Meagre Origin minutes for Murray a bonus: South Sydney

The Rabbitohs are hosting North Queensland at Accor Stadium on Sunday afternoon and will have their skipper fully fit after NSW coach Brad Fittler only opted to play him for 30 minutes in the heavy defeat on Wednesday.

Demetriou questioned the bizarre tactic but said it benefited his team to have Murray running on all cylinders against the Cowboys, who have claimed the scalps of premiers Penrith and heavyweights Melbourne in their past two games.

"It's done us a favour, bringing Cam on with 30 minutes to go," the Souths coach said on Saturday.

"I'm not too sure how a player of his level sits on the bench for 50 minutes but that's up to the coaches and it's never easy.

"We should be thanking Freddy as it's helped us getting him prepped for this week."

Fittler also opted to replace centre Tom Trbojevic, injured in the opening exchanges, with Souths hooker Damien Cook - who had never played at the top level in the position - rather than use Murray.

"Cookie, it's not what I would do but I sort of understand it ... Cam's (Murray) played there plenty of times before for us and done the job.

"He's not as fast as Cookie so I understand why they were thinking that."

Mitchell has missed the opening two Origin games with a calf injury and Demetriou ruled the fullback out of the third game in Sydney on July 13

"He won't be available for game three - his calf is not responding - won't play until after the bye (in round 21)," Demetriou said.

"It's taken longer than we thought ... with the calf, sometimes they scan better than they are.

"We're not in the position to rush it at all - we need to make sure we get Latrell fit and firing for after that bye week and take the pressure off him in terms of trying to get on the field here and for Origin, and just focus on his rehab.

"The decision has been made now that his calf is not responding so we need to take a long-term view."

Souths have lost three out of their past four matches to drop to fifth on the ladder and Demetriou said his team needed to tighten up their defence.

Helping their cause is the absence of Cowboys enforcer Jason Taumalolo, who has dropped out with a minor hamstring injury, with Jake Granville going to lock.

"We've got a job to do in our defensive process and we've been missing that a little bit over the last month," he said.

"We're not happy with how we've been playing but we don't want to forget the quality of footy we played in the month previous and it's about getting back to that now."

Australian Associated Press