League Unlimited

In all my years of watching the coaching merry-go-round at South Sydney, never before have they had a better opportunity to get rid of their first grade coach than the one they are faced with now.

Let’s retrace some steps over the last few seasons...

When Souths were re-admitted to the NRL competition in 2002, they gave the head coaching job to Craig Coleman, a favourite son and the incumbent coach following their ungracious disposal from the comp at the end of 1999.

Coleman was sacked in the early 2003 for some disastrous pre-season form. He was the first coach to have ever suffered this indignity.

Paul Langmack was appointed to the head coaching role 11 days (yes 11!), prior to the 2003 competition. He was replaced, again for underperformance, in the bye week of 2004 (round 13 – unlucky for some) by Arthur Kitinas.

Kitinas played mostly lower grade football for Souths, but the former hooker stayed at the club as a coach to Presidents Cup and Reserve grade before assuming the top job.

For one reason or another, most likely profile, Kitinas was replaced by returning Aussie Shaun “Bomber” McRae, who was at the helm of Hull FC until the end of 2004.

Bomber steadied the ship for a period of time and was there for 3 seasons. He seemed to negotiate the privatisation of Souths by Russell Crowe and Peter Holmes-a-Court fairly well before they purchased Jason Taylor from Parramatta, as an assistant, who was overlooked by the Eels in favour of Michael Hagan.

Following the departure of Brian Smith, Taylor took up the job at Parra and proceeded to take them to 8th position, before moving on to Souths the following year.

Despite repeated assurances to the contrary, McRae was dumped in favour of Taylor. Bomber took up an administration role at the club before his position became untenable and he returned to the UK. He currently coaches the Salford City Reds.

In the three seasons since, Taylor has taken the Rabbitohs to the semi finals just once – in 2007 (but the first time since 1989) – where they were understandably bundled out in Week 1 at Brookvale against eventual Grand Finalists Manly Warringah.

Under the new ownership Taylor has had luxuries bestowed upon him that no other coach in the preceding decade has. The likes of Roy Asotasi (at the time regarded as arguably the world’s best prop), David Kidwell (then a current international), Craig Wing (we all know how much of a fuss he created) and several other mid-tier players (like 2008 winger of the year Colin Best, and premiership forward Michael Crocker from the Storm) joined the Bunnies to bolster their squad.

Well, none of these players seemed to have helped. Souths have missed the finals two years in a row now and their ‘Mad Monday’ celebrations got so out of control that David Fa’alogo allegedly knocked out Taylor on the drink after allegedly being provoked by the coach himself.

Given the fact that no other coach since their re-admittance has lasted three seasons, mostly because of underperformance, Jason Taylor must be walking a tight-rope.

The man has a well publicised alcohol fuelled incident to his credit – namely being ejected from the SCG in the late 90’s – and now this appears on his resume.

Clearly, out of all the coaches who have donned the Red and Green since Souths were readmitted to the NRL in 2002, Taylor has now surpassed them in all negative aspects. You only have to look as far as Nathan Brown slapping Trent Barrett in 2003 to see how quickly a coach can lose the respect of his players.

And respect is the only unit of currency an NRL coach has.