NRL 2022: Jason Demetriou and Cameron Murray’s calming influence behind Rabbitohs revival
Sometimes it takes a special relationship to kickstart momentum. That is why coach Jason Demetriou and captain Cameron Murray have the Rabbitohs making serious headway.
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Jason Demetriou is laser-focused on winning a premiership with South Sydney but for the moment, he is happy to take a quick trip down memory lane.
Let’s start with 2015 and working alongside Paul Green, where he played a major role in helping North Queensland secure their maiden premiership.
“It was a huge moment,” Demetriou said.
“I have obviously reflected on it more over the last few weeks. For us at the time and forever now in history there is only one group of men — playing group and staff — that will be involved in the first premiership in history.
“[Can I] lean on what happened in ’15? I think so and in ’21 [with South Sydney]. I think we got our prep bang on for that game and it went right down to the wire, as did the ’15 game.
“Out of those games you learn that the big moments matter in big games. That is the biggest message you can give to players — defend well and make those efforts that win you those extra moments, that will win you the game in the end.”
Demetriou went perilously close to winning a second premiership last season when he worked alongside Wayne Bennett at the Rabbitohs. They were pipped by Penrith and Bennett departed, leaving Demetriou at the helm.
Now, the buck stops with him.
“Green was very process (driven) — making sure we know the things that got us this far and valuing them in the finals,” Demetriou said.
“Wayne was pretty similar but he spoke a bit more about moments and owning the big moments in the game.
“They weren’t too dissimilar.”
Having served an apprenticeship under two of the best coaches in the game’s recent history, Demetriou now has the chance to make his mark.
The Rabbitohs started the season slowly but hit their straps with the return of Latrell Mitchell and will head into Sunday’s game at Allianz Stadium feeling good about their chances.
At the heart of their revival has been Demetriou, who has helped Rabbitohs fans quickly move on from Bennett’s departure.
“He has done a great job,” Rabbitohs captain Cameron Murray said.
“I had no doubt at the start of the year that he would because he is a great coach and great mentor, very passionate about what he does.
“Everyone wants to play for him. We always knew it was going to be difficult from the start [of the year] and it was. The good thing was we regrouped and stuck together.”
Demetriou and Murray have taken to talking on the phone after every game. Their relationship has been crucial to Souths success — when Murray was overthinking things earlier this year, it was Demetriou who helped snap him out of it by sending him away for a couple of days after the State of Origin series.
“I tend to overthink and be someone I am not when I am not playing my best footy,” Murray said.
“When I got to where I felt comfortable, I would suffer a little setback. It is hard to enjoy your footy when you are having these setbacks. I overthink and it is hard to lead a footy team when you are not playing the best yourself.
“That was the hardest point. After Origin, I got away for two weeks — the coach was really good about it and said get away from footy. I turned my phone off and relaxed.
“JD is very passionate, he just loves his footy. When he wants to get a message across, he gets it across.
“He is just a good fella. He has a great mix similar to Wayne, of a really good relationship with players but he is not scared to pull someone up.
“Very emotional, very passionate.”
Real story behind Demetriou appointment at South Sydney
- David Riccio
The man responsible for bringing Jason Demetriou to South Sydney has revealed for the first time that supercoach Wayne Bennett had nothing to do with the appointment.
The stunning revelation has emerged as Demetriou attempts to become just the second coach to take a side previously coached by Bennett beyond the first week of the finals.
Demetriou’s quest to do what few coaches who have succeeded Bennett have been able to do takes a major step when the Bunnies face the Roosters on Sunday in a do-or-die elimination final at Allianz Stadium.
Scuppering a widely held-view that Demetriou followed Bennett to South Sydney from their days together at the Broncos, former Rabbitohs GM of football Shane Richardson said the rookie NRL coach was never part of a Bennett package deal.
To that point, Richardson told how Demetriou, 46, beat “six other candidates” for the role to succeed Bennett as head coach of Souths.
“Wayne didn’t bring Jason down from Brisbane,’’ Richardson revealed.
“He (Demetriou) stood on his own two feet to get that job, it wasn’t Wayne who got him that job.
“We did an exhaustive search on who we wanted to replace Wayne when he was due to leave us (in 2021).
“There were six others we looked at.
“The thing was, when Wayne took on the job (in 2019), he never got to choose his high performance staff.
“That was because we wanted to put in a system that when Wayne left, it was still going to be there when he was gone and so that we weren’t left in a situation where we’d have a bunch of Wayne’s own staff leaving with him.
“We decided that the Rabbitoh way and the way we do things was, we weren’t just going to have a coach come in and rearrange everything and then move out.
“Wayne wasn’t against it. He was happy for us to go through the process.”
Following 12 months working with Bennett as the Broncos attack coach in 2017, Demetriou joined the super coach at Souths as his assistant coach in 2019.
In February 2020, it was announced that Demetriou would succeed Bennett at the end of the 2021 season.
That, according to Richardson, was always the plan — even if Bennett won last year’s premiership with the Rabbitohs.
Richardson, who stood down as Rabbitohs GM in early 2020 but remains a consultant for the club, broke down key details of how he chose Demetriou following a one-on-one meeting at a hotel in Kingscliff, on the NSW north coast.
Demetriou brought with him his vast coaching resume and development as a leader that began with a stint with Keighley in the UK, before delivering a premiership with Northern Pride in the Queensland Cup, working as assistant coach at the Cowboys, before working as both an NRL assistant and NSW Cup coach with St George-Illawarra before joining Bennett at the Broncos.
“I always think that to have coaches who want to be coaches, they have to coach men first,” Richardson said.
“He coached men for years.’’
There was another key factor in Richardson’s appeal in Demetriou, who spent all of his 13-year playing career in England, playing for six clubs.
“The best coaches are coaches, who weren’t necessarily the best players,’’ Richardson said.
“They had to work really hard on their ability to play as high as they did.
“So therefore probably harder than what, say, a Wally Lewis, had to work.
“He was used to working hard.
“I liked his mental toughness, the way he talked about footy and there were some pretty good coaches we interviewed.
“Some of them have got jobs now.
“But in our opinion he was the best young coach at the time to take the job on.
“Whoever we appointed was always going to take over from Wayne.
“Wayne knew that even if he won the premiership in the last year, we had made a commitment to Jason Demetriou.
“It was similar to when we appointed John Lang for two years and we appointed Michael Maguire.
“Langy knew he had two years and everyone was on the same page.‘’
Stepping out the shadows of Bennett, in a season that saw Demetriou lose star fullback Latrell Mitchell for three months, Richardson said the rookie coach deserved credit for his first NRL season.
“He lost some key players last year and had to replace them internally,’’ Richardson said.
“He lost Latrell at the start of the year, which cost them games that they may have won and put them in the top four.
“Coaching is about winning and no one knows that more than Jason.
“But we put Jason on to be the long-term coach of the club.
“We’d like to think Jason had a career for as long as he can.’’
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