Nerd’s Eye View: How it'll take four players to replace Reynolds at Rabbitohs

New coach Jason Demetriou’s biggest challenge is replacing South Sydney’s smallest player in his first year as head coach.

Wayne Bennett’s former assistant is aiming to become the first coach to make the top four in the first season after the seven-time premiership winner has left a club.

Bennett’s departure to head up the Dolphins expansion club is a massive blow for the Rabbitiohs while another move north, Adam Reynolds joining Brisbane, has the potential to be just as significant, potentially more so.

Reynolds wore many hats for the Bunnies – captain, halfback, goal kicker and chief on-field playmaker, and Demetriou will turn to four players to pick up the slack.

Cameron Murray has already been announced as captain, a logical choice for the club considering he is a level-headed leader, a local junior, a representative star, has the respect of his peers and at 24 and under contract until the end of 2025, he can fill the role for a long time.

Goal kicking is also a no-brainer for Demetriou. Star fullback Latrell Mitchell was the NRL’s leading scorer in 2018 and 2019 with 248 and 273 points during those premiership-winning years at the Roosters so he will assume the role when he returns from suspension in round three with his fill-in at fullback, Blake Taaffe, set to start the year kicking goals.

Mitchell has a powerful boot but his career strike rate of 74% is more than 8 percentage points lower than Reynolds’. The reliable right boot of Reynolds has saved the Rabbitohs’ skin many times over the past decade,

It’s the main on-field roles where Reynolds will be hardest to replace.

His No.7 jersey is set to go to Lachlan Ilias, a former Australian Schoolboys rugby union representative who was given a taste of the NRL at the end of last season in the final round against the Dragons.
If he doesn’t mesh with NSW five-eighth Cody Walker as a halves combination, Taaffe or Dean Hawkins, another young halfback who received a brief crack at NRL level last season.

Ilias will likely play a secondary role to Walker, who will assume more of the playmaking workload.

To put into perspective how much the Rabbitohs will miss Reynolds – he was one of only two players to start in 25 matches last year (alongside halves partner Cody Walker) and he was the NRL’s leading scorer with 260 from five tries, 118 goals and two field goals.

Walker was credited with an incredible tally of 37 try assists, dwarfing Reynolds (14), but the halfback was often the catalyst for those raids, leading Souths in the try contributions category with 28 with his five-eighth on 18. Put simply, the Rabbitohs rarely put points on the board unless one of their halves was the reason.

Reynolds dominated South Sydney’s kicking in general play, earning 8028 metres from 261 kicks with Walker (2727 from 108) and retired bench utility Benji Marshall (1460 from 52) the only other meaningful contributions.

Mitchell has possibly the biggest boot in the NRL so he is likely to step up for clearing kicks this season.

As great as Reynolds’ kicking game has been for the past decade, South Sydney did not rely on it as heavily as you might think. They ranked 15th for total kicks per game (18.4 ahead of only the Roosters at 17.9) last season and only the Tigers (494), Roosters (481) and Titans (477) gained less ground in kicking metres on average.

Souths were also last for attacking kicks (7.4), which is perhaps a by-product of scoring so many tries down their left edge with sweeping passing movements, but were still one of the better teams at forcing line drop-outs at 1.5 per game to be sixth overall.
Taking over a team which went within two points of a grand final win should be ideal for a rookie coach but history has shown it has been hard to follow in Bennett’s footsteps.

Ivan Henjak took Brisbane to sixth spot in 2009, Steve Price guided the Dragons to ninth in 2012, Rick Stone ended with the wooden spoon three seasons later in Newcastle while Anthony Seibold’s first year at the Broncos four years ago resulted in an eighth-placed finish before a 58-0 finals humiliation against Parramatta.

If Demetriou can adequately replace Reynolds, he will go a long way to reversing that trend and have Souths in contention for the 2022 title.