Although the South Sydney Rabbitohs won the game, they had periods where it looked like they were falling asleep – but they still managed to win the game, on the back of stellar performances from their Origin representatives in Dave Taylor and Greg Inglis.
With the 36-18 victory a welcome boost for the club, it was some periods during the game that could have resulted in a different scoreline, with the Bunnies seemingly playing the game in patches, rather than for the entire 80 minutes.
Canberra themselves had good chances of their own, but it was a combination of sloppy play leading to errors, as well as some very soft defence around their goal-line, that cost them a chance to win.
With Inglis playing 80 minutes and Dave Taylor getting an early rest, the QLD centre said that he told Souths coach Michael Maguire, that both he and Dave Taylor were eager to play in the clash.
“I rang Madge (Maguire) straight after the game and put my hand up … Dave and I put our hands up to play tonight,” Inglis said.
“If you sit around all weekend it tightens your muscles up and you become sorer over the weekend. I think in the end I wanted to come back and keep the Bunnies on a roll.
“I’ve always wanted to back up after Origin over the past few years for Melbourne as well. In the end it’s just about making sure your recovery is right and your diet is right and just get back on the field and perform.”
Although their form is somewhat ominous, Inglis knows that Souths cannot afford to get carried away.
“There’s no telling what we can do. We just have to perform for 80 minutes back-to back. It’s something that we spoke about after the game and at halftime we spoke about our defence.
“We have lapses in our game and obviously we have to fix them up .. we know we’ve got the attack and the defence is there, it’s just about keeping the standards up a bit higher.”
Raiders coach David Furner highlighted the fundamental errors that the club made, as the reason why they lost.
“I thought we were in the contest in the second half but we made some fundamental mistakes,” said Furner.