A potential modern day rugby league fairytale descended into a nightmare for South Sydney and their brilliant young halfback Adam Reynolds after his standout rookie campaign was cruelly terminated by injury in Saturday's NRL preliminary final loss to the Bulldogs.

You could hear the collective groan of Rabbitohs supporters across Australia when their young champion pulled up in the 27th minute with a hamstring injury.

In that fateful moment, the prospects of Souths ending their 41-year premiership drought took a mortal hit.

For a while, next week's grand final looked like it might be a classic clash between old league royalty in Souths and arguably the modern day monarch in Melbourne, notwithstanding salary cap infractions.

Hooker Issac Luke was making plenty of metres out of dummy half and crossed for a try, while prolific goalkicker Reynolds added two goals and had the Bulldogs going backwards with some skilful kicks in general play.

Reynolds' value to Souths was underlined just a couple of seconds before the cruel injury when a pinpoint kick pinned the Bulldogs back in their in-goal area.

An authentic local junior for a club whose fans revere their homegrown talent, 22-year-old Reynolds quickly became the darling of the Rabbitohs fans and made them forget - and perhaps even belatedly celebrate - Chris Sandow's defection to Parramatta.

He played every game, finishing the year as the competition's second highest pointscorer with 208.

Souths held on to their 8-4 lead for almost 10 minutes after Reynolds left the field, but the seeming inevitability of a momentum shift came to fruition in the last four minutes of the half.

A 12-point Bulldogs scoring burst took the sting out of Souths and the contest.

Four more Bulldogs tries in the second half added insult to the Reynolds injury and the pain of success-starved South Sydney supporters, many of who weren't even born the last time they won the premiership in 1971.

AA