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Melbourne, Canberra, North Queensland and Brisbane can win the comp and Canterbury and Gold Coast can’t. So where does that leave Cronulla and Penrith?
They’re the two wild cards. It’s hard to predict where they stand going into the finals – and for very different reasons.
It wasn’t so long ago that the Sharks were on a sensational winning streak that stretched to 15 games, but they now enter the playoffs with the worst form of any of the top eight teams over the last five rounds.
Cronulla have lost four of their last five and have gone from playing for the minor premiership against the Storm on Saturday night to missing the all-important top two. They are now forced to travel to Canberra for a date with the Raiders, who have seemingly forgotten how to lose.
Could the Sharks be headed out the back door by halfway through the finals series, or will they stage a dramatic recovery that sees them still leapfrog the second week of the finals by beating Canberra and going straight to a grand final qualifier?
Right now, the likelihood is that in week two they will have to play for their survival, but based on their best form this season you’ve got to say they are at least still a chance of pulling it together again quicker than that.
Penrith, with some of the best young players in the competition, are often described as a team of the future. The question is: can that future arrive in the next few weeks?
This will be the first finals experience for each of their halves, Bryce Cartwright and Nathan Cleary. Cleary only made his first-grade debut this year and Cartwright, who made his debut in 2014, was out injured by the time the Panthers made the finals that year.
But, like Cartwright and Cleary, Benji Marshall and Robbie Farah were young players in key positions who were experiencing finals footy for the first time when Wests Tigers won the comp in 2005.
It’s a watching brief with the Sharks and Panthers in the first week of the finals. Now that we’ve switched to finals mode, we’ll know much more about what they’re capable of after we’ve seen them in action.
The Bulldogs and Titans don’t warrant much discussion when it comes to trying to work out who will win the premiership.
The competition table was lying when the Bulldogs were still in the top four with two rounds to go. (Click to Tweet)Now the truth has been told and they will enter the finals in seventh place, coming off the back of three straight losses.
Their style of play has no hope of getting them four straight wins against top-rate finals opponents.
The Titans lost their last two games, but still picked up the last available place in the finals because no other team was good enough to take the chance to go past them. Well done for getting there, but they are just making up the numbers.
Melbourne have had an interesting last four weeks, losing to Canberra, beating Manly, losing to Brisbane and beating Cronulla.
They’re in the top two, they’re extremely well-prepared by a great coach in Craig Bellamy and driven by two superstar players in Cooper Cronk and Cameron Smith, but the Raiders and Broncos each found legitimate ways of beating them. There was no fluke about it.
The Storm were impressive in beating the Sharks and can obviously still win the comp, but their aura is not quite as strong as it was five or six weeks ago.
Canberra have simply kept on winning. When a place in the top four opened up, they grabbed it, and when an unlikely top-two spot went on offer they were unflinching in taking that as well.
Now they’ve got a home game against an uncertain Cronulla and a win would mean that in week three of the finals they compete for a place in the grand final. Of course they can win the comp.
The Cowboys are a huge threat. A couple of times this season they looked like had just a bit of a premiership hangover, but it wasn’t there for long. In the last three rounds, they knuckled down with three straight wins to make sure of a top-four spot.
Last season, the Cowboys went to Melbourne at the preliminary final stage and beat the Storm. There is no reason they can’t beat them in Melbourne again, this time in the first week of the finals.
Brisbane’s best form this season is at least as good as any other team and better than most, but they paid a big price for a form slump because it made it very difficult for them to finish in the top four.
They recovered to win their last five games and although it wasn’t quite enough to get them back in the top four it has restored their rating as genuine contenders.
I’m going for the Broncos, Raiders, Cowboys and Panthers to win this week’s games and the Cowboys to win the comp.
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