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Up and Down ... Adam Reynolds and Mitch Pearce have a change of fortunes. Source:FoxSports
TWO halfbacks walked on the field last weekend, two very different halfbacks walked off it. Two halfbacks with it all at stake.
One plays for a future already written, the other to rewrite his past.
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Only one will prevail.
Adam Reynolds ran on the field Saturday night with South Sydney - the competition leader - a position the Rabbitohs have held most of the year.
The Dally M Rookie of the Year, his second season was holding up whatever scrutiny the award brought him, and it always brings some.
Yet 80 minutes later Reynolds limped off, slightly injured, with the work ahead of him. John Sutton was in the dressing room with ice on an ankle that looked like it had a water balloon attached to the side.
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Two to four weeks, they said about Sutton.
Join Paul Kent and Ben Ikin live on Wednesday at 7.30pm for NRL 360 on Fox Sports
Reynolds got the all clear, but Greg Inglis was still injured and not due back until just before the playoffs.
The Rabbitohs' spine, as they call it, was cut in half.
The night before, after the Sydney Roosters killed off Penrith, Pearce stood next to Brad Fittler to get his man of the match award.
Second question, Fittler asked what was learned from the Origin loss.
"For me, personally, I've learned just to try to come up with better last plays," Pearce said.
"Me and Jimmy [Maloney], it probably wasn't the best in the first half but that's a big focus for me.
"Just to pull myself out of play sometimes and just think my way around the field a bit more.
"Know when the team needs a restart or a good kick down field, just to build a bit of pressure.
"It's a work in progress but I have been working hard at it since I got back."
Reynolds and Pearce have battled all year, since NSW coach Laurie Daley declared in his newspaper column that Pearce was his NSW halfback come hail, as it eventually did, or shine.
Some believed his time was up.
They believed Reynolds was ready.
Some believed Pearce was on his last chance.
They want Reynolds to replace him.
They put blame for NSW's loss at Pearce's feet, and it was nothing of the sort.
When Pearce returned to the Roosters he resumed a conversation he started with coach Trent Robinson the first time they sat together after Robinson took the job.
The irony of Pearce's career is that, for all the boy-most-likely tags attached early on, he has never been properly taught how to play halfback.
While the tools are all there, the running and passing, the subtlety, the key to the good halfbacks is game management, last play kicking, playing to the team's structures.
The chief criticism of Pearce through Origin was an inability to close a set, which happens to be Reynolds' great strength.
Polish, they say.
Robinson listened to the criticism and realised, while not right, it wasn't completely invalid.
"You don't get those opportunities to really have a look at the essence of a guy's decision making until they get to the top end," he said yesterday.
So his education with Pearce continues
Two halfbacks, two directions.
Pearce walked off man of the match match with the Roosters now sharing equal first spot, ahead on percentages.
The following night they held it when Sutton limped off and the Rabbitohs went down to North Queensland.
The loss was significant for more than the change in competition ladder.
It brings us back to the debate Daley started before round one, and might cause some to reassess their .
Sutton has been Reynolds great foil throughout the season, the creative playmaker in the Rabbitohs line-up. It allowed Reynolds to take himself out of sets until he needed to bring the polish others talk about.
For years Pearce has tried to do both roles, now Reynolds will now to accept a greater role in the Rabbitohs playmaking.
There is no reason he can't do it, but it will certainly be tougher.
The finals are also nearing and, while Sutton and Inglis will be back in the side, finals football brings a pressure some might call Origin-like.
It's different.
Rabbitohs coach Michael Maguire knows the change ahead, and is gearing Reynolds for it.
"We talk about things all the time," he said.
"Situations in games, when to put plays on, we're always talking about scenarios, what happens.
"But he likes his footy so he tends to come to me about a umber of things, too."
Rightly or wrongly, Pearce, 24, and Reynolds, 23, have become attached this season and could remain that way the rest of their careers.
They are in charge of the best two teams in the competition, and it starts now.
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