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Last night’s clash at ANZ Stadium was arguably one of the most desperate matches of the 2016 season so far.
Both teams had something drastic to prove.
On the one hand, Souths were facing the prospect of equalling their longest losing streak during the Michael Maguire era.
At the end of last year, they lost four matches in a row, ruling them out of the finals.
Losing four again so soon was something that needed to be avoided at all costs if this year’s finals were going to feel like a serious possibility.
On the other hand, the Tigers were facing the prospect of an even more sustained and humiliating losing streak.
Over the last couple of weeks, they’ve shown us just how far they can descend, and just how much more they can disappoint their fans.
That they ended up winning last night is a testament to their greater desperation.
While the Bunnies have hit hard times, they’re one of Sydney’s prestige teams: they’ve got a stable infrastructure, club culture and local mythology to fall back upon.
Straddled between Leichhardt and Campbelltown, more and more alienated from Balmain and still in need of a proper clubhouse, the Tigers have much more to lose.
With every game of footy it feels as if they’re fighting for their very existence.
Sometimes that can make them seem almost unbearably vulnerable, but sometimes it can produce the steely determination we saw last night.
That kind of footy only comes from a team who are backed into a corner with no room to move.
In front of an astonished home crowd, Souths conceded twenty points in nearly as many minutes.
While a try from Kirisome Auva’a just before halftime put the Bunnies back in the picture and another from Dane Nielsen at the 49th minute reduced the margin to two, the Tigers never stopped fighting back.
Minutes after Nielsen scored his first four points for the Rabbitohs, Jordan Rankin beat Greg Inglis to a grubber from Luke Brooks which he then converted just as deftly.
As always, James Tedesco shone, planting the Steeden at the same second as Adam Reynolds for the first try of the night, and setting up Rankin’s first try with a beautiful cut-out pass moments later.
While the match couldn’t have been more brutal, there was something great about seeing Teddy and Reynolds effectively – if inadvertently – playing as one.
It was like a glimpse of a Blues partnership we will probably never get to see if Laurie Daley continues to select Josh Dugan and Mitchell Pearce at every opportunity.
It was worrying, then, to see Tedesco taken off for the second half with a shoulder issue, especially since Mitchell Moses had also sustained a quad injury during warmup.
Still, it was amazing to see how the Tigers managed to retain their momentum without him.
Ironically, what the boys in orange and black probably needed at this stage was a game in which their star fullback wasn’t in the spotlight for the entire eighty minutes.
While Tedesco has shone in virtually every match this year, the team also has to function as a team.
Finding themselves devoid of their no. 1 may actually have provided them with that little bit of extra desperation they needed to cross the line eight points ahead of Souths.
For a match that felt as if it was going to provide the Bunnies with a key turning point in their season, then, last night’s showdown was a bit of an upset for both parties.
At one point, it felt as if the Tigers might just manage to school the Rabbitohs as dramatically as they had been schooled by the Raiders the weekend before.
While that didn’t happen, let’s hope that the victory motivates both teams as they prepare to take on the Eels and Bulldogs next weekend.
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