Rabbitohs Future Looking Strong with Focus on Pathways – Part Three
In part three of our in-depth look into the Rabbitohs’ pathways systems, recruitment and retention, we speak to Rabbitohs Head of Pathways, David Furner, about the future of the ‘Pride of the League’.
FUTURE PROOFING
Rabbitohs Head of Pathways, David Furner, knows a thing or two about Rugby League and growing nurseries of players over his four decades associated with the game at the highest levels, as a player, coach and administrator.
Eight months into the job of guiding of the Rabbitohs Pathways system, Furner says he is very confident in the plans the Club has in generating and cultivating future first graders and representative players in the red and green.
“In fact, I couldn’t be more confident in what we are all doing here around pathways at Souths,” Furner said.
Let’s take a closer look.
Furner said he learned lessons during his time at the Canberra Raiders where he won premierships as a player and was Head Coach of their NRL team.
“The first thing that I looked at was the history of where our successful teams drew their players from, and I've done it before when I used to coach the Raiders,” Furner said.
“I looked at where all the players come from. The successful teams at the Raiders obviously had the local players there, but they also had players from New Zealand, Queensland, Sydney, and other areas of New South Wales. We were getting the best talent that we thought could play first grade.
“So when I first started I brought together ‘Hilly’ (Pathways Recruitment Manager, Brent Hill) and Tyrone (former Pathways Coaching Director, Tyrone McCarthy) and we said we support the local juniors 100%, but we also need to supplement them with other players that we think can go all the way to first grade. There's a time where we need to add better players where there are gaps in the South Sydney Juniors’ production line.
“We also wanted to target the SG Ball age group. If you bring players in at that age group, they develop into senior footballers as Rabbitohs. They learn what the Club is about, the spirit in the place, what it means to be a Rabbitohs player. That’s very important.
“So we work closely with ‘Ello’ (Rabbitohs Head of Recruitment and Retention, Mark Ellison) to identify where we need to bolster the squad, the expected movement of players or players coming towards the end of their career into the future, and then trying to develop our own players from a young age to play at the top level when they are required.
“‘Hilly’ did a really good job of assessing the talent in the Juniors and then going out and recruiting from outside our traditional catchment area around that SG Ball under 19s age group.”
The changing face of the South Sydney district has made it a necessity for the Rabbitohs to not rely solely on its local junior production line.
“The numbers just aren’t there in the local area anymore due to changing demographics, the cost of living near the city, etc.,” Furner explained.
“Souths Juniors do a fantastic job of developing talent with the limited numbers of kids playing in our district, especially people like Keith McCraw and Luke Curry, but we recruited from outside and added to our squad appropriately.
“Look at some other junior areas, such as Penrith Juniors. They have ticked over 10,000 players this year. We're at around 3,000. So again, we’re supporting local juniors, but we need to look elsewhere too. Sometimes, outside the box, which we have.
“Our philosophy is that we if we have two players of equal talent and work ethic, one a local junior and one an outside recruit, we’ll go with the local junior. But if we have to recruit better players from outside, we’ll do that too.
“75% of our Harold Matthews under 17s squad are local juniors. By recruiting at the SG Ball level, players coming in from outside our area have four levels of football as a South Sydney Rabbitohs player to get to first grade. This will ensure they develop as a Rabbitoh. They will know what we believe in, how we act as a Rabbitohs representative, and what we stand for.”
The next step for Furner and his team was to look at turning around the results of previous seasons and how they can best develop future first graders for the South Sydney club.
“The next thing was looking at the quality of player available,” Furner said.
“In 2024, none of our pathways teams made the semi-finals. In 2025, both our under 19s and under 17s boys made preliminary finals and were very close to playing in grand finals. That’s an enormous improvement in one season.
“So after the successful season with the SG Ball, we put 16 of those players up into the Jersey Flegg Cup squad to begin training at the higher tier. Now, they have to earn their position to train and play at that level, but I wanted to put them up to see how they handled the rise.
“Now we have ten SG Ball players playing Jersey Flegg Cup at the under 21s level, and their results have started to turn around.
“But more importantly, those players are developing their talents, skills and work ethic at the under 21s level too.
“We've also got six or so players of Flegg age that are up with NSW Cup currently, and there are a number of players who are still Jersey Flegg-eligible playing first grade.
“It also creates competition for positions, even though they are two, three or four years younger than the other players in that age group.”
There has been a lot of talk about the injuries to the Rabbitohs’ NRL side throughout the season, but something that is often forgotten is the effect this has on the grades below this tier.
“There has also been an element of necessity (in bringing the SG Ball players up to Jersey Flegg Cup) because of the issues with injuries in the two top grades,” Furner explained.
“Every injury in first grade affects the NSW Cup and Jersey Flegg Cup squads as everyone shifts up one spot in that injured players’ position.
“That has put significant pressure on the performances of the NSW Cup and Jersey Flegg Cup teams, but it has also created opportunities for players to develop at the higher tier.”
There were changes made to the coaching ranks throughout the Rabbitohs pathways system for the 2025 system. This gave Furner the opportunity to instil the values of what it means to be a Rabbitoh from the beginning.
“I got all of the coaches in as we have had significant change in the coaching departments. I brought the coaches in to talk about what I wanted throughout the grades, the non-negotiables, you could say,” Furner said.
“Number one was fitness. Number two was physicality. Then thirdly was to compete. We wanted to make defence a priority. Always compete on every play for every minute of the game.
“We went through a lot more detail in attack and defence, but we wanted to see those three things implemented at training. So that's what I do now. Every training session I'll go and have a look and make sure these three things are being adhered to and if I think I can help the coaches, I'll help out.”
Furner says the influence of experienced coaches at the NRL level helps with the pathways program, with Head Coach Wayne Bennett looking for simple things from the pathways system.
