Michael Maguire was happy with his South Sydney side's ability to win ugly after they edged past a gutsy Wests Tigers side on Sunday.
A Dylan Walker try five minutes from time iced the result against an enthusiastic Tigers side who were in the contest for most of the match but lacked the polish to take full advantage of a dominant opening half-hour of the contest.
Some outstanding Souths defence kept the Tigers to just one try, scored by Robbie Farah, with Dylan Walker, playing with a suspected broken hand, bagging a brace and Greg Inglis and Alex Johnston also crossing for four-pointers.
"We knew defensively we'd have to be up for today," Maguire said.
"I was proud of the players and how they got through those momentum changes and came up with some special plays throughout the 80 minutes and we were able to hang solid.
"I thought Greg, as he does, showed some great character there to tackle James Tedesco twice and managed to get it out of the in-goal and go down the other end and create something special.
"The boys stood up for each other and showed the character required today."
Walker will have scans to determine the severity of his injury on Monday but Maguire said he never had any temptation to take him off.
"I'd like to say he's no doubt but we have to wait and see what the scans show," he said.
"He has got a sore hand so we'll wait and see how that comes up.
"He definitely was going to get back out there. He's learnt that and he's grown in himself to be able to do that sort of thing for the team which is a great sign for the kid."
Taylor was upbeat about his side's performance despite tasting defeat for the fist time against the club that sacked him in 2009.
"We just didn't take advantage of the opportunities that we had, we made too many errors," Taylor said.
"But I'm not about to sit here and go on about that. Most coaches talk about it, everyone understands, you're going to make it tough for yourself and we did.
"We made it harder than we needed to be. But we followed up some disappointing attack with some real effort and grit, I thought, in the way we defended."
Skipper Farah said the performance showed plenty of indication that a genuine finals push is not beyond the joint-venture after a lean few years.
"Effort was good, but our execution was poor," Farah said.
"But you can take a lot out of it. There's nothing out there that we can't fix.
"We went with them for a while there, but the good sides play for 80 and there were just patches there where we let ourselves down."
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