Melbourne edged Souths 29-28 in a tense classic on Friday night to book their place in the grand final eliminator.

The Rabbitohs will now face the winner of Brisbane against St George Illawarra next weekend to stay alive in the finals.

Inglis bemoaned his side’s inability to finish the Storm off when they got ahead.

"We had them on the ropes a couple of times and then we’d give a penalty away,” he said after the game. "The next thing you know they’re attacking our line.

"You can’t do that to a high quality side like Melbourne Storm. They make you pay. We didn’t handle the key moments well.

"Melbourne did and that’s why they’ve got a week off next week and we don’t. It’s do or die for us. It comes down to the 80 minutes next week.”

Souths coach Anthony Seibold praised his players but rued the clinical, relentless nature of the home team.

"We were really good in patches, but the Storm showed us in the key moments how to play semi-finals footy,” he said.

"They punished us with every error and penalty that they we gave… but we’ll learn from it. I’m very disappointed obviously. We were very, very good in certain areas of our game.”

Seibold said the Bunnies won’t be changing their game-plan for their next finals fixture.

"We know what we need to do,” he said. "We build pressure with efforts, that’s our game-model and its served us well all year.”