“Wayne (Bennett) is obviously the Head Coach and he will have systems and philosophies that he wants amongst his top squad. They have the two assistants as well in Ben Hornby and Steve Antonelli,” Furner said.
“I spoke to Benny and Steve, and obviously Wayne, about what I was looking at putting in place for the start of the season, and they were big on the basic fundamentals, the fundamental skills.
“It's not about shape and all that sort of stuff. It's literally teaching the pathways players how to tackle, teach them how to pass, teach them how to run, teach them quick play-the-balls.
“So it was the basic fundamentals, because once they get into the elite levels, the coaches don't want to be teaching that.
“The philosophies are there all the way through. The plays are the same all the way through. The idea is to make it as simple to transition through the grades as possible, but also to have the pathways players ready to go and to build on their development at each tier of the Club.”
When thinking about recruiting young players from outside of our district, there are pitfalls which the Club tries to avoid. It’s all based around support systems.
“We try to leave the youngest players that we recruit from outside of our area at home as much as we can,” Furner said.
“There may be a couple of players that move to Sydney if they have the maturity and the family support to do so, but generally we prefer to leave the really young players in their home environment, in their school environment, and move them to Sydney when they are ready to do so.”
With that philosophy in mind, the Rabbitohs have set up a number of academies across the eastern seaboard, which means players can continue to live at home but still be trained and coached as a Rabbitoh.
“We have a number of academies that we use to attract players and to turn them into South Sydney Rabbitohs players,” Furner said.
“We have a partnership with Keebra Park State High School on the Gold Coast which is one of the best Rugby League schools in the country.
“We have the partnership with the Iron Armour Academy in Victoria, a group which is breaking down the barriers to participation at the highest levels for young Victorian players.
“We have the Black Rabbits academies that we have set up in south-east Queensland and in Sydney, and we have a new opportunity to identify players in New Zealand later this year.
“We make regular trips to the Gold Coast, Brisbane and Melbourne to work with our academy players and coaches to help develop them as South Sydney Rabbitohs.
“We also have our affiliation with the Townsville Blackhawks which sees a handful of their players get pre-season training with the NRL squad in Sydney. We had a trial match planned for the pre-season which unfortunately had to be cancelled due to the cyclonic weather in that part of the world at the time, and it also delivered us Gehamat Shibasaki to fill in at the NRL level last year.
“We are always assessing the value and the quality of these programs and we help make adjustments where they are needed throughout the year.”
Outside of the elite talents at each age group level and the professional ranks, the Club also has development squads and programs designed to uncover the players who are yet to show their full potential or could perhaps be a ‘late bloomer’.
“We also have our development squads and Junior Bunnies squads which supplement our junior representative squads,” Furner said.
“South Sydney Juniors, led by Luke Curry and Keith McCraw, do a fantastic job in this space alongside coaches such as George Katrib, Ben Lowe and Eddie Paea.
“These players range from under 13s to under 18s, and they have the opportunity to train, play and develop as Rabbitohs players whilst striving for selection in the junior representative squads.”
These squads are not just restricted to the male pathways, with the Rabbitohs fielding a full pathways system in the female game, under the leadership of Pathways and Women’s Operations Manager, Rob Capizzi.
“We have a Harvey Norman NSW Women’s Premiership team who have started the season strongly, and we have Tarsha Gale Cup (under 19s) and Lisa Fiaola Cup (under 17s) female squads as well, so have made an investment in the women’s game too,” Furner said.
“We also have development squads for the female pathways, and we support the work Souths Juniors are doing to encourage young girls to play all forms of Rugby League, whether it’s tackle, touch or League Tag.
“Souths Cares is also running a fantastic program called ‘Play Her Way’ (insert links to Play Her Way content) which is providing identified girls the opportunity to begin professional-level training at a young age between nine and 17 years of age.
“The women’s space is exciting and it’s all designed to support a South Sydney Rabbitohs NRLW team when we are granted a licence in the future.”
Furner understands the thirst of Members, supporters, fans, media and others external to the Club, to see success right here and right now. However, he also sees the need to develop for the future to ensure the Club has a steady stream of homegrown talent that can be added to with elite talent throughout the professional ranks.
“Immediate success is something everybody wants, but so is the future success of the Club, futureproofing the Club,” Furner said.
“So we plan beyond the two-year cycles of the junior representative groupings. We try to plan four to five years ahead, all the way from under 15s through to first grade.
“This is where we work closely with the NRL staff, people like Mark (Ellison) and Wayne, to ensure we are developing players for the needs of the NRL team in the future, to bring in players at the younger age groups to turn them into South Sydney players from a young age, and identifying the best young talent to wear the red and green.”
Ellison said the Rabbitohs Pathways have been doing a magnificent job to shift the focus of how we attract players to our Club.
“We’re always watching where the best players come from, and for us to be competitive in our Harold Matthews and SG Ball teams, and therefore have these guys coming through wearing the South Sydney jersey when they get to the next stages of the pathways. We’ve had to go and find different areas where we’ve started looking at players,” Ellison told the Let’s Go Rabbitohs Podcast.
“We’ve got an excellent Pathways Recruitment Manager in Brent Hill. He’s doing a great job in that, and ‘Furnsie’ (David Furner) is doing a great job in managing the whole pathways system.
“Obviously we work closely together…but ‘Hilly’ has truly just shot the lights out in what he’s been doing.”
So what is next on the agenda for Furner and his pathways crew?
“Our next area of focus is strengthening the under 21s age group,” Furner stated.
“Some of the SG Ball Cup players will come through next year, but we need to look outside the box at that age group and strengthen it.
“We did it with a good level of success at the SG Ball level this year so now we will look to do the same with the Jersey Flegg squad for next year.”
