Brisbane have put their traditional State of Origin-period wobbles behind them and surged up the NRL table, downing South Sydney 50-22 at Suncorp Stadium for their fifth straight victory.

Minus their Origin stars, the rejuvenated Broncos brought a depleted Rabbitohs side back to earth with a nine-tries-to-four win on Sunday, cementing their place in the top eight.

Brisbane's record is now 7-6 after they had started the season 1-4 and their traditionally tough run through the three-match Origin period now seems like a memory.

Coach Ivan Henjak has no problems with the rep season still having more than three weeks to run with his "Baby Broncos" not losing a match yet without skipper Darren Lockyer, Sam Thaiday and Israel Folau.

"To be quite honest that was not an issue for us and it's not going to be an issue for us, it wasn't even discussed," Henjak said.

"We've got enough good players here and we've done too much work for us not to think that we can go out and compete every week."

Henjak said his talented younger brigade were starting to find their feet at NRL level.

"We were always confident that they would come up to speed, they just needed some time," he said.

"Sometimes you are not afforded that, some people want results straight away, and when they fail or make a mistake you are getting hammered - that wasn't doing them any good, but we were always confident that they could handle it."

Souths were without 10 players themselves due to injury, suspension and representative duty but the loss meant they slipped from third to fifth in a tough examination in Brisbane.

The injury-hit Warriors are two points out of the top eight after a valuable 32-24 away win over hapless Newcastle.

Coach Ivan Cleary's side is hanging in there and should have halfback Brett Seymour, prop Sam Rapira, forward Jacob Lillyman and centre Brent Tate back in the fortnight after next week's bye.

"A lot of guys are learning how to play week in week out with the travel," Cleary said.

"What we'll get out of that is probably guys fast-tracked a bit.

"To get some senior players back will obviously help."

The Knights are stuck in the cellar with North Queensland, who ground out a 16-8 win over Canberra on Saturday night, and Canterbury - all three above only points-less Melbourne.

"The same old same old for us, close enough but not quite there," Knights coach Rick Stone said.

"A bit of discipline, a little bit of execution, a little bit of desire, there's 10 or 15 per cent in all of those ingredients we definitely need."

Gold Coast are back up to fourth following Friday night's drought-breaking 28-14 win over Manly, who are now back in sixth place.

The Sydney Roosters can keep pressure on the top eight with a win over the Storm at AAMI Park on Monday night.

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