Bulldogs forward Tony Williams has been a vital if somewhat unheralded component of his club's powerful start to 2016 and halfback Moses Mbye said people may have forgotten just how good 'T-Rex' is.
The destructive Origin and Test back-rower had hardly missed a minute of his team's first three games but played just half of the Good Friday win after suffering a concussion late in the first half.
It didn't stop him having an impact though, with one impressive offload under pressure as seemingly half the Rabbitohs team pushed him towards touch resulted in a Josh Morris try and another offload setting up a line break. He still managed to churn through 100 metres in his 37 minutes, from just eight runs.
After the game, Mbye was full of praise for the back-rower in his comeback from last season's long-term pectoral injury.
"I think people have forgotten how good 'T-Rex' really is," Mbye said.
"It was unfortunate last year he missed a lot of football, he's copped a lot of flak over the last few years because of how he's been performing but people forget that he's a State of Origin player and he's played for Australia also.
"He looks like he's finding his feet now the last few rounds, he's put in some really good performances... He's been pretty impressive."
Centre Josh Morris, the beneficiary of Williams' early offload, added to the praise for the forward's efforts so far this year.
"'Rex' has played 80 the first couple of games so that shows that he's really fit." Morris said.
"He was a handful in that first half and got our sets off to great starts so if he can continue doing that every week he's going to be hard to handle."
The blue and white forwards as a unit were powerful against the Rabbitohs and both Morris and Mbye were happy to be the beneficiaries.
"Souths are a great outfit and it's very hard to [roll through the middle] against them. Credit to our forwards, I won't take that away from them," Mbye said.
"They went well through the middle there and they got us a lot of metres and got us going on the front foot."
He said it is "any half's dream" to play behind such a dominant pack.
"That's where you base your football off, quick play-the-balls and going forward, and good go-forward like that. It's invaluable. It makes my job a hell of a lot easier when the boys are playing that style of football."
Morris was pleased that for the most part, they resisted pushing offloads in favour of fast play-the-balls and momentum.
"It's good to watch. The best thing was that they were poking their nose through but they weren't going for the offload, they were getting down for the quick play the ball and we were playing some football off the back of that," Morris said.
"'Grub' [Josh Reynolds] was exposing them down that right edge so in times before we probably would have passed it but the boys really stuck to the plan and it came off with points."
