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For the past 10 days many heads have been scratched in the wake of Greg Inglis’ appointment as captain of the South Sydney Rabbitohs.
The ex-Souths captain John Sutton was the first to win a grand final since 1971 for the red and green club. Before Sutton had time to recover from his grand final hangover, he’s been written into the history books as the first premiership winning captain in 107 years to be axed from the role before the start of the following season.
Michael Maguire says Inglis’ appointment as skipper will help refresh the squad ahead of their title defence. For 43 years South Sydney have been trying to find a winning culture at the club, they finally grab a hold of that culture and now they feel it’s time to refresh from that same winning formula.
In modern times at the Rabbitohs it does seem a lot safer to be a captain of a wooden-spoon winning team than to captain a premiership winning squad. Bryan Fletcher won two spoons for the club in 2003-2004, yet continued as captain until the end of the 2005 season. Peter Cusack was given a second chance in 2007 to captain Souths after winning the spoon in 2006, but if you lifted up the Provan-Summons Trophy as a captain of Souths for the first time in four decades, you’ve just played your last game in the leadership role.
Inglis was handed the captaincy from Sutton on the 22nd of this month and two days after the rugby league community found out that Greg is staying loyal to his adopted club by turning down two multi-million dollar deals from European rugby clubs Bath and Toulon.
Have Souths just used the captaincy as a bargaining tool to keep their superstar fullback from leaving the foundation club? Is this the right decision to push aside a Kensington United junior who has played 229 first grade games for the same club? In my opinion it takes a little bit of shine off the captaincy title at South Sydney.
The club have had many distinguished names such as Clive Churchill, John Sattler, George Piggins and Bob McCarthy in the captaincy role and all have earned the honour. Giving the captaincy away as a deal sweetener just doesn’t sit right.
“John is comfortable with the club’s decision and supports the change, and he knows his role within the team won’t change much either in terms of what is expected of him as a senior player and a leader among the squad,” Maguire said last week.
If Sutton is comfortable with this decision then hats off to him, the man shows to be a true clubman. If he was a little more high profiled he’d be able to hold on to his childhood dream for a little bit longer. The self proclaimed pride of the league have a bad track record of repaying loyalty at their club, you just have to look at the way Souths repaid Nathan Merritt for his time spent there.
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