South Sydney are eyeing a key three-week block as they attempt to turn their season around and make a run at the NRL finals.
After three wins from their first nine games, the Rabbitohs hopes of avoiding spending a second-straight finals series as onlookers are quickly evaporating.
They have the Wests Tigers on Friday night, before crunch matches against Melbourne and Parramatta before their bye.
And they know going into the round-13 break with anything less than a 5-7 record could virtually spell curtains for their year.
"We'd love to win all of them," hooker Damien Cook said.
"But we need to win at least two of them to be back on track going into the bye.
"Because once you get past that halfway mark you can't drift too far from the top eight."
The break for the representative round couldn't have come at a better time for the Rabbitohs.
They had eight players away on national and regional duties, and they insist Redfern now has a more relaxed vibe than it did following their 46-8 flogging at the hands of Manly a fortnight ago.
"It was an embarrassing performance," Cook said.
"We all knew that. We weren't happy with any parts of the game.
"But sometimes the week away from football in club land can be good - hopefully everyone has come back refreshed and ready to go."
The Rabbitohs revival will need to begin at ANZ Stadium against the Tigers.
They have not beaten them on any of the past four outings prompting Cook to name them as a "bogey side" for Souths.
Notably, the Tigers appear to have Souths' number in attacking, having tallied at least 30 points in each of those matches.
They are also ranked second in the league for offloads with more than 12 per match, a worrying trend for the Rabbitohs considering their most recent defensive according to five-eighth Cody Walker.
"We didn't want to get our bodies in front and eradicate the offloads that were happening (against Manly)," Walker said.
"So we'll have to do that this week against the Tigers who love an offload as well."
"They're pretty dangerous. They had a lot of offloads against us last time and it got them on the front foot a lot."
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