- Bunnies thrashed 54-20 by Melbourne
- He now only has one win in eight games.
- The pressure on Demetriou is immense
South Sydney coach Jason Demetriou admits he has “no idea” whether club officials will give him the time he believes he needs to turn his team’s fortunes around, with the board meeting next week to address his future.
Demetriou knows the heat is coming after a horror show in Melbourne on Thursday night, the 54-20 loss to the Storm continuing a 19-year win drought in Victoria.
Their team conceded their highest score of the year, allowing 10 tries, and the South are now anchoring the NRL ladder with just one win having entered round eight hoping to show signs of improvement.
Returning from break, Demetriou had outlined a five-week plan to get his team back up and running, but he might not have much time.
Calls for Demetriou’s immediate dismissal are growing louder after Souths produced their worst defensive performance of the season in their 54-20 thrashing of Melbourne on Thursday.
Rabbitohs players appear dejected after allowing one of the Storm’s 10 tries.
“I love coaching this club, I love coaching this team and I will be there and I will continue to do my best and if someone taps me on the shoulder and says time is up, I can’t control it,” he said after the tough defeat. . , convinced that their season was “salvable.”
“I told the players: the conversation is over, we have to deliver, we have to do it.”
“It’s not going to change unless we start putting in performances that get the results we want, but more importantly, performances we know we’re capable of.”
“There are patches in that game where we get back to 36-20, we show a lot of determination, but it’s either side of halftime again, three weeks in a row, where we let the game go.
“The players have to take ownership of that and their own performances and start executing the things that we know we can do.”
Demetriou and his players (pictured) have a five-week plan to stop their free fall, but the coach admitted he has no idea if he will last that long.
The next four weeks include matchups with the Panthers and then winnable games against teams outside the eight, the Dragons, Cowboys and Eels.
“We set a five-week plan to improve and we will stick to it because it won’t get better in one night, in a week, but it will get better,” Demetriou said.
Demetriou insisted he could already see an impact after former assistant David Furner rejoined the staff last week as defense coach despite the huge score in Melbourne.
“David came in and did a good job, he did what was necessary to make sure we identified the things we need to improve on,” he said.
“We’ve trained on it but we didn’t put it on the field and that’s the difference right now.”