Dolphins co-captain Tom Gilbert has declared his “brain fade” that earned a sin bin was “not a good look” in his side’s loss to the Rabbitohs.
Gilbert and David Fifita were both given their marching orders in the 71st minute by referee Peter Gough, who deemed the pair instigators in a all-in push and shove match.
The melee was sparked by a Tom Flegler penalty, with the Dolphins enforcer dropping his elbow down onto Fifita’s head, which saw tensions rise.
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On the next tackle, it was Gilbert who delivered an aggressive tackle, which Fifita took issue with which sparked the incident that saw two players sin binned.
“It’s probably a bit of a brain fade, if anything,” Gilbert said when asked about the moment.
“Probably frustration in our performance, individual performance, that’s all it was.
“It’s not a good reflection of what we stand for, we want to be a physical team but it’s probably not the right way to do it.
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“I agree with the referee’s decision in hindsight, not at the time, but reflecting it’s not a good look for our team.
“Definitely take a little bit of ownership of that for sure.”
Wayne Bennett, meanwhile, couldn’t understand why either player were sin binned, saying: “It’s a bit of a waste of time but I’d like to know why he got the sin-bin. No idea.”
Speaking on his team’s disappointing performance, head coach Kristian Woolf highlighted two key issues.
“I didn’t think we gave ourselves a real chance in the first half to be honest. I thought we were a little bit ill disciplined,” Woolf said.
“We got some basic things wrong that we can’t get wrong and they competed a bit harder than us in that first half, we were on the back foot a fair bit there in the first half.
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“What I am proud of is I thought we came out with a different energy in the second half, I thought we fought back pretty hard.
“But if I just go back to the two things I said before, our discipline, our errors. When you’re making that many, we just didn’t give ourselves a chance.”
Gilbert echoed his coach’s sentiment, saying: “We found it really difficult to get ourselves involved in the game as it went along.
“That was probably our own undoing and then on top of that, Souths capitalised really well. So a big focus from us is to find some consistency within our game.
“And within our weeks to make sure that we don’t produce a similar performance.”
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