuds bagged, Jayden Su’A claim abuse, the Roosters deny it, and even Mitchell’s partner Brielle – horrifically — receive death threats via Instagram.
Elsewhere, there have also been headlines made of referees generally, Phil Gould specifically and host of others including – but not limited to – Manu’s family, Victor Radley, the NRL Bunker, Wayne Bennett, Nick Politis and that Roosters side fighting on like Monty Python’s Black Knight.
Oh yeah, the Bunnies are also now without a superstar fullback for the NRL finals series.
All of which brings us back to Taaffe, and that photograph resting on a bedside at his grandparent’s house.
An image which not only shows the youngster seated alongside now great mate Mitchell, but carries the NSW star’s signature beneath the simplest of messages: “Hey bra, Head up. Trust The Process.”
Then to finish things off, “Love Ya”.
“It’s a message Latrell wrote earlier this year,” Darren Taaffe explains. “Back when Blake was really frustrated by his injury and Latrell, he just wanted him to keep going, keep him trusting that it would all be OK.
“And throughout everything, Latrell’s just been so supportive.
“You can even see in the Charity Shield when Blake goes down injured, there’s footage of Latrell going straight up to give him a cuddle.”
Better, the Indigenous All Star is now quietly preparing his protege for everything to come.
Which isn’t to say Taaffe is the new Mitchell.
Who could be?
“But absolutely Latrell will be mentoring him,” insists the rookie’s uncle Keith McCraw, who doubles as chairman of Souths Juniors. “Obviously nobody wanted Blake’s opportunity to come at Latrell Mitchell’s expense.
“But I know Latrell, Cody Walker, Benji Marshall — those three have all really instilled a confidence in Blake this year. As a footballer, he already had the speed, the natural ability … but those three have instilled a confidence in Blake to get out there and do the job.”
Which is why we can also tell you, alongside that signed message from Mitchell, sits one from Marshall too.
A photograph of the pair playing together on which the New Zealand Test great has written: “I Love You Bro. You’re The Man.”
Importantly, Taaffe now gets the chance to prove it.
Which is some rise for a fella who, after debuting in June, will make what is still only his fifth NRL appearance this Saturday against the Dragons.
A fullback who got so little game time when initially playing with the Roosters Jersey Flegg, he walked out one day and never returned.
From there, and after being unable to crack a start with The Entrance, switching to nearby Berkley Vale, where after just two games coach Alex Moore helped secure that Bears deal.
“And first game, he played the Roosters,” dad recalls.
So as for how he went?
“Carved up, scored a couple of tries,” he laughs. “Afterwards, the coach came up and said ‘Ah, I probably should’ve given you more of a game’.”
Says Moore: “All Blake ever wanted is an opportunity.
“And once Norths gave him that … well, look where he is right now.”
Parramatta recruitment boss Ben Rogers agrees.
Two winters ago, when still employed by Souths, it was Rogers who was tasked with taking a “limited budget” and creating that Bunnies Flegg side that would eventually beat all-comers.
Asked about the key to Taaffe, who played No.6, the coach recalls weekly video sessions with both he and halfback Lachlan Ilias, of whom big things are also expected at Redfern.
“Start of each week we’d watch video of the opposition,” Rogers recalls. “And it really was like working with your assistant coaches.
“Those two wouldn’t only find chinks in the opposition armour, or put plans together, they could then go out and execute.
“It eventually became a big part of how we beat the more fancied teams.”
Which brings us full circle to this Saturday.
Then beyond that, as far into the playoffs as these Rabbitohs can go.
Which, with Mitchell now gone, nobody expects to be a decider. But for Taaffe, that’s fine.
Yet know this kid whose grandfathers played for the same La Perouse team, whose father and uncle also played for the Bunnies, he also boasts the type of athleticism, and wheels, that comes from having Souths great Kevin Longbottom as an uncle, and old Canterbury flyer Gavin Lester as a cousin.
Elsewhere, he defends, as Uncle Keith puts it “so well he’s never needed hiding in any defensive line”.
Throw in too those footy smarts that once upset a Jersey Flegg premiership race.
And grit? This is the same kid, remember, who only three years ago was unwanted by every club not named North Sydney.
Which is no small thing when you’re playing for free.
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