Twin injury blows to Mitchell and Murray have rocked South Sydney on the eve of the season.
Souths CEO Blake Solly has dismissed suggestions the Rabbitohs’ training facilities or their intensive pre-season schedule under Wayne Bennett is behind the brutal double injury blows for stars Latrell Mitchell and Cameron Murray. And NRL great Willy Mason reckons there could be a silver lining to Murray’s latest setback after suggesting the captain could come back rested and refreshed after his lengthy lay-off.
Murray is set to undergo surgery for a ruptured Achilles and is expected to miss most of the 2025 season, with the Rabbitohs confirming he would be sidelined for “the coming months”. While scans confirmed Mitchell would be out for six to eight weeks with the latest hamstring injury of his career after both Rabbitohs superstars wetn down during a horror day at training on Wednesday.
The injuries are a crushing blow to the Rabbitohs’ hopes this season and have sparked questions around whether the state of their Heffron Park training ground might have had something to do with it. However, Solly has brushed off any such suggestions after revealing their training facilities were deemed “perfect” after being inspected just three weeks ago.
“We actually got the playing surface checked by independent specialists three weeks ago, and it was perfect,” the Rabbitohs CEO said. “Some of the soft-tissue injuries we had last pre-season were not even at Heffron Park. They happened when we were training at Redfern before Christmas whilst Heffron was unavailable.”
Souths moved from their traditional training base at Redfern Oval into the new $25 million centre of excellence at Heffron Park in 2023. But the team has endured a horror run of injuries since. Apart from Murray and Mitchell, big prop Shaq Mitchell also suffered a hamstring injury during last weekend’s All Stars game that will see him miss the start of the season. Tevita Tatola and Campbell Graham have also endured long injury stints on the sidelines but are pushing to return, with Solly pointing out that many of the injuries are quite different and in some cases, did not happen during training anyway.
Every high-performance and coaching department reviews processes and programs regularly. What’s been interesting about our situation is there have been no two long-term injuries that have occurred in exactly the same situation. Junior Tatola’s [foot] was a freak injury, and so was Campbell’s. Cameron [wrist] and Shaq’s injuries occurred during representative games. It’s not a case of them being soft-tissue injuries affecting one specific part of the body this pre-season. But we’ll continue to review everything, and we have every confidence in our high-performance and coaching staff.”
The Rabbitohs boss praised Bennett’s ability to keep the spirits of his playing group up after the latest injury crisis to rock the club. “He’s remained extremely upbeat. I don’t think Wayne thinks that anything that happened yesterday will stop us from potentially winning a comp. Nobody here is writing off our season,” Solly added.
Willie Mason sees ‘silver lining’ in Cam Murray injury
Bulldogs legend and former premiership winner Mason reckons Murray’s injury lay-off could actually be what the skipper’s body needs to help prolong his career. Murray’s brutal Achilles injury came after a wrist issue that ruled him out of Tests with the Kangaroos last year and he’s also battled shoulder issues amongst a host of other niggles, having played a lot of club and rep footy over recent years.
“I just think there’s always a silver lining and he’s played a lot of football in the last five or six years at the top with Origin campaigns and big runs into the semis,” Mason said on his podcast, Levels. “He plays big minutes and sometimes your body just goes ‘bang, I need a f***ing break’.
“He has a year off in the game and sometimes that can prolong your career at the end, If he misses the whole of 2025, all he does is rehab and work on all his other injuries, he can fix everything like that and come back next year and start fresh. You miss a whole year of getting hit – it’s the contact and everything like that. He’s not a big man, he is giving away 10 or 20 kilos in the middle and he does not shirk it at all… he’s a forward thinker and an intelligent man, and he’d be thinking about getting his body right and coming back bigger and stronger.”
