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Young Rabbitohs extinguish hapless Dragons as Johnston inches closer to record
Sam Kosack • August 22nd, 2025 12:05 am
A Wayne Bennett masterclass in another coaching milestone for the supercoach has led South Sydney to a decisive 40-0 victory over the Dragons.
Bennett brought up his 100th game in charge of the Rabbitohs with the biggest defeat of Dragons in Rabbitohs history.
As Sydney received a record amount of rain, all eyes from the sparse live audience were on Alex Johnston in his pursuit of Ken Irvine’s try scoring record.
Johnston crossed in the 37th minute cutting the gap to three but couldn’t get over again despite his side’s seven-try haul, potentially moving the record out of reach in 2025.
He now needs a hat-trick in the Rabbitohs’ final game against the Roosters at Allianz Stadium.
The Rabbitohs’ halves of Cody Walker and Ashton Ward were unstoppable, validating Wayne Bennett’s unorthodox coaching selections.
Walker began from the bench and only played 44 minutes but that's all he needed to extinguish the Dragons, having an immediate impact, putting Alex Johnston away for a line break that led to a Jye Gray try within a minute of coming on.
Ward is the prime example of Wayne Bennett’s Rabbitohs side in 2025.
Weighing in at 74kg, Ward, a Dragons’ junior, was kept in the first-grade side over English import Lewis Dodd, and showed his promise, finishing with a try assist, 85 run metres, and 30 tackles, fighting tooth and nail for every one.
Fullback Jye Gray put together a very compelling pitch to keep the fullback jersey in 2026, running for 357 metres without a linebreak and a try.
The Rabbitohs scored four tries in the second half, including a first NRL try for Thomas Fletcher.
The Dragons were all smoke, no flame, in what was labelled an “embarrassing” performance by SEN’s Jimmy Smith.
“Are you going to ask me if you can find any positives out of that? No, I can’t,” Dragons’ premiership winner Luke Priddis told SEN.
“The way that I thought they were going to approach the game… the changes that they made was, it was going to be a quick, attacking middle crusade but it just didn’t exist.
“(Damien) Cook played there as a second halfback, he was pretty much just offloading the ball.
“They got their pants pulled down because in that first half, those three little blokes in the middle had 80 tackles between them and it showed in the second half.
“It was always going to show when you're making that many tackles in the first half.”
