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There are so many fires burning at South Sydney right now, it’s difficult to know which one needs the garden hose first, but you can trace some of the fractures in the club back to August last year.
As a player, Sam Burgess was a force of nature who expected everyone to care and hurt and play through as much pain as he did. He was never about personal glory, just the glory-glory of South Sydney.
As an assistant coach with designs of one day holding the main job, he sets the same standards for the current squad even where they may not have the same approach as he did.
In summary, a difference in coaching styles is at the heart of the infighting and feuds troubling South Sydney.
Those fault lines are hard to track but the best I can ascertain, having spoken to a variety of sources, is Burgess and fellow assistant John Morris are on the outer with coach Jason Demetriou, who Burgess thinks gives preferential treatment to Latrell Mitchell and Cody Walker, neither of whom get on particularly well right now with Burgess, who is also close to captain Cameron Murray and Damien Cook.
Then there are all the whispers and leaked stories; the back-biting and undermining. Just the general sort of stuff that happens in rugby league each day.
South Sydney assistant coach Sam Burgess.Credit: Getty
This schoolyard imbroglio would be acceptable if it was a pub team or the Wests Tigers, but it’s South Sydney, one of the favourites at the start of the year to win the premiership.
Burgess was added to Demetriou’s staff last August at the urging of co-owner Russell Crowe after he spent the year coaching the Orara Valley Axemen in Group 2.
When it was announced that Burgess was returning to Redfern, several people at Souths wondered if it was the right move. Not because Burgess is divisive or a bad influence. Mostly, because he was a big guy with a big personality coming into a team with a vastly different dynamic to what he’d been involved with as a player.
Demetriou was also relatively new to the role, having replaced Wayne Bennett at the end of 2021, so how was it going to work with a club legend like Burgess sitting in the wings?
Cody Walker and Latrell Mitchell.Credit: Getty
In the last six or seven weeks, those concerns have escalated as Souths’ season spirals out of control, culminating in Sunday’s dreadful 29-10 loss to Newcastle.
Burgess issued a firm “no mate” via text when contacted on Tuesday, but you can only imagine he’d have no truck with the sense of indifference with which Mitchell appears to be approaching matches.
Last Wednesday night, Mitchell attended the concert of US country music star Luke Combs and was videoed shotgunning a can of beer on stage before throwing it into the crowd.
No big deal, of course, but it wasn’t the greatest look from a player who has missed 10 weeks because of injury, in a side spluttering to the finish line, just days out before a must-win match against the Knights in Newcastle.
Burgess would be the last person to criticise a player for having a beer, regardless of whether it’s a sneaky schooner at the Coogee Pavilion or a shotgunned can in front of a sold-out stadium.
The difference, though, is someone at Souths would’ve taken Burgess to task about it the next day, or at least had a quiet word.
Tellingly, nobody in power at Souths has mentioned the Combs incident to Mitchell.
In other words, they didn’t want to upset him before such an important match. A reminder: this is Latrell Mitchell, not Beyonce nor Luke Combs. The other key difference is Burgess would have torn into the Knights’ pack like it was personal, running himself into the ground. If Souths didn’t win the game, at least Newcastle would know they’d been in a fight.
Mitchell did the opposite, looking barely interested at times before digging an elbow into the back of NSW teammate Tyson Frizell, for which he’s been suspended for one match.
It’s a silly play that will rub him out of a critical game late in the season. Just as his errant shot on Roosters centre Joseph Manu cost Mitchell a 2021 grand final appearance, another will similarly sideline him from the final-round match against the Roosters.
After the game, Demetriou was critical of Mitchell’s indiscretion, stunning all concerned because there has been no greater supporter of the fullback in the past year than the coach.
Does Mitchell receive preferential treatment? Is there one set of rules for him and another for the rest of the playing group?
Maybe – but so what?
There hasn’t been a team in history that hasn’t stroked the egos of its superstar players. Bennett understood better than anyone that you can’t win premierships without superstar players, whether it was Allan Langer and Kevin Walters at the Broncos, or Mitchell and Walker when he coached Souths.
Yet Bennett had the rare ability of making sure the rest of the group never felt like they were coming second and he often did this by playing “good cop, bad cop” with his assistant coaches so that the head coach could be the good guy.
Demetriou, an assistant to Bennett for five years, is still a relatively young coach and Burgess is even greener.
But both would understand that Bennett treated superstars differently because they played like superstars. Surely, they could agree that Mitchell’s recent actions and his long spells out with injuries mean he is currently far removed from that constellation.
His teammates seem to think this. In a recent video session, Mitchell snapped at Murray for not passing him the ball when he wanted it.
“When I call for it, give it to me,” Mitchell said, according to those in the room.
To which Murray replied: “Most of the time, you’re not there.”
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