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I can’t believe Penrith are rank outsiders to win the premiership from here. After next weekend I reckon they’ll be one of the only two teams left that are still alive in the competition.
The bookmakers have obviously decided that Friday night’s game between South Sydney and Sydney Roosters is the real grand final.
Even though only one of those two teams can make it through to the decider, they are the clear first two picks in premiership betting, with the Rabbitohs the title favourites.
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Canterbury, who will play Penrith on Saturday night, are third favourites and then there is a gap to the Panthers on the bottom rung.
The Bulldogs are warm-ish favourites to beat the Panthers, while the Rabbitohs are only slight favourites over the Roosters.
The bookies clearly believe that, while they can’t be sure who will win between Souths and the Roosters, whichever team does win will beat the winners of the other game. I’m not even remotely as sure of that.
One thing results in the first two weeks of the finals series have told me is that you can’t take anything for granted.
North Queensland came from 30-0 down to level it up at 30-30 with the Roosters – and still with 24 minutes to go.
Canterbury lead Manly 16-0 – and it should have been 30-0, such was the first-half dominance of the Bulldogs – only for the Sea Eagles to force extra time at 17-17.
Both the Roosters and Bulldogs ended up winning by a point.
The only thing I’m certain of after that is that the Cowboys and Sea Eagles are gone. There is plenty of room for debate on what is going to happen from here.
I’ll give the Roosters one thing. When they absolutely, positively had to steady, at 30-30, they did. It couldn’t have been easy – their minds must have gone blank there for a while, in shock at what had happened.
There were some dodgy decisions that affected both sides, although I don’t include what happened at the end of the game on that list. The ball went slightly forward off Robert Lui of the Cowboys.
But you can’t escape the fact the Roosters gave up a massive lead with still a heap of time left on the clock.
You also cannot escape the fact Canterbury should have put Manly out of their misery well before the Sea Eagles came back into the game.
The Sea Eagles entered the match decimated in the forwards. The Bulldogs pack was full of big boppers who had monstered Melbourne a week earlier. But while it was all one-way traffic early, Canterbury ended up having to survive a massive scare.
The NRL has got what it wanted from the salary cap – parity among the clubs. The gap in competition points between the first-placed and eighth-placed teams after 26 rounds was just eight points. Both last year and in 2012 the difference was 12 points.
I like parity. It gives more teams a chance to do something and increases the pressure on the players, coaches and officials at each club to get the best out of what they’ve got. But it creates a problem for the finals series under the system being used.
The teams that manage to finish first and second after 26 rounds deserve a significant advantage, but in a more even competition that advantage – in its current form – is lessened.
When you get a situation like the one we had this season, when the first four teams were all from Sydney, that advantage is further diminished.
It would be fairest if the top two teams could be given the first week of the finals off. Then they’ve had their advantage. The most games they would have to play in the finals would be three, as opposed to potentially four if they lost in the first week under the current system.
But, unfortunately, that doesn’t work within an eight-team finals format.
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