DANE ELDRIDGE: South Sydney’s move to dump Adam Reynolds continues to haunt hapless NRL team

The Rabbitohs have burned through so many scapegoats in their ongoing slump they’ll probably blame 2025 on the Super League War.

But with the glamour club approaching three straight years on the skids, can anyone actually pinpoint the root cause for their ongoing woes?

Nothing’s changed since punting Jason Demetriou - if anything, the graveyard spiral has only accelerated - so he definitely wasn’t the problem.

It wasn’t Lachlan Ilias either, nor was it Sam Burgess despite sensationally parting ways for allegedly upsetting club culture by urging better standards.

And despite the club’s gaslighting otherwise, everything certainly can’t be blamed on Lewis Dodd.

Nope, all of South Sydney’s headaches can be traced back to Adam Reynolds, and more specifically, the club’s midlife crisis decision to dump the champion halfback for someone younger and less weathered.

Reynolds was virtually walked off the compound by Souths at the end of 2021 after offering their favourite son nothing more than an insulting 12 month extension.

And to be fair, Reynolds was 31 at the time, an age considered in sports science dog years as Paleolithic and osteoporotic.

But on the other hand, he was a 231-game premiership halfback with a surgically precise kicking game in an NRL playmaker shortage, not to mention a local boy with romantic notions of playing out his career at a hometown club notoriously righteous about its juniors.

Either way, it’s inescapable that Reynolds has since nestled in to greener pastures at the Broncos while the foundation club is the loser divorcee sleeping in a race car like Kirk Van Houten.

The Rabbitohs are not only facing their third straight year without finals football, they’re also hurtling south on a seven game losing streak that could deliver its first wooden spoon since 2006.

Off the paddock isn’t much rosier, with the organisation lumped with a salary cap shaped like an upside-down wedding cake and an injury crisis that probably warrants its own Geneva Convention.

After refusing to stump up for Reynolds, the Rabbitohs continue to shell out $1m a year for Latrell Mitchell only to get one flash of brilliance for every ten questions about his ROI from frustrated fans.

The administration has also bizarrely blown megabucks on Jack Wighton to fill a hole that didn’t exist, plus recently extended the 35 year old Cody Walker despite being sidelined for the rest of 2025 with the old-man quinella of calf and hamstring strains.

Add blue chip names in the casualty ward like Mitchell, Brandon Smith, Campbell Graham, Mikaele Ravalawa and now the brilliant Keaon Koloamtangi, and surely inspirational skipper Cam Murray is odds-on for leprosy when he returns from his Achilles layoff.

Further deepening the Reynolds decision has been the utter malpractice that has taken place with the club’s halves.

We all know Souths backed the wrong horse by opting for Ilias over the departing ace, with the anointed upgrade now tragically plying his trade at a different club in reserve grade.

But this has been exacerbated by signing St Helens prospect Lewis Dodd as the Next Ilias only to sadly treat him like the Next Ilias.

Since joining the club for 2025 on not-insignificant freight, Dodd has made a mere handful of appearances for the Rabbitohs and most have only been in Tuesday’s extended squad and Thursday’s cut list.

Perhaps it’s like any complicated breakup and the Reynolds decision remains raw enough that Souths aren’t ready to spend time with anyone new- even if paying them $600k annually to stay for three years.

But to everyone else, Dodd’s catfishing is not only the greatest mystery in rugby league since Changa’s boots, it’s tarnishing the veneer of supercoach Wayne Bennett.

While Bennett has never been big on bonhomie, his continual ostracisation of Dodd makes his decision to bench Gorden Tallis in his final game in 2004 look like a 21 gun salute.

The coach is doing everything in his power to ensure the kid doesn’t get any minutes, even shuffling Euan Aitken to centre, Alex Johnston to fullback and Jack Wighton to five-eighth just so Dodd goes to NSW Cup.

But it’s not all the coach’s doing; the administration has plenty to answer for too.

South Sydney’s power-laden hierarchy - namely chairman Nick Pappas and CEO Blake Solly - are administrators who enjoy an esteemed air in rugby league circles.

But it’s 2024 and they’re resting on laurels from 2014 by conducting business like it’s 2003.

Admittedly the hierarchy has been distracted on other matters of enormous pertinence, such as delivering a brand new Centre of Excellence that is cursed while pouring focus in to re-homing back at Allianz Stadium just to spite the Roosters.

But such is their recent track record, fans are harking back to the good old days when the administration’s most embarrassing problem was Russell Crowe commandeering training sessions.

All they want to know is the club’s vision, and if possible, whether Reynolds drove over a black cat as he left the carpark.