BY CURTIS WOODWARD

@woodward_curtis

You would think looking at the final score in Friday night football at ANZ Stadium that the Sydney Roosters had a bad night. They didn’t. The South Sydney Rabbitohs, the old rivals, just destroyed them in a perfect performance.

This wasn’t a showing where the Rabbitohs – heavy outsiders against the defending premiers – spent the night shutting down the likes of James Tedesco, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves and Luke Keary.

Tedesco ran for his usual metres.

The Roosters shot out to an early lead.

But the rest of the night belonged to the home side.

Souths have been pretty average recently and lost to lowly Canterbury last weekend in a horror performance.

And then out of nowhere… they throw this up.

The Rabbitohs made the Roosters look like nobodies.

There isn’t a better halves combination in the game right now than Adam Reynolds and Cody Walker and that includes the young guns out at Penrith.

Yes Reynolds and Walker were spectacular but what about guys like Liam Knight, Campbell Graham and Corey Allan?

The Roosters lost veteran hooker Jake Friend early in the contest but then immediately scored via Josh Morris. It was all too easy. It looked like a long night for the Bunnies.

Then South Sydney went mad.

When was the last time we saw the Rabbitohs this good?

Souths went bang and scored four tries to led 26-4 at the break.

We expected the mighty Roosters to fire back but it just didn’t happen.

And to think, Souths did all this without Latrell Mitchell.

They were also missing James Roberts.

https://the81stminute.podbean.com/e/ep-19-steve-jackson-five-and-five/

The most outrageous play of the night came with the Rabbitohs up 42-8.

Tevita Tatola rolled forward on halfway, offloaded, a pass to Cameron Murray who carved the Roosters up the guts, in traffic he offloaded, Walker found a pass, then another one and Alex Johnston scored in the corner!

In the next set, the Rabbitohs went again.

They made a break down the left and Souths were over again.

But to add insult to injury, Allan gave the ball back to Johnston in the in-goal to give the club great another try.

https://the81stminute.podbean.com/e/ep-18-david-boyle/

Reynolds potted it from the sideline which gave the club its greatest win over their biggest foes… ever!

Forget ’systems’ and whatever else.

With three minutes to go, Johnston got his fifth try.

Anything your writer says in this article won’t do this performance justice.

You just have to go and watch the replay.

There isn’t an argument.

History will tell us this is the Rabbitohs’ greatest ever performance.

The result will be spoken about for the next hundred years.

TOP TEN: Who is the best premiership-winning team of the last decade?

The Roosters couldn’t have been any more embarrassed but then they were.

Already down 58-8 on full-time, the Rabbitohs got a penalty.

Rabbitohs fans around ANZ Stadium and the country raised two fingers.

Reynolds did the honours.

There hasn’t been a showing like this against such a good team for a long time.

Even decades.

@woodward_curtis