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Jason Taylor rubbishes talk of a player revolt

LiveNews | Andrew Moore

 

The Rabbitohs’ goal-line defence was worse than terrible. Captain Roy Asotasi was pathetic. Chris Sandow needs a stint out of first-grade.

 

I hope South Sydney are more concerned privately about what’s going on at the club than they are publicly.

 

The claims by coach Jason Taylor and chief executive Shane Richardson that there are no off-field problems at Souths aren’t fooling anyone.

You just had to watch them play on Saturday night.

I stand by what I said at full-time in that game – the Rabbitohs players, other than a few, disgraced that famous South Sydney jersey.

Mick Crocker tried his guts out, Isaac Luke tried his guts out, Craig Wing tried his guts out, I’m sure some others did as well.

But – and I know this is the harshest thing you can say about any professional athlete – you cannot convince me the South Sydney team had a dig on Saturday night.

The Rabbitohs’ goal-line defence was worse than terrible. It was weak and it was pathetic.

The performance of captain Roy Asotasi was pathetic.

Halfback Chris Sandow needs a stint out of first-grade – to replace your halfback 30 minutes into a game is ridiculous. If he isn’t playing well enough to be in first grade he shouldn’t be there.

John Sutton’s great start to the season is now nothing more than a distant memory. He dies with the ball far too often and when he does offload it invariably goes straight to the opposition.

You can’t convince me that the players are playing for their coach.

If Souths want to continue with Jason Taylor for the rest of the year and the next (he is contracted to the club until the end of 2010) then they need to let the players know in no uncertain terms that he is the man, and for the players to pull their heads in or leave.

Because something is definitely not right at Redfern, and the more Souths officials want to deny it the worse it’s going to become.

The Rabbitohs’ season is pretty much finished now, but the problem is they still have nine games to go and the fans deserve much, much better than the absolute garbage this team produced on Saturday.

If Souths didn’t have any talent you wouldn’t worry about it, but they have some very talented players who don’t appear to be giving it anywhere near everything they have.