'I won't walk around with my head down': Demetriou vows to fight on

Rabbitohs coach Jason Demetriou declared it was “business as usual” at South Sydney as players revealed they had vowed to show their support for him with a brave and spirited performance against the Sharks.

Souths remain anchored to the bottom of the NRL ladder after suffering a 34-22 loss to Cronulla, but Demetriou was proud of the effort after they lost three injured players, including captain Cameron Murray, before halftime.

Stand-in skipper Cody Walker said the players had fought hard to demonstrate their backing for Demetriou and would return to training after a few days break to prepare for their ANZAC Day clash with Melbourne.

“I think we always try and go out there and fight for the jersey, and fight for the coach,” Walker said.

“We’ve got tremendous respect for JD and how much work he puts in, so we wanted to show that, and I thought we did that.

“The scoreline probably doesn't reflect the tightness in the game but you can see the effort and the energy.

“There was a lot of spanners in the works in the first half, with players going off. We just had to sort of find our groove and thought we did that in the second half. We fought to the very end.”

Demetriou said no one from the club had spoken to him about the ongoing speculation about his future after winning just one match so far this season.

“It’s business as usual for us, we'll rest up and then we'll get some good training in the bye week, and then get ready for Melbourne,” he said.

“For me, it's my job. I'll review the game like I always do. I'll enjoy spending some time with my wife and my girls tomorrow. I think that's important, [because] they ride this rollercoaster as much as anybody does, but I won't walk around with my head down.

“I've got no reason to, I've worked my backside off to get into this position as the head coach of one of the biggest rugby league clubs in the world.

“I'm really proud that I get to represent these boys, our fans, our members, the staff, and I'm excited about turning it around. If that changes, time will tell.”

Asked if he expected to remain as Souths coach, Demetriou said: “I expect so. Nobody's told me otherwise so we'll review the game and turn up. If not, we’ll find out”.

After leading the premiership in Round 11 last season, the Rabbitohs crashed and have now won just five of their past 19 matches.

However, Demetriou continues to insist he is the best man to get Souths back on track.

“It's not ideal, don't get me wrong,” he said. “You don't want to be going through this but the reality is it's elite sport and we're a huge club.

“I'm disappointed for our members and our supporters to hear some of the things that just aren't accurate, but I understand why the noise is there. It's results driven, and we're not getting the results.

“More importantly, we have just probably lacked times where we're showing that fight that we're renowned for, and I thought we showed that today. I'm extremely proud of them.

“We had nearly $4 million of the cap sat on the sideline, we lose three players we can't get back on the field, we lose a fullback for 15 minutes, we lose a winger, and we’ve got one interchange for over 40 minutes, and they keep turning up and turning up.

“We're 28-22 with five minutes to go and we're right in the fight, so I can't be prouder of the boys.

“As a coach, what you want to do is turn up and fight for each other and fight for their jersey, and show what the club means to them, and I think we saw that tonight.”

Walker said the Rabbitohs had been training hard but the effort wasn’t transferring into their performances.

“I think in previous weeks we've probably looked like a team of individuals rather than a team that's together,” he said.

“I thought the improvement for us was that in weeks gone by, when breaks are made, we're probably not in the picture, whereas tonight we were so I think that’s an improvement.

“We've just got to build on that, we've got to bottle that bit of effort up and continue to work hard at training to get ourselves out of this mess. No-one else is going to get us out of it, we've got to get us out of it.”