South Sydney Rabbitohs left to reassess after making just one grand final from five straight preliminary final appearances

While the rest of the rugby league world will watch Parramatta v Penrith in an epic NRL grand final on Sunday, the devastated South Sydney hooker will be doing anything but.

The 31-year-old Australia and NSW hooker is yet to win a premiership from 10 seasons in the game and was a shattered man after Saturday night’s 32-12 loss to Penrith.

“The grand final is the hardest thing to watch when you lose a prelim, knowing what could have been and what if,” he told CODE Sports.

“I’ll keep an eye on it, but I don’t think I’ll watch it too much.”

Saturday night’s heartbreak was the fifth straight year Souths have made the preliminary finals, only advancing through to the decider once, for no premiership success.

Last year’s grand final against the Panthers was their first appearance since their premiership win in 2014, marking a huge era of dominance that has not yet amounted to another title.

Each time Cook has avoided watching the grand final and it only gets harder as the years go on and frustration builds.

There’s been a window for success at South Sydney over the past five years and another preliminary finals loss compounds the feeling that the window could close at any point.

“Another year is gone and another opportunity to get to a grand final and have a crack at winning it, that’s why we play the game we do because you want to go on and win those grand finals,” he said.

“It’s so hard to get to grand finals and that’s why it’s such an honour to win.

“We’ve just got to come back next year now and do it all again.”

And it gets more painful every year.

“It does, the further you go into the finals the more it hurts to bow out in the prelims,” he said.

“It’s right up there with losing the grand final last year. There was a special feeling about this year, losing the experience of last year, we knew if we got past the great side of Penrith we’d have a real shot of winning it. It’s not to be, it’s another year gone.”

Souths were leading 12-0 in the first half when Penrith had three tries rightly disallowed, but a three-minute period before halftime levelled the scores at 12-all at the break. However, Souths couldn’t find their rhythm in the second half and the Panthers were relentless in their pursuit of their third-straight grand final with the chance of back-to-back trophies.

Cook said it will take some time to get over the loss of yet another failed crack at the premiership. However, there are positives to be drawn from the season.

There was a big turnover of players this year with Adam Reynolds, Dane Gagai and Jaydn Su’a all departing, opening the door for young stars Isaiah Tass and Lachlan Ilias to develop.

Heading into 2023, Souths have a stable squad with just Jaxson Paulo, Mark Nicholls and Kodi Nikorima leaving the club next season.

“There’s definitely some boys this year who I’m very proud of. Lachie, for one, he’s come into some big shoes [Reynolds] and he’s done an outstanding job and he’s only going to get better and better for it,” he said.

“The club’s in a really good position with Lachie, Keaon [Koloamatangi] had an outstanding season. Campbell Graham is unbelievable. He’s so tough.

“He doesn’t get the credit he deserves in this game. We’ve just got to learn from this experience and come back and do what we can in the pre-season, do what we can and come back again next year.”

Cook and his representative teammates will have some time off for the next few weeks while waiting for confirmation they’ll be heading to the World cup, which starts in the UK next month.

It’ll be a welcome distraction and a necessary mental refresher before next pre-season, which starts early next year.

“We have exit stuff [at Souths] next week and I’m then hopeful of playing the World Cup, it’s a dream for me,” Cook said.

“You can only put your best foot forward for your club and that stuff takes care of itself, I’ll wait to see what happens there and go from there.

“It’ll take some time but once you get past it, you have to freshen up, get your mind away from footy and have that family time and freshen up because it’s full on once pre-season starts.

“We come back and do it again, that’s why we love it.”