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All 16 teams have now played one game for the season, and 80 minutes of football for each club is more than enough game time to make sweeping statements about the entire 2015 NRL season.
The ‘hyperbole alert’ was set off a number of times on the weekend, as a number of individuals overreacted to Round 1 of the NRL, so let’s analyse five of the bigger overdramatised melodramas:
1. The game has passed Wayne Bennett
There is saying that’s popular in American sports: ‘Father Time is undefeated’.
It relates to the fact that no athlete has ever been able to fight off their body eventually getting old, ensuring they can’t do things they used to. Some great athletes prolong their careers more than others, but in the end, age catches up with everyone.
Can the same be true about a coach’s mind? Can they simply struggle to keep up with the game as they get older, and it can pass them by? Specifically, is Wayne Bennett a dinosaur and the modern NRL is making him look out-dated?
I heard such comments and questions after the Rabbitohs belted the Broncos in almost every facet of the game on Thursday night.
Brisbane have a new and unsettled squad, a few injury concerns, were playing the defending premiers, and it was just the first game of the season. That all may have something to do with the result, don’t you think?
No? Easier to blame the most successful coach in NRL history? OK, then.
2. The Roosters will win the comp
Heading up to Townsville to take on the Cowboys and Johnathan Thurston for your opening game of the season should have been a daunting task for the Roosters.
Instead, led by a superb performance in the first half by Mitchell Pearce, the Roosters gave North Queensland a bit of a touch-up.
The Chooks seemed a little bit off the pace all of last year. Though they had a good season, and were still one of the teams to beat, something just didn’t seem right.
Perhaps it was a premiership hangover, with hunger and desire dropping just enough that it affected their focus. Or perhaps that’s all a load of crap, and they simply didn’t win the competition last year.
Either way, they looked pretty determined and motivated on Saturday night, and in many people’s opinions, they installed themselves as the early premiership favourites – along with the Bunnies – after one round.
And we all know – ahem – how much weight that carries in the grand scheme of things.
3. Manly will now fall apart
The first half of Friday night’s Parramatta versus Manly game was very enjoyable. Though there was a little bit of the rust that you would expect this early in the season, both teams came out with plenty of fire, and some quality football was played.
In the second half, only one team showed up, as the Eels – led by new recruit and Manly life-member Anthony Watmough – put the Sea Eagles to the sword, running out 42-12 victors.
Not long after, it was announced that Manly halfback Daly Cherry-Evans would be leaving the club at the end of the season to take up a lucrative offer from the Gold Coast Titans.
Not long after that, came the talk that fellow half Kieran Foran may be off to Parramatta on an equally rewarding contract.
And not long after that came the narrative that the Sea Eagles would fall apart and 2015 would be a write-off for Manly, due to the psychological impact of DCE, and possibly Foran, leaving the club.
Considering Manly somewhat mortgaged their future on Cherry-Evans and now he’s leaving, I can understand the angle that Manly may struggle this year. However, these guys are professional footballers, and Geoff Toovey is a good coach.
Let’s not declare the Sea Eagles’ 2015 campaign dead and buried just yet.
4. Josh Reynolds was a flash-in-the-pan in 2014
The Bulldogs five-eighth struggled a little after the Origin period last year, after a hot start to 2014 saw him earn the number 6 jersey for NSW.
Since then, he’s been labelled many things, but ‘overrated’ has started to pop up frequently.
His first NRL game of the 2015 will do little to silence his detractors.
Reynolds wasn’t great on Sunday afternoon against the Penrith Panthers. He made a number of mental errors, and it certainly wasn’t his greatest game with the ball in hand either.
This has ensured that a number of footy followers have begun the ‘overrated’ talk again, and there is even suggestions that Reynolds simply isn’t a very good footballer.
I guess his Origin selection, a series win for NSW, and grand final berth were all just luck, and he played no part in those successes?
5. The Titans are in for a long and painful season
I had to add my own overreaction, or it just wouldn’t be fair. Yet sometimes overreactions aren’t really overreactions at all, and mine pertains to the Gold Coast Titans.
Last season I wrote after Round 1 that it just didn’t seem like it was going to be the Newcastle Knights’ year. Considering all that the club went through in 2014, that actually ended up being an understatement, and far from an overreaction.
This season, despite the Daly Cherry-Evans announcement, I get the feeling the Titans might be in for a very long year.
It started with the cocaine scandal in pre-season. It continued with the news the club can’t pay its bills, which resulted in the franchise now being managed by the NRL. Then on the field, they suffered a heart-breaking, one-point loss to the Wests Tigers.
Gold Coast, it could be a tough season in 2015.
Overreaction? We’ll see.