Reliable rugby league forecasts from a solitary round of evidence

Recent reports confirm that a fraction of a single round’s footy is more than enough for irrefutable long-term forecasts and sweeping generalisations for the season ahead.

Personally, I’m usually a pragmatist that prefers to reserve talks of crisis until the season’s first plea bargain, but unfortunately such days of careful deliberation have been long flushed.

So in an attempt to keep pace with the Joneses, I’ve decided that I am now perfectly enlightened on everything that will eventuate in 2015, after exhaustively examining seven-eighths of a week’s play.

As per always, there were a couple of humdrum customers that didn’t warrant sensationalising. As for the other legends who birthed ammo, here is what the season ahead holds.

The losers
Manly. It’s official: the golden era is dead, buried and cremated, and 2015 will make the Northern Eagles years seem like a Dragons eleven-peat.

Classy playmakers are deserting the place in droves and the forward pack is still being manipulated like a balloon animal, rendering their spesh backline a white elephant.

While the place just probably needs a thorough de-frag, the board will overreach and subsequently implode by Round 5 at the latest. At this point, the newly-elected state government will order the bulldozing of Brookvale Oval and the Leagues Club before smothering the nightmarish soil with an over 50s leisure centre for Geoff Toovey to wallow in after he’s sacked next weekend.

There’s a silver lining though – well, at least for other parts of New South Wales. Jamie Lyon will come out of representative retirement just to get away from the place, and then