South Sydney Rabbitohs head coach Jason Demetriou has confirmed he expects to remain in his position following the club's bye.
The Rabbitohs, who fell short 34-22 against the Cronulla Sharks on Saturday evening in a brutal game littered with injuries for the men from Redfern, now sit one and five to start the season.
External noise during the week had suggested if the Rabbitohs failed to beat the Sharks, Demetriou would be sacked by the club.
The horror start to 2024 follows a dreadful finish to 2023 where the club fell from the top of the table after Round 11 to missing the finals, with criticism engulfing Demetriou's coaching style.
But Demetriou said no one at the club has spoken to him about his future.
"I expect so," Demetriou said when asked if he was going to be the coach next week.
"Nobody has told me otherwise, so we will review the game and turn up."
Demetriou said the external noise isn't a distraction, although it wasn't what he wanted to be going through.
"It's not really a distraction. It's not ideal. You don't want to be going through this, but the reality is, it's an elite sport, we are a huge club," he said.
"I'm disappointed for our members and supporters to hear some of the things that just aren't accurate but I understand why the noise is there. It's results driven, and we aren't getting the results, and more importantly there are probably times we aren't showing the fight we are renowned for.
"I thought we showed that today and I'm walking out of here really proud of the team."
The game against Cronulla followed a dramatic 27-second press conference after the club's captain's run on Friday, throwing further fuel on the fire surrounding Demetriou's future.
The coach said the walk out was triggered by not wanting to answer questions that served no purpose however, having been asked about his future directly before ending the interview with media.
"There is no real point in me standing there answering questions about it. It doesn't serve any purpose for the players, and it doesn't serve any purpose for me, so I said what I needed to say and ended the interview," Demetriou said on his press conference walk out.
"It wasn't the shortest interview ever. I think Wayne [Bennett] has done that's shorter, and I think Ricky [Stuart] has as well as a bit to work on, but I'm more than happy to front here and have those questions asked."
The embattled head coach, who has been in charge of the Rabbitohs since Wayne Bennett concluded his time at one of the competitions' remaining foundation clubs, said he was proud of the performance South Sydney put in against Cronulla.
"I'm pretty proud [of our performance] to be honest," Demetriou said.
"I spoke about it last week, about valuing the 80 minutes to make it the most important part of our week. There was a fair bit of carnage out there and we had one interchange for over half a game. We lost a winger and a fullback for 15 minutes, and to drag ourselves to 28-22, to maintain that fight we are winning a lot more games than we lose, that's for sure."
It was a sentiment captain Cody Walker agreed with, suggesting there was improvement.
"We have been training really well, but it just hasn't transfered onto the game. In previous weeks, we probably looked like a team of individuals rather than a team that is together. I think there is an improvement there, and we have to build on that. To bottle that effort and get ourselves out of this mess," Walker said.
"I think we always try to go out and fight for the jersey, and fight for the coach. We have tremendous respect for JD and how much work he puts in, so we wanted to show that tonight. The scoreline probably doesn't reflect the tightness in the game."
Things won't get any easier for South Sydney after next weekend's bye, with the club set to face the Melbourne Storm away from home, and then the Penrith Panthers. Losses in both games would leave the Rabbitohs with a one and seven start to the season prior to a clash with the St George Illawarra Dragons at Kogarah.
