Paul Kent: South Sydney ignored Sam Burgess’ warning that coach Jason Demetriou must fix now

South Sydney halfback Lachlan Ilias has been made the fall guy, but coach Jason Demetriou may pay the ultimate price if he can’t steer the Rabbitohs out of their early NRL season slump, writes PAUL KENT.

South Sydney Rabbitohs are in crisis.

Rugby league has always been a game of momentum but nowhere is it more important to have control of than in the social pages.

You know the place. It has nothing obviously to do with wins and losses but it becomes the heartbeat of social media and a conversation on the dark side that, overall, masks the problem.

Left to roll, it can’t be stopped.

If Souths’ coach Jason Demetriou can’t begin to arrest the small pebbles beginning to roll his way, then he better get ready for the avalanche.

But it doesn’t look like the Rabbitohs’ are prepared to honestly address the problems they have.

On first look, under a hard magnifying glass, none of the problems that beset the Rabbitohs last year — when they led the competition after 11 rounds but failed to make even the top eight after the full 27 — seem to have been resolved.

In round one it was a loss of concentration that saw the scoreline slip away from them.

Rabbitohs coach Jason Demetriou. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers

Last week it was an uncertainty with the ball and what appeared a hijacking of the game plan.

The entire first half, halfback Lachlan Ilias was bypassed all but once when it came to the Rabbitohs’ kicking game.

It wasn’t part of the game plan but for reasons nobody knows, Cody Walker and Latrell Mitchell took over the kicking game, Ilias played poorly and was dropped for Friday’s game against the Roosters.

SOUTHS FAIL TO LEARN LESSONS

The decision has echoes of last season and the Rabbitohs can’t say they weren’t tipped.

Sam Burgess delivered some honest truths last year and the Rabbitohs sided with Demetriou and the senior players and Burgess was promptly tipped out of the joint.

He headed to Warrington in the UK Super League, who finished sixth last year, and after five rounds has them sitting on top of the table.

Former Rabbitohs assistants John Morris and Sam Burgess. Picture: NRL Imagery

Meanwhile, the Rabbitohs failed to cop the tip and address the problem.

It’s all about control and accountability.

Honesty is a problem at South Sydney.

Then news broke on Monday that doubled down on the Waterloo whisper that all is still not right at a club struggling to deny there is a problem.

CRACKS APPEARED LONG AGO

Former Rabbitoh winger Josh Mansour sat down for an interview on James Graham’s The Bye Round podcast released on Monday and did little to ease problems in Redfern.

“Every time he spoke to me he didn’t kind of live up to what he was saying,” Mansour said, “and I let it get to me.

Former Rabbitohs player Josh Mansour. Picture: Jonathan Ng

“Once, twice … there was a couple of conversations that didn’t go the way he said it was going to go.

“I’m a man of my word. I was holding him to everything he was saying.”

It’s a damning criticism of a coach.

It finally ended for Mansour when the players were called in for a video tribute to the players, they were told, who were finishing up at the club.

As the tribute started Mansour popped up on the screen.

“I was the first one,” he said. “I didn’t even know I was leaving.”

While confronting, the problems for Souths is not so much a new storm but a rekindling of the same issues that derailed last year.

Honesty and accountability.

Like blaming Souths’ problems on the defence of Lachlan Ilias, who didn’t play well against Brisbane but, that said, blaming a loss on a halfback’s defence is like blaming global warming on a stubborn hot lamp in a house of sin.

In the complicated politics of clubland, where coaches have a top squad of 30 and only 13 can make the starting team on any weekend, keeping the players happy is one of the great talents yet some coaches can’t help but get tricky with the truth, sometimes preferring a rubbery conversation over a cold truth.

But trust is won through honesty.

Part of Burgess’s gripe with the Rabbitohs last season was that Demetriou was being dictated to by senior players who went unnamed but travel under the codenames Walker and Mitchell.

Souths denied a problem.

Rabbitohs players watch on as Jack Wighton and Latrell Mitchell share a laugh at training on Monday. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Walker and Mitchell expressed surprise there was a problem, saying they had no idea there was one, if any, and they might even believe that is true.

It certainly resonates elsewhere, though, and Souths’ players noticeably stiffen when it is raised.

GHOSTS OF WAYNE LINGER

It’s part of the reason former coach Wayne Bennett is quietly being mentioned already in terms of the Rabbitohs’ future.

The momentum is building already and Demetriou has one chance to fix it. One of the existing truths of this game is that, inevitably, momentum reaches a point that can’t be stopped and is often reached before the coach realises there is a problem.

Burgess tried to head it off and the club moved him on.

Assistant John Morris saw enough and also left.

Bennett, meanwhile, remains unattached next season and is seen as the one man that can handle the South Sydney playing cartel.

And a man that handles the political swings of momentum better than any.

Originally published as Paul Kent: South Sydney ignored Sam Burgess’ warning that coach Jason Demetriou must fix now