Unless it’s full, Stadium Australia can seem like a very lonely place. When it is empty, or close to it, it feels eerie, silent and soulless.
For South Sydney, down 30 against the Panthers on a cold Thursday night, two days after the coach was sacked and with only the die-hards and 74,000 empty seats for company, it would be easy to get lost in the plastic, cement and squalor.
Strange things happened in the 42-12 defeat to Penrith, the kind of permanent, unnatural strangeness that only occurs when a club is fully tilted.
Dean Hawkins injured his quadriceps starting. Damien Cook was forced to play at full-back after Jye Gray succumbed to an ankle injury following a hip-drop tackle.
Prop Tom Burgess lobbed the ball downfield from his own side of the halfway line and advanced it inches from the dead ball line in the type of kick that even the absent Nathan Cleary would be proud to call his own.
The fans gave the team a standing ovation as they left the field at halftime trailing 18-12, desperate to believe and perhaps even daring to hope.
Not to win, mind you. Even the most die-hard Rabbitoh couldn’t have expected that, not with a new coach arriving 48 hours before the game, not against Penrith.
But maybe for a contest. For a couple of things to build on. Let them leave thinking the Rabbitohs were at the beginning of something.
But they wouldn’t understand. The Panthers worked hard. South Sydney’s bad habits emerged again, which have helped them lose 16 of their last 21 games.
Taylan May’s try was one side’s vision down the hole and in the end the bright start only added to the bitterness.
Hard as it was, this was the first night of the rest of South Sydney’s life. The drums are beating louder with each passing day that Wayne Bennett will return to the club he led to a grand final in 2021.
It’s not a fait accompli – even if his signing is announced soon, Bennett has walked away from a deal more than once in his decorated career – but his return will bring back memories of better times and hope for the future.
But that’s still a while away, if it ever happens. Things could still get worse before they get better. There are still four months left in this season and many, many games to play.
Add it all up and things could get very bleak for Souths, as bleak as they have been since their hellish early years of readmission, when every win was a treasure amidst the sea of defeats.
It won’t get that bad, but it’s far from better. The Rabbitohs were already scrambling to build a team before this game and now, if Gray and Hawkins are out long-term, they will be pushed to the limit.
Latrell Mitchell’s return from suspension next week will help, even if any chance of him moving to center or five-eighth (which interim coach Ben Hornby denied was ever on the table) has now been ruined by the others. team injuries.
Hornby will also help: he has a good temperament for this task, however arduous and imposing it may seem. He seemed positive after the game and it looks like he will bring that attitude as best he can in the coming months.
Hornby said he could feel the effort on their side and they didn’t deserve to lose by that much. It may be a difficult thing for a Rabbitohs fan to take after conceding 42 points in a row, but it’s the kind of statement Hornby has to make and his charges have to believe regardless of whether it’s true or not.
If they were one step away from redemption, it would have already happened. They can’t be taken down anymore and now all they have is each other.
This is a team deep down looking for a way out of hell and the attention and speculation won’t stop even if the losses continue. The spotlight will not fade because with those from the South it can never do so.
When some teams are bad enough for long enough they can fade into the background, but the Rabbitohs are too important and too prominent a side to hide in the shadows. Clubs like them are the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral because that is the price you pay for being the pride of the league.
Bennett, if he returns, will bring the promise of a better future. But before that happens, there will be many cold, lonely nights in Homebush.
