South Sydney coach Michael Maguire didn’t reinvent the wheel in the off-season, but he has reinvented the premiers, which in NRL terms is every bit as revolutionary.
No team has managed to defend a title in a unified competition in Australia since Brisbane in 1993 and, when the Rabbitohs returned to pre-season training minus inspirational forwards leader Sam Burgess and fellow bruiser Ben Te’o, it appeared that record would stretch by another 12 months.
But one viewing of Sunday night’s devastating, record-breaking World Club Challenge demolition of St Helens will have the entire NRL on notice that not only are these Bunnies deserved premiership favourites – they’re version 2.0 on the team that swept to glory last year.
Where last season South Sydney relied heavily on the brute force of the Burgess boys bashing their way up the middle of the park, this year they have the finesse out wide of ball-playing backrowers Glenn Stewart and John Sutton.
And while George Burgess still enjoys man mountain status as one of the game’s premier enforcers, suddenly it seems wherever you look South Sydney have an attacking force ready to tear the defence apart.
“Look across the park, you’ve got (hooker) Issac Luke that can play, you’ve got (halves) Luke Keary and Adam Reynolds,” star fullback Greg Inglis said.
“And on the edges we can use Johnny Sutton and Glenn Stewart.
“It just brings very good dimension to our attack.”
St Helens coach Keiron Cunningham looked shell-shocked following his side’s historic 39-0 loss to the Rabbitohs at Langtree Park – and admitted being in awe of the job Maguire had done in the off-season.
“Michael Maguire’s a bit of an idol as a coach to me. I look up to what he does,” Cunningham said.
“He’s reinvented his team and how they play.
“They’ve been used to power runners on the edges for them.
“They’ve got two ball-playing backrowers now and it’s definitely going to give them another edge.
“They’re going to be a tough team to beat this year.
“I actually thought they’d lost a bit of punch, but the way they played the game was good – and they’re just going to get better and better.”
Maguire said it was essential that teams, even premiership-winning ones, kept adapting and improving.
“We’re a very honest team and we talk amongst ourselves about how we’re going to keep evolving,” he said.
“History shows that the bar is always getting set higher every single season.
“I think with Greg, allowing him to swing round to both sides with two ball-playing backrowers adds a big difference to us.
“It frees up our halves.
“There’s a few options there we can really add now, moving forward.”
