South Sydney coach Jason Demetriou brushed off questions about former halfback Adam Reynolds, saying he wouldn’t deal in hypotheticals about a world where the local junior had remained with the club.
“It’s irrelevant, he’s not there. So there’s no point in me worrying about it,” he said post-match.
“The decision’s been made, he’ll be wearing a Broncos jersey this year and my job’s to coach a team to get the best out of them that we can this year.
“There’s no point in thinking about what might be, if we miss him, if we don’t miss him. The fact is he’s not there.”
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Demetriou conceded that the Rabbitohs’ attack looked clunky and directionless in their 11-4 upset loss to the Broncos.
“I think losing [Blake] Taaffe the day of captain’s run didn’t help, but we’ve got to build our season, there’s no doubt about that,” he said.
“We’ve got some changes in key people, but I was really happy defensively with how we kept turning up.
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Demetriou said that Reynolds’ replacement, Lachlan Ilias, looked sharp at times but conceded he was a ‘work in progress’.
“I thought he was pretty good. He’s learning, and he’s going to learn, he’ll keep learning all the time. He defended really well which is a big part of his game, I think he can hone his kicking a little bit more but other than that I thought it wasn’t a bad start for him.”
The coach rejected the idea of using Ilias in and out of the side, in the way the Roosters managed Sam Walker’s first few months in the NRL.
“The only way he’s going to get better is to be out there.”
Captain Cam Murray said it was ‘early days’ in a new era at Redfern, without Reynolds, Dane Gagai, Jaydn Su’A and former coach Wayne Bennett.
“Lachie’s there to learn, and I thought he did a pretty good job tonight,” Murray said.
“We’ve got to build our season and there’s a lot more to practice at training – we’ll get better.”