Wayne Bennett will be back on the coaching market ahead of the 2025 season and a shock return to the Rabbitohs has been floated amid mounting pressure on Jason Demetriou.
South Sydney slumped out of the finals race after winning only four of their final 13 games in 2023 and have begun their 2024 campaign with two losses to the Broncos and Sea Eagles.
Demetriou is reportedly batting with issues surrounding his two star players, Latrell Mitchell and Cody Walker, with former assistant Sam Burgess departing after he raised concerns.
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He argued the pair were given preferential treatment, and despite claims the club had fixed their attitude problems in the off-season, The Australian’s Brent Read made a bold call.
Read believes Demetriou is “in danger” of being the first coach sacked this season and has to unlock his superstar players, having dropped halfback Lachlan Ilias ahead of Round 3.
“The coach is in a fight for survival now, and his best hope is to win games of footy,” Read said on NRL360.
“His best hope of wining footy games is for Latrell and Cody and the big guns to fire up, he can’t upset them because his job is on the line.
“He’s under massive scrutiny… it’s the making or breaking of Jason Demetriou right now, that’s where we are at in his coaching career.
“Second year in, this will make him or break him. Of course he’s in danger.”
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“If he repeats the second half of the season in the first half this year, they will be looking for a coach,” NRL360 co-host Paul Kent added.
“Souths aren’t a club, given their last 10 years, they don’t sit their and accept mediocrity. They won’t keep putting up with this.”
Despite their disastrous 2023 campaign, Demetriou was handed a contract extension until the end of 2026.
But that still hasn’t stopped the NRL360 panel from claiming Bennett could make a shock return to Redfern, with a new succession plan in place.
Burgess departed for the Super League last year and has won four of his five games as head coach of the Warrington Wolves.
Kent believes that Burgess could return to the Rabbitohs as Bennett’s assistant in 2025, lining up a two-year plan that would see the legendary Englishmen assume the head coach role.
However, Burgess’ issues with Mitchell and Walker still remain and would need be resolved before any potential South Sydney homecoming.
“Lets be honest, you can’t tell me Jason is not looking over his shoulder a little bit,” Anasta said.
“The issue is with Sam coming back, the guys who he had perhaps an issue with, they are still there,” Read said.
“Sam comes back as an assistant to Wayne and goes through the same process. Wayne comes back as a head coach, gives Sam two years working under him like he’s doing with Woolf now, like he did with Demetriou before,” Kent said.
“Then that’s your whole succession plan there, done.”
But Bennett could be the perfect man to fix the problems that remain at the Rabbitohs, having previously had success at the club as recently as 2021.
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South Sydney went down to the Panthers in the grand final that year and the master coach managed to play finals football in each of his three seasons in charge beginning in 2019.
Read had “no doubts” Bennett will coach on past his current contract with the Dolphns and Kent believes he can address the issues that remain under Demetriou.
“He’s made it pretty clear he wants to coach next year… he had a pretty successful time there,” Read said.
“It will work if he goes there, because he knows how to control the big voices in the room,” Kent said.
“It seems like an avoidance for the difficult conversation, the greatness of Wayne Bennett, who was there before Demetriou and who ran the club very tightly.
“Wayne Bennett is very good at the tough conversation. You may not want to hear it but at least you know where you are.
“Some coaches like to sit there and not make you feel bad, give you a bit of a sugar pill, but ultimately the truth comes out.
“And this what’s happening at Souths, and their refusal to address it, when we were all told over the summer had been addressed, it’s all that needs to be fixed.”
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