The South Sydney Rabbitohs believe they are close to getting back on the winner's list, with execution holding them back.
Following up losses in Perth to the North Queensland Cowboys, and back in Sydney against the Canterbury Bulldogs where they failed to register a point, South Sydney added to one of the NRL's longest-standing hoodoos on Friday by losing an Anzac Day game to the Melbourne Storm 24 points to 16.
Despite spending most of the first half in defence, the Rabbitohs went into the break at ten points a piece, and assistant coach Ben Hornby, who was filling in for Wayne Bennett during post-match media commitments, said the effort from the Maroubra-based outfit was there, but execution was letting them down.
"There was a lot of effort, the boys tried hard. The execution just isn't there at the moment, and it hasn't been for the last few weeks," Hornby said during the post-match press conference.
"In some ways, it's an easy fix, but when you're making the changes we are week to week, it's getting difficult.
"It's not ideal, but we have persevered and done pretty well this year with the changes that we have had. We aren't using that as an excuse, but it does make it more difficult to build cohesion and get our execution spot on, so we have to get back on the training pitch and come back next week.
"They are a quality side, probably premiership favourites. We have been defending quite well on our tryline, so we have been proud of that, but we are still just having moments where we aren't getting the job done."
Centre Jack Wighton, who was one of South Sydney's best in the contest, said it was pleasing to have pushed the Storm as hard as they did given the circumstances, which included Latrell Mitchell spending ten minutes in the sin bin, and also saw Cody Walker being ruled out with an injury in the days leading up to the game.
"Coming off last week, we can take a lot of positives out of that. We have a young team, a lot of position changes and we were sticking it to one of the better teams in the competition. We were in the game the whole time and still making errors, so we will take confidence out of that. If we keep making errors though, we will keep getting the same results so we just need to try and fix that," Wighton said.
South Sydney now hold an even four and four record and will clash with the Newcastle Knights at Magic Round next weekend.
