New Souths coach Jayson Brewer confident of Rebels’ rebuild
New Southern Districts coach Jayson Brewer is confident the Rebels can put last year’s disappointing season behind them and move up the ladder and into finals contention again in 2023.
The Rebels sacked coach Todd Louden half way through 2022 after the veteran coaches’ costly “High Performance Rugby Program” failed to yield results.
Off the field, the club’s targeted focus on first grade success also led to a fairly public falling out with Southern Districts’ successful women’s 7s program and a not for profit designed to support rugby in southern Sydney.
But Brewer, a former assistant coach of the Fijian national side, said he didn’t find a club in turmoil when he arrived at Forshaw in November last year.
“Obviously things didn’t go to plan at Souths over the past few seasons, but it seems the club drew a line in the sand midway through last year,” Brewer told Rugby News.
“Since I’ve arrived, I’ve been really impressed with the core playing group, the staff and all the volunteers at the club.
“As a collective, everyone is working really hard and you can see there is a real desire to get the club back to where we all think it should be.
“We’ve identified a number of areas where we need to improve things right across the club and we’ve also set some new expectations and some non-negotiable’s for the playing group moving forward.
“We had a solid six weeks of training pre Christmas and then we started back up last week and so far it’s all been really positive”
Most recently, Brewer spent the past four years coaching in Japan. During his time with Fiji, the side won two Pacific Nations Cup titles and rose to 7th in the World Rugby rankings following landmark victories over Scotland and Italy.
He also held roles in high performance coach development at Rugby Australia throughout a 20-year coaching career that he believes has put him in good stead to take the reigns at Southern Districts.
“I’m well aware that the results in first grade and second grade last year didn’t meet the expectations of the club.
“Initially, we’ve been working really hard to rediscover our DNA. On the field, we want to get back to being a hard nosed side that fights for every result, we want to be consistent with our training and we want to be really well connected as a group.
“My job within all of that is to make sure that every player has a clear understanding of their individual role and to make sure every players understands where they fit within the club and the side’s framework.”
Despite last year’s difficulties, Brewer said the club has retained the majority of the playing group from last season.
He said he expected a number of younger players to push into the top squad from colts, alongside a select few recruits in key positions.
“If you look at the numbers from last season, the reality is that the lads weren’t that far off in most of the games that they lost.
“There are a lot of good footy players here and they played a lot of good footy last season. They seemed to just struggle to do it for 80 minutes and that’s what we need to change.”
“There was also a really high injury rate at the club last year so we’ve looked at some of the data around our training loads and made some changes there.
“We also need to improve our discipline because we were a highly penalised side last season, especially around the ruck and in defence.”
The club has also retained the services of former first grade coach Matt Barr, who as Head Club Coach is working on the Rebels’ rebuild both on and off the field.
“Barrey and I have been working really closely with our colts coaches to make sure we’ve got more depth coming through colts and into grade each year.
“For that to happen, we need to have really strong relationships with our junior village clubs and that’s been another big focus.
“We’re tracking well but we know we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. From what I’ve seen so far though, I’m really excited and I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do come round one.”
The Rebels open their 2023 campaign at home against Gordon on April 1.