Didn’t put him in a good place’: Demetriou’s Latrell reveal amid Souths’ season implosion
Souths coach Jason Demetriou has opened up on the toll of Latrell Mitchell’s injury on his fullback and his team amid their disappointing 2023 season fade-out.
Speaking with The Sydney Morning Herald, Demetriou believes Mitchell’s injury hurt both the confidence of his star player and the team, who went from first after 10 rounds to miss the finals altogether.
“When he’s fit, we all know how good Latrell is,” Demetriou told The Sydney Morning Herald.
People forget he went into Origin the best fullback in the game, in my opinion. He was a big contributor to why we were on top of the table. Then he doesn’t play 10 weeks
But when you miss 10 weeks in the middle of the season, it’s hard to get your form back for the rest of the year, not to mention come back into a side that had lost confidence. That put more pressure on him.”
Demetriou believes the stop-start nature of his return from his calf injury, which was meant to only be a couple of games before stretching out to 10 weeks, hurt Mitchell’s mindset.
“The frustration of the injury, and the extended period he was out, it didn’t put him in a good place either,” Demetriou said.
