Souths back on track with big win out west

South Sydney coach Michael Maguire isn’t getting carried away with the reigning premiers’ form despite Saturday’s 36-4 win over the New Zealand Warriors making it three in a row.

The Rabbitohs moved to an 8-5 record and temporarily into the top four with the victory which was sparked by 50-gamer Dylan Walker who scored a double in front of a venue record crowd of 20,272 fans.

The reigning premiers lost three consecutive games earlier in the season to sit 4-4 but have flexed their muscle in recent weeks with triumphs over the Warriors, Gold Coast and Parramatta.

“We went through a period where we’ve learnt a lot as a group,” Maguire said.

“We’re growing as a team and there’s a lot of footy to be played.

“There’s some areas of our game where we showed some great signs, but we look at every game as an individual game.

“We’ll get plenty out of this performance and we got plenty out of the last few performances as well and we’ll take that into next Friday (against the Wests Tigers).”

Souths captain Greg Inglis said the group was “growing each week” in an ominous sign for the competition.

“We’ve had to keep digging and keep fighting and improving on what we put out there,” Inglis said.

Inglis, who said he was fine after an ankle concern during the game, was impressed by the atmosphere generated by the sell-out crowd, which only boosts Perth’s chances of getting an NRL club in the future.

“It’s terrific. Seeing a record crowd turn out like that, it’s amazing,” he said.

“We’ve been coming over here for a number of years now and we see a crowd like that turn up every time we come.”

The result maintained the Warriors’ miserable record in Perth and coach Andrew McFadden labelled their performance “poor”.

New Zealand had won three successive games coming into the clash, but were no match for Souths.

“It was an opportunity for us tonight to come up against a very good side and make our mark on our season and we fell short tonight,” McFadden said.

“I guess it’s a bit of a reality check.”

McFadden refused to use the long-haul travel journey as an excuse and said they wouldn’t panic ahead of next Saturday’s home clash against the Sydney Roosters.

“We really haven’t put in a performance like that for a while,” he said.

“We really fell short tonight, but we won’t be panicking.”

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