Bulldogs stumble against Rabbitohs on Good Friday

Rounding out a miserable four weeks that come after a miserable four years, this is now Canterbury's worst start to a season in 50 years.

Not since 1971 have Canterbury been winless after the opening month, with South Sydney in cruise control for a decent portion of their six-tries-to-zip Good Friday victory.

Coach Trent Barrett was widely heralded as the puppeteer pulling the strings for Penrith last year, but he pulled no punches after this latest shutout.

He can see the problem, and the solution. But as for any progress being made by his "pedestrian" attack?

"Not really. There's a lot of things that are going wrong with our attack and don't think this is the right forum to discuss it," Barrett said.

"Our attack is pedestrian. It is. But we don't help ourselves by these fundamental errors that we're making. We had two passes over the sideline, a forward pass from dummy-half. 

"I know what's wrong with our attack but I'm not going to discuss it here. It's not an easy fix no ... if it was that easy, everyone would be an NRL coach and you'd fix it, but it's not.

Just five minutes in the writing was on the wall for Canterbury and curly questions were being asked aloud, when Lachlan Lewis's head was crunched in an attempted tackle on Josh Mansour.

Lewis stumbled out of the contact but remained on the field for one more set, only to be called from the paddock for a HIA he duly failed.

Barrett acknowledged the issue around Lewis's head knock, saying: "He should have come off.

"We realised that and we thought that. He probably should have come straight off."

With hooker Sione Katoa switching into the halves the Bulldogs battled on, Jack Hetherington with a few screws loose in the process.

The fire-and-brimstone-wielding front-rower overdid it twice in a madcap few minutes, being placed on report for a crusher tackle on Cameron Murray, then launching a long-range shoulder charge at the next Rabbitoh he encountered.

Luckily Hetherington missed his mark or both men would still be in orbit.

His 120-plus running metres in 40 minutes still made him the best Bulldog on the park, but eventually the Rabbitohs ground them down to a 14-0 half-time lead.

From the outside Damien Cook had threatened to unpick Canterbury's ruck defence as though opening a locked door with a hairpin.

By the 32nd minute, he was doing just that for Cody Walker to score the simplest of support tries.

In the 55th they repeated the dose from 60 metres out.

Cook had himself a day out two line breaks for tries and 134 running metres – a triple-figure mark he passed seven times in his breakout 2018 season, only for this to be his third 100 metres-plus haul since.

In between Walker's two tries, the South Sydney playmaker let his aggression get the better of him when he landed an elbow to the back of Nick Meaney's head.

That and a crusher tackle from Keaon Koloamatangi were two of the few blemishes on South Sydney's afternoon, while Meaney didn't last the day due to broken ribs, just to rub salt into very open blue and white wounds.

As his wont, if Wayne Bennett was impressed by the Rabbitohs showing, he wasn't showing it afterwards.

"I just thought the continuity in our game wasn't there, [there] was a lot of stop start stuff," Bennett said.

"I was pleased with [keeping the Bulldogs scoreless]. We played a pretty good game last week [against the Roosters] and we gave up 16 points from a drop ball and two kicks. That takes the gloss off what you do.

"So when you're playing as comprehensively as we were today against that opposition you do want to come in with that scoreboard as low as you possibly can."

For the Rabbitohs Josh Mansour, Alex Johnston, Latrell Mitchell and Adam Reynolds all helped themselves to tries.

With a penalty goal and six conversions from as many attempts, Reynolds' 18 points kept the scorers busy all afternoon.

If only the same could said for poor old Canterbury.