Six rounds into the NRL season an we’re honestly no closer to knowing exactly who the good teams are. No team is undefeated and the two teams at the top, the Broncos and Storm, have both been unconvincing at times.
Meanwhile, schadenfreude is at an all-time high around the league at the sight of the woebegone Sea Eagles propping up the table for the first time in a long time.
Team of the round: the Cowboys
The Cowboys’ remarkable turnaround continues. After many pundits (including me) pronounced them dead on arrival after a three-loss start to the season, they have been moved to a better hospital and had their condition upgraded to alive.
After pipping the Storm in golden point in Round 4, North Queensland followed up with impressive wins over the Panthers and Rabbitohs.
While the Panthers (Jamie Soward) and Rabbitohs (Adam Reynolds) were both without their chief playmakers, you can only beat the team in front of you and the Cowboys took full toll over the last two rounds.
With three of their next four games in Townsville the club will have had a home-game-heavy start to the season, so it is critical they continue to bank wins before Origin inevitably starts to bite their playing roster.
Player of the round: Jesse Bromwich
Dragons iron man and fried chicken aficionado Peter Mata’utia deserves some consideration here but I like to recognise the efforts of the big men in the middle as well as the showboats on the outside, so we’ll go with Bromwich.
In a grinding, rain affected affair in Canberra Bromwich had 13 carries for 146 metres and five tackle breaks in the second half alone. It was a performance that ensured the Raiders played off the back foot all half and allowed the Storm to overcome an eight-point half-time deficit.
Even when Bromwich didn’t break tackles he carried men forwards and drew in additional tacklers, crucial second efforts to give Cooper Cronk and the impressive Blake Green space in which to work
Only Paul Vaughan came close to matching Bromwich’s performance during the game, and across the entire round only a handful of props surpassed Bromwich’s second-half effort over the course of an entire game, let alone a single half.
Interesting personnel move of the week: Cronulla’s rotating fullbacks
When the teams were announced last Tuesday there was much speculation about how Sharks coach Shane Flanagan would utilise Ben Barba off the bench. Barba, the toast of the NRL as a fullback at the Bulldogs in 2012, has struggled at both the Broncos and the Sharks when forced into the five-eighth role.
Moreover Jack Bird, he of the high expectations, came into the team in Round 5 against the Roosters and made an immediate, match-winning impression. Making things even more complicated was the performance of Valentine Holmes in the game against the Roosters after he was switched to fullback in place of Michael Gordon.
In the end Flanagan’s solution was even more surprising than simply shifting Bird into the forwards or playing Barba as a true loose player. Despite his strong performance at the back in Round 5, Holmes was sent back to the wing with Gordon playing the first half at fullback. Remarkably Gordon was then substituted out of the game, with Barba taking his post at fullback.
In the modern NRL healthy outside backs are never substituted out of the game. Never. Yet there was Gordon, sitting perfectly healthy on the sideline for the whole second half.
This was a profoundly different approach to the game but one that may become more familiar as the interchange and replacement rules change over the next few years.
More importantly in the short term it demonstrated a creative streak that many Sharks fans were desperate to see from their coaching staff.
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