South Sydney Rabbitohs
The South Sydney Rabbitohs are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the Sydney suburb of Redfern that competes in the National Rugby League (NRL). They are often referred to as Souths or the Bunnies.
Club information
South Sydney District Rugby League Football Club
- Official
- Rabbitohs, Souths
- Colloquial
- Bunnies, Rabbits, The Red and Green, The Cardinal and Myrtle, The Pride of the League
Red
Green
17 January 1908
- Stadium Australia (84,000)
Ben Hornby (interim)
9th
336 – John Sutton
187 – Alex Johnston
1,896 – Adam Reynolds
The club was formed in 1908, as one of the founding members of the New South Wales Rugby Football League, making it one of Australia's oldest rugby league teams. It is one of only two NSW foundation clubs still present in the NRL, the other being the Sydney Roosters.[note 1]
The Rabbitohs' traditional heartland covers the once typically working-class suburbs of inner-south Sydney. The club is based in Redfern, where its administration and training facilities are located, however it has long held a wide supporter base spread all over New South Wales. The team's home ground is currently Stadium Australia in Sydney Olympic Park. South Sydney is the most successful professional team in the history of Australian rugby league with twenty-one first grade premierships.
Club symbols[edit]
Emblem[edit]
The club mascot is the rabbitoh, a now-disused term that was commonly used in the early 20th century to describe hawkers who captured and skinned rabbits and then sold the meat at markets,[45] so named because they would shout "rabbit-oh!" around the markets and suburbs to attract buyers. The club is also informally referred to as the Rabbits, Bunnies or Souths.
Exactly how South Sydney came to be known as the Rabbitohs is unknown. According to one version of events, dating from pre-schism days at the turn of the 20th century, some of the club's players earned some extra money on Saturday mornings as rabbit-oh men, staining their jerseys with rabbit blood in the process; when they played in those blood stained jumpers that afternoon, opponents from wealthier rugby clubs did not always appreciate the aroma and would mockingly repeat the "Rabbitoh!" cry.[46] Another version was that the term was a disparaging reference by opposing teams to South's home ground being plagued with "rabbit 'oles"; in those early days Redfern Oval was then known as Nathan's Cow Paddock.[1] A third version claims the Rabbitoh name was adopted from that of the touring Australian rugby union teams of the early 1900s who were nicknamed "Rabbits" prior to discarding the name in 1908 in favour of the moniker "Wallabies".[47]
The "Rabbitoh" emblem, a running white rabbit, first appeared on the team's jersey in 1959. The Rabbitoh emblem has in various forms been carried as the club's crest on every player's jersey ever since. The original "Rabbitoh" emblem design that appeared on the team's jerseys throughout the 1960s and 1970s has now been incorporated on the current jersey.
The South Sydney Rabbitohs celebrated its centenary year during 2008. The club released a centenary emblem to commemorate the occasion. To also coincide with the centenary year, Souths opted to alter the logo by removing the red and green oval from the emblem for a solid white rabbit with the words South Sydney Rabbitohs set in uppercase type.
Colours[edit]
South Sydney has used cardinal red and myrtle green colours on its playing jerseys for the vast majority of the club's history. Prior to the establishment of the rugby league club in 1908, the South Sydney rugby union team originally wore a red and green hooped jersey. Some sources have suggested that this combination of colours was due to the local rugby union club being nicknamed the "Redfern Waratahs". The first British inhabitants had often called the waratah a "red fern" instead, hence giving the suburb its name, and ultimately the local rugby club its emblem. Red and green dominate the colours of the waratah and hence, possibly, the South Sydney Rugby League Football Club adopted these colours for its jerseys.[47] However, the suburb of Redfern was named in honour of William Redfern, one of the first doctors of the colony, who treated convicts and poor settlers as well as the wealthy.
The club's jersey has been a hooped-styled one comprising alternating red and green, and has been used for the vast majority of the club's history.[48] In 1945 and 1946 the club broke with this tradition and used a green design with a red "V" around the collar, before reverting to the original hoop style. From 1980 to 1984 the team played in a strip which saw the inclusion of white hoops within a predominately green design with a central red stripe and was affectionately known as the "Minties"[49] jersey (so-called due to its apparent similarity to the wrapper design of the popular sweet). With the introduction of "away" jerseys towards the end of the 20th century, the club initially introduced a predominantly white jersey for away matches which was changed to a predominantly black one for the 2006 season.
