The South Sydney Rabbitohs had a stack of key players miss game time in 2025, but while a majority of those stars were out with injury, highly-touted English recruit Lewis Dodd was absent from the starting lineup for other reasons.
Dodd, who lasted just one season in Redfern, has spoken out regarding his disappointing exit from Redfern, pulling back the curtain on what was a rollercoaster stint for the young halfback.
“When I first came over, this outcome is not what you dream of,” Dodd said to the Daily Telegraph.
“I would’ve changed the fact that I didn’t play as much as I wanted, but I wouldn’t change much else.
“I have learnt a lot on and off the field.”
When asked why he got such little playing time with the NRL squad, he admitted head coach Wayne Bennett had a lot to do with it.
“There were little things,” Dodd said.
‘I came to the club before he was here, so I wonder if that had an impact.
“He might just think I wasn’t the halfback he wanted for his side; sometimes a coach doesn’t think you’re good enough.”
Despite Bennett’s lack of faith in the young half, Dodd has admitted he hasn’t taken the criticism to heart.
“I can’t just think that because one person thinks you’re not good enough for his side, that means that 16 other coaches don’t think you’re good enough,” he said.
While Dodd said he “hasn’t lost any respect” for Bennett and will not speak badly about him, he does feel somewhat hard done by.
“Am I annoyed that I felt like I didn’t get a fair chance? Yes, of course,” he said.
“But I understand not every coach is going to like you as a player or think you fit their team as a player.
“I have no hard feelings towards Wayne.”
Dodd, who will return to the Super League in 2026, believes starting less than one full-length match as a halfback with the Rabbitohs was not enough to decide his NRL future, and feels it’s unfair that it has transpired that way.
“That’s the only thing that I’ve got in my mind,” he said of his lack of game time.
“If I had come over and I got what I feel like was a fair chance and a fair go and I wasn’t up to it and I wasn’t good enough, then I could live with that.
“But because I don’t feel like I have, there is a burning desire to prove and test myself.”
While the last 12 months didn’t go as planned, he admitted he would return to the Rabbitohs if given the chance.
“If the deal came up again and it was exactly the same, I would do it, and that [speaks] volumes of the people at the club,” Dodd said of the Rabbitohs.
He will join the Catalans Dragons in 2026.
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