South Sydney set to make major change in coaching shake-up

South Sydney are set to make a major change to their coaching staff with former NRL coach David Furner being lined up to join the club to help the under-siege Jason Demetriou.

The Rabbitohs have opened discussions with Furner, who was Tim Sheens’ assistant at the Wests Tigers last season, to rejoin the club where he has previously held a role as an assistant coach.

Former Raiders coach David Furner will join Demetriou at South Sydney.

Furner is yet to put pen to paper with the Rabbitohs, but the club is keen to provide Demetriou with additional resources and experience in the coaching ranks.

This masthead reported last week that the club was privately concerned with the level of experience on Demetriou’s coaching staff following the departure of two assistant coaches last year.

As part of the end-of-season review, the Rabbitohs advised Demetriou to hire a senior assistant to replace John Morris and Sam Burgess, but Demetriou instead promoted NSW Cup coach Joe O’Callaghan to fill the void left by the departures of Burgess and Morris.

The Rabbitohs, who persuaded Demetriou to take on Burgess as an assistant last year despite the coach’s misgivings, didn’t want to tell him who he could and couldn’t appoint again and gave them their blessing to replace Morris and Burgess with just O’Callaghan.

Furner was the main recommendation put forward to Demetriou last year. The coach chose not to appoint Furner in favour of promoting from within.

After a 1-5 start to the season, and with his job on the line, Demetriou has made a request for Furner to join him on the coaching staff, where he will help out with defence.

“I’m close with David and I know he’ll have a good impact on improving our defence,” Demetriou told this masthead on Tuesday morning when asked about Furner’s arrival at the club.

South Sydney chief executive Blake Solly hinted at the changes in an interview on Sunday morning after the team’s narrow loss to Cronulla.

Rabbitohs players during their loss to the Sharks.

“Cleary a 1-5 start to the season is never good enough for our club,” Solly said. “The questions we will be asking is what can we all do to improve and what can we all do to help support the players, Jason and the football staff?”

Morris was previously entrusted with overseeing the team’s defensive set-up, but Demetriou has taken over that department in 2024.

The team’s defence has been terrible to start the year, leaking 196 points at an average of 32.6 points per game.

That is the worst defensive record in the competition by a long way. The North Queensland Cowboys have leaked the second most points in the competition with 149 in the same number of games.

The Rabbitohs also have the second worst attacking record in the competition with an average 15.6 points scored per game, only better than the hapless Gold Coast Titans (12 points per game).

Furner was last the head coach at the Canberra Raiders for five seasons between 2009 and 2013. He has since held assistant coaching roles at Newcastle, Canterbury, Cowboys, Tigers and South Sydney.

His job is safe for now with Solly admitting the resilience and fight the club hoped to see from the players was evident against the Sharks.

“I think Nick Pappas said on Saturday what would be required to get that time and I think the team showed that,” Solly said.

“It was a brave performance in really difficult circumstances. Clearly there’s always room for improvement but the character and the performance stacks up with exactly what Nick said we needed to see on Saturday.”

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