Before the start of the 2007 season, the club announced that the away jersey would be styled identically to the traditional home jersey, with the exception of sponsorship and the rabbit emblem, which has been styled similarly to the one that initially featured on jerseys in the 1960s.[50] For season 2009, the rabbit emblem is black for home matches whilst the emblem is the original white for away matches.[51]
The playing shorts worn were historically black, though in the late 1970s the club adopted green shorts with a red vertical stripe. This was then superseded by the white shorts of the "Minties" outfit. When the club subsequently reverted to the traditional playing strip, the decision was made to wear black shorts once more. In 2008 the Rabbitohs wore white shorts to match the white stripe running down the side of the jersey.
Geographic area[edit]
The South Sydney District Rugby League Football Club (precursor to the current corporate entity) was formed, under the original 1908 articles of association with the NSWRL competition, to represent the Sydney municipalities of Alexandria, Botany, Mascot, Waterloo, Redfern and Darlington and the southern parts of the City Of Sydney. It additionally represents southern parts of the eastern suburbs of Sydney, including the suburbs Coogee, Kensington, Kingsford, and Maroubra.[56]
Souths have a proud history of Indigenous players from the local district clubs including La Perouse United, Redfern All Blacks and Indigenous recruits from Country NSW.
Supporters[edit]
The South Sydney Rabbitohs continue to have a large supporter base in its traditional areas of South-eastern Sydney, despite having moved from Redfern Oval two decades ago, while also enjoying wide support throughout other rugby league playing centres around the country.[66] The official South Sydney supporter group is known as "The Burrow".[67]
South Sydney at one stage had the highest football club membership in the National Rugby League, with membership exceeding 35,000 as of June 23, 2015. That member number also included more than 11,000 ticketed members, the highest of the Sydney-based NRL clubs. Following the conclusion of the 2021 NRL season, new figures showed South Sydney to have the second highest membership of Sydney NRL clubs behind Parramatta.[68]
It was announced during the 2010 Charity Shield game that both St. George Illawarra and Souths had exceeded the 10,000 milestone, making the 2010 season the first time two Sydney clubs had entered the season with 10,000 ticketed members each. The club had members from every state in Australia and international members in 22 countries. Football club membership peaked at some 22,000 when the club was re-admitted to the National Rugby League for season 2002.[69]
"Group 14", a collection of club backers including businessmen, politicians, musicians and media personalities, was formed before the Rabbitohs' exclusion from the NRL in 1999.[70] Members include Anthony Albanese, Laurie Brereton, Michael Cheika, Rodger Corser, Michael Daley, Andrew Denton, Cathy Freeman, Nick Greiner, Deirdre Grusovin, Ron Hoenig, Ray Martin, Mikey Robins, and Mike Whitney.[71][72] They contributed to South Sydney's bid for reinstatement, following the club's exclusion from the competition at the end of the 1999 season. A sustained campaign of public support that year, unprecedented in Australian sporting history, saw 40,000 people[73] attend a rally in the Sydney CBD in support of South Sydney's cause.[74][75] In 2000 and 2001, public street marches took place in Sydney with in excess of 80,000 people rallying behind the Rabbitohs.[21] The club also has a number of high-profile supporters as well, many of whom were dominant figures in Souths' battle to be readmitted into the premiership in 2000 and 2001.[76][77] In 2007, supporters set a new club record for attendance with an average home crowd figure of 15,702 being the highest ever since the introduction of the home and away system in 1974.[78]
In 2023, incumbent Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, a lifelong South Sydney supporter, was named the club’s number one ticket-holder.[79]
Individual awards[edit]
Club Best & Fairest[edit]
The George Piggins Medal is the award given to the Rabbitohs player determined to have been the "best and fairest" throughout an NRL season. The inaugural winner of the award in 2003 was Bryan Fletcher. In 2013, John Sutton and Greg Inglis became the first joint winners of the award.[111][112]
South Sydney are the most successful club in terms of honours and individual player achievements in the history of NSW rugby league.
The club achievements include:
The club's players have also achieved some notable individual game and point scoring milestones: