Greg Prichard | July 11, 2009

JASON TAYLOR had reached the coaching crossroads. He knew he had to make drastic changes to his approach if he was going to have any chance of being the coach he wanted to be, so he switched to playing hard-ball with his South Sydney team like he had never done before.

Last night, against Penrith at ANZ Stadium, the Rabbitohs bought into it, ending a five-match losing streak.

It's only a start and Taylor made it clear there would have to be plenty of improvement before Souths could say they are realising their potential, but at least it was a start. Heaven knows where Taylor and the Rabbitohs would have been left had they lost again after such a week of upheaval - particularly against a Panthers outfit that was severely weakened by injuries and the absence of players due to State of Origin commitments.

Following last night's win, Taylor said the morning after their 54-20 flogging by Wests Tigers last Saturday night he realised it was a case of change or else. "I knew my career was staring me in the face," Taylor said. "Not as far as being concerned about losing my job, but the direction in which my coaching career was heading. If you don't push players hard, they're not going to reach their potential. That was a really good lesson for me. I needed to push them harder - I still need to push them harder.

"We had been accepting near enough as good enough and it was an attitude switch from me, about getting people to perform at a level that is higher than what they thought they could get to themselves. We had been mentally soft for five weeks. We were able to do it for a little bit, and then we would switch off. We weren't playing for anything like 80 minutes but if you can make that mental switch, you can change things in a week."

Now, Taylor said, Souths had to build on last night or it will end up being a waste of time.

"We didn't get the result completely tonight," he said. "We got a good first 40 minutes but the early part of the second half wasn't good enough. We gave them too many opportunities.

"Three errors in a row - we've got to get better. If we want to be competitive, that's not good enough, so we have to keep pushing. I don't feel relief right now. I feel some satisfaction that we've made a difference."

The Rabbitohs had slipped to 11th place - five points outside the top eight - before last night. Taylor read them the riot act, threatening to drop players if the team didn't improve dramatically.

Five-eighth John Sutton was among those whose form had been particularly poor in the humiliating loss to the Tigers. Taylor replaced him with 14 minutes to go in that match and Sutton obviously agreed the coach had a point because he reacted by lifting his game dramatically.

After setting up the opening try against Penrith with a clever pass that put second-rower Eddy Pettybourne into the clear from close range, Sutton scored a try in each half himself to banish last week's demons with the type of attacking performance that he occasionally produces.

Afterwards, Sutton said he had been embarrassed by his performance against the Tigers and had been motivated by Taylor's decision to lay it on the line.

"I just wanted to come out here and prove I could play better than I did last week," Sutton said. "'JT' just showed us some parts we did wrong last week and I was in most of them. I guess he was more intense and all the boys responded and stepped it up at training this week because we needed to.

"It's only one win and we need to do this every week. We had to turn it around or our season was ending pretty quickly."