Souths hammer Canberra in NRL clash

South Sydney’s Queensland Origin stars Greg Inglis and Dave Taylor turned on the power to help the Rabbitohs to their fourth straight NRL victory 36-18 over Canberra 36-18 on Friday night.

Two nights after playing their part in the Maroons’ win over NSW, Taylor and Inglis ripped the Raiders defence to shreds at ANZ Stadium, helping Souths to third place on the ladder.

Both Rabbitohs stars scored doubles with Taylor running riot on the right edge while Inglis was outstanding chiming in from fullback and looked threatening every time he touched the ball.

Souths ran in seven tries to four in an entertaining match with the Rabbitohs dominating the second half after going into the break leading 14-12.

Canberra had their chances early in the second half but made several errors including Josh McCrone failing to find touch from a penalty with Souths making them pay when Ben Lowe scored a soft try under the posts.

The Raiders were missing star fullback Josh Dugan and Blake Ferguson due to alcohol-related bans and their teammates were hopelessly outclassed in the second half.

A try by Raiders centre Joel Thompson just before the break brought Canberra back within two points to give the visitors some hope after they had trailed by 14.

The match came to life after a scrappy opening, Souths scoring through winger Justin Hunt who dived over in the corner following a nice pass from Inglis.

Raiders fullback Reece Robinson kicked the re-start dead and Souths made them pay with Taylor bumping off a couple of tackles to make it 10-0.

Inglis rocketed onto an inside pass a couple of minutes later and scored under the posts with Adam Reynolds slotting his first goal of the night to make it 14-0 after 18 minutes.

Canberra hit back with a couple of tries to centre Jarrod Croker, who failed to convert his tries.

Inglis, who scored the controversial Origin match sealer for Queensland, said he and Taylor didn’t waste any time in calling coach Michael Maguire after Wednesday night’s match to make themselves available for Souths.

Inglis played the full 80 minutes while Taylor was given an early mark, leaving the field with about 15 minutes remaining.

“I rang Madge (Maguire) straight after the game and put my hand up … Dave and I put our hands up to play tonight,” Inglis said.

“If you sit around all weekend it tightens your muscles up and you become sorer over the weekend. I think in the end I wanted to come back and keep the Bunnies on a roll.

“I’ve always wanted to back up after Origin over the past few years for Melbourne as well. In the end it’s just about making sure your recovery is right and your diet is right and just get back on the field and perform.”

While he’s excited by Souths’ form, Inglis isn’t getting carried away with anything.

“There’s no telling what we can do. We just have to perform for 80 minutes back-to back. It’s something that we spoke about after the game and at halftime we spoke about our defence.

“We have lapses in our game and obviously we have to fix them up .. we know we’ve got the attack and the defence is there, it’s just about keeping the standards up a bit higher.”

Canberra coach David Furner said his team squandered golden opportunities to force their way back into the match.

“I thought we were in the contest in the second half but we made some fundamental mistakes,” said Furner.

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