South Sydney’s annus horribilis goes from worse to worse with yet another star going down in last night’s Round 20 loss to the Panthers.
The club’s best forward in 2025, Keaon Koloamatangi, left the field after getting his foot caught awkwardly making a 52nd-minute tackle on Panther Luke Garner and didn’t return.
Souths are already weighed down with the longest injury list in the NRL, having missed 193 collective games through injury this season according to stats from NRL Physio.
Now, as the club awaits scans to reveal the extent of the damage to Koloamatangi’s right ankle, some fans have joked it may almost be time for Rabbitohs coach Wayne Bennett to lace up the boots himself—which got us thinking about the master coach’s playing days.
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‘A young fast fullback’
While 75-year-old Bennett never played in the NSWRL, back in the day he was a fine club first-grader in Brisbane playing for both Brothers and Souths in the 1970s.
A lanky outside back and goal kicker, he also played several rep games for Queensland and two tour matches for Australia when selected in a touring squad to New Zealand featuring rugby league Immortals Graeme Langlands and Bob ‘Bozo’ Fulton.
“When I was 21, I got picked in a train-on squad for the emerging Queensland team and they put us in camp for two months,” Bennett reflected in 2018 of the rep selections that were a ‘turning point’ in his life.
“I had so much confidence after that, I played for Queensland that year and got picked for Australia for an eight-day tour of New Zealand.”
Speaking of his one-time Queensland teammate in a 2020 interview with The Courier Mail, NRL Hall of Fame forward and South Sydney legend John Sattler described Bennett as ‘a young fast fullback’.
Right now, it feels like the Rabbitohs would settle for an ‘old slow anything’—as long as he’s fit.
South Sydney faces the Cronulla Sharks in Gosford next Saturday night in NRL Round 21.