smh.com.au

SOUTH SYDNEY powerhouse David Taylor developed a reputation at Brisbane for attacking out wide and monstering opposition centres and wingers, but his brief at the Rabbitohs is different.

Talking about his tremendous second half against Canberra yesterday, Taylor said: ''We [the forwards] needed to get the ball and just run hard, and that's what we did. At the moment, that's what I'm concentrating on, getting the go-forward happening. You don't really want to be going out wide too early.''

Souths coach John Lang was delighted by the contributions of both Taylor and the club's other big forward buy this season, Englishman Sam Burgess.

''Burgess and Taylor had shown patches of it this season,'' he said. ''It's been coming together, and they were terrific when we came back to win that game today. That second half was by far Dave's best half of the season. It isn't easy for guys to come into a new club and adjust to things, and I've got no doubt those two guys will be great players for Souths and in representative football in the years to come.''

Taylor felt Souths, after surging to a 6-0 lead inside the first 10 minutes of yesterday's game, perhaps thought they had greater control of the game than they in fact did. ''We were a bit comfortable, and when that happens the other team gets on top of you,'' he said.

''You get a mindset that everything is going OK, and then you start doing things that get you into trouble. We made breaks, but then we threw passes that were too risky, when we should have held on to the ball and waited for the next tackle. We spoke at half-time about simply holding on to the ball. If you don't have the ball you can't score tries, and we had some catching up to do.''

Taylor said his game at Souths differed to how he played for the Broncos in that he was required to do more of the ''nitty-gritty stuff''. He has no problem with that. ''One thing I know is that if I work hard, I get my best results. I'm needed to hit the ball up, and after that whatever happens, happens,'' he said. ''I'm not out there to do the big plays.''