- Bunnies defeated Melbourne 54-20
- Now only one win from eight games
- The pressure on Demetriou is enormous
South Sydney coach Jason Demetriou admits he has ‘no idea’ whether club officials will give him the time he thinks he needs to turn around his team’s fortunes, with a board meeting next week to discuss his future.
Demetriou knows the heat is coming after a horror show on Thursday night in Melbourne, with the 54-20 loss to the Storm continuing a 19-year winning drought in Victoria.
His team conceded the biggest score of the year, conceding ten tries, and Souths now anchor the NRL ladder with just one win, having entered the round of 16 hoping to show signs of improvement.
When Demetriou returned from the bye, he had a five-week plan in place to get his team back up and running, but he may not have had that much time.
Calls for Demetriou’s immediate axing are growing louder after Souths produced their worst defensive performance of the season in their 54-20 thrashing of Melbourne on Thursday.
Rabbitohs players look dejected after conceding one of 10 tries against the Storm
“I love coaching this club, I love coaching this team and I’m going to show up and keep giving the best of myself. “If someone taps me on the shoulder and says time is up, I have no control over that,” he said after the heavy defeat. , adamant that their season was “salvageable.”
‘I said to the players: the conversation is over, we have to get results, we have to get it done.
“It won’t change unless we deliver on performance that delivers the results we want, but more importantly, performance that we know we can do.
‘There are periods in that game where we got back to 36-20, which showed a lot of determination, but it’s again either side of half-time, three weeks in a row, where we’ve let the game down.
“The players have to take some ownership of that and take charge of their own performance and start executing on the things we know we can do.”
Demetriou and his players (pictured) have a five-week plan to stop their freefall, but the coach has admitted he has no idea if he can last that long
The next four weeks include clashes with the Panthers and then winnable games against teams outside the eight, the Dragons, Cowboys and Eels.
“We have set ourselves a five-week plan to improve and we are sticking to that because it won’t improve overnight, in one week, but it will get better,” Demetriou said.
Demetriou insisted he could already see an impact after former assistant David Furner rejoined the staff as defense coach last week, despite the huge scoreline in Melbourne.
“David has come in and done a good job, doing what it takes to make sure we identify the things we need to get better at,” he said.
“We trained for that, but we didn’t put it on the field and that is the difference now.”