How Souths can beat Roosters: pack mentality and edging towards the fringes

Friday night’s showdown between South Sydney and the Roosters might well be the first proper blockbuster of the season.

Alongside the usual rivalry, there’s one big narrative: the rekindling of the Latrell Mitchell-Joey Manu feud from last year that saw Manu wiped out with a broken cheekbone and Mitchell suspended for six matches.

Speaking after the final captain’s run at Redfern Oval on Thursday morning, new Souths coach Jason Demetriou said he couldn’t remember a build-up like this for a regular season game in his many years in footy.

Though the media coverage has been built around the bad blood between players stemming from last year, perhaps the spotlight might be better put on the systemic clashes that could decide the game at Accor Stadium.

The Roosters were caught cold in Round 1 by a tactically perfect performance from Newcastle, but managed to turn in a much more coherent display to batter Manly last Friday night.

Souths, on the other hand, have lost both games – though they might just as easily have won them, as it took an intercept and a field goal to give Brisbane a win in Round 1 and then an extra-time field goal for Melbourne in Round 2.

The bookies have the Roosters as $1.60 favourites – Souths are $2.35 – and perhaps justifiably so, given the trajectories.

If Souths are going to win, they need to have their tactics spot on: so it’s worth a deep dive into what a tactical victory looks like for South Sydney.

Go toe-to-toe in the forwards

Before we get into the tactical specifics, there’s the obvious point. The Bunnies have to match the Roosters up front.

The pack put in a strong performance last week against Melbourne, winning the counts on overall metres, post-contact metres and set distances, only to be let down further out wide via poor completions and errors.

Souths have to repeat that, especially if the rain comes as expected.

“I think it’ll be won in the middle third,” said Demetriou. “The conditions are going to dictate that. We need to step up and give our playmakers a bit more time to do what they need to do.”

That second insight is telling, because in both games so far, Souths have at least been competitive in the forwards but perhaps not to the extent that they were last year.

With a rookie halfback in Lachlan Ilias, they need to create as much time as possible for him to adapt in first grade, and to get his more experienced spine partners in Cody Walker and Latrell Mitchell into the game.

Lachlan Ilias needs to kick more (and better)

There is a blueprint for how to beat the Roosters, as Newcastle proved just two weeks ago. The secret to their success came from negating the back three of the Chooks through intelligent kicking, led ably by Adam Clune and Jake Clifford, which nipped the set starts in the bud.

Last season, this area was one in which Souths were able to dominate thanks to the long-kicking ability of Adam Reynolds. Without their halfback legend, the role has fallen to Ilias who – while by no means terrible this year – is still very new to top grade footy.

What Reynolds brought wasn’t simply the ability to get territory, but to free up Walker to concentrate on his attack.

Walker has averaged seven kicks per game in the two outings this season, nearly double his numbers of last years, indicating that he has shouldered some of the burden of Reynolds’ absence.

Ilias is on 5.5 per game. If the Bunnies want Walker to have the attacking impact he managed last year, that number needs to be a lot higher.

“Lachlan is as important as anyone else in his role,” said Demetriou. “He’s got a role to do. I think he’s been improving in his role every week and he’ll be looking to improve again.

“The improvement that Lachlan has had in the last couple of weeks has allowed him (Walker) to be freed up and hopefully we’ll see that. Cody is at his best when he’s thinking clear and he’ll be like that tomorrow night.”

Win the battle of the edges

Souths boast one of the best edge combinations in the comp, with the Walker-Mitchell-Alex Johnston pathway consistently producing for the Bunnies on the left.

On the other side, however, they have looked all at sea at times, with Jaxson Paulo and Taane Milne sometimes struggling to the point where Paulo and Milne have now been switched with Milne taking over as centre.

The Roosters are less dominant to one side. They have Daniel Tupou on the left wing as the main strike outside Paul Momirovski, with Manu typically lining up on the right and Billy Smith named outside of him.

If Souths can get the ball to their outside backs in the flowing motion that we saw last year then there is certainly a benefit to exploiting Smith and Momirovski, who missed five and four tackles respectively in Round 1, but they also need to be wary of the ability of Manu, who has been quiet so far this season but possesses huge ability and – given the history with Mitchell – will be fired up.

Watch the inner edge

The Rabbitohs have to worry about a lot of Roosters players, but one specific area to line up should be what you might call ‘the inner edge’.

That’s the area where the middle forwards end and the edge defence begins, typically where faster edge forward, a slower middle and a halfback are stationed. That’s often where the indecision between the up-and-out middles meets the slide-or-engage of the outside players.

Sam Walker targeted it perfectly last week for the Roosters’ first try, taking on the gap between Haumole Olaukau’atu and Sean Keppie, and Luke Keary did the same for the last try, exploiting the indecision of Daly Cherry-Evans and Olakau’atu to put Nat Butcher over.

When the halves are firing, the Chooks have made an art form of finding the gap between the outside backs and the inside forwards. It’s why Sitili Tupouniua scored at a one-in-two rate last year, because he was running directly at that area.

Tupouniua will miss the clash with Souths due to a head knock, but the threat remains, particularly with the way that the Roosters are attempting to run their halves this year.

Walker and Keary, instead of splitting sides of the field, will often sweep to double up on the same side, playing as first and second receiver with one of the bigger bodies coming on the crash ball. South Sydney has to identify when this is happening and be alert to it.