South Sydney have escaped with a slap on the wrist for Jason Taylor's illegal sideline address but NRL chief executive David Gallop warned the struggling coach it must never happen again.

Souths were warned by the NRL after unprecedented scenes in Monday night's 12-10 loss to the Sharks when Taylor called almost his entire team over the sideline for a mid-game pep talk.

Gallop said Souths would not be fined unless the incident occurred again and said the Rabbitohs would not have been docked premiership points if they had won the match.

"It's not a situation where the two points were at risk, but certainly we've given Souths a warning today that it's not permissible within the rules," Gallop said.

"We don't expect to see it again. It's potentially a fine if it were to happen again."

"It's an unusual situation, but it's not like a 14th player being on the field creating an unfair advantage - that's the type of situation where points are in jeopardy."

Sharks coach Ricky Stuart said on Monday night Souths would have been stripped of the two points for breaching the rules, but said on Tuesday his club would not have lodged an official complaint to the NRL had the Rabbitohs won.

Gallop said he understood how it could have happened.

"Look, they (Souths) are under a lot of pressure having not won a game, it was a close moment in that game and I guess JT wanted to get his message home and he did it in an unusual way," Gallop said.

"Being 0 and 5 is not a nice situation to be in and I think most rugby league fans are probably feeling sorry for them."

The winless Rabbitohs remain anchored to the bottom of the NRL table but captain Roy Asotasi said they were remaining positive.

He said Monday night's mid-game huddle even illustrated the unity and spirit within the squad despite a run of poor results.

"The thing is we are very tight and we're very positive all the time," Asotasi said.

"A lot of people say, `Souths, how can they be positive?' when times are down.

"But we don't shoot anyone down just because we lost five games in a row.

"The main thing is that we've got to stay positive and the moment you start pointing fingers, that's when things start to go wrong.

"It's round five, it's still a very long season and things can still turn around for us."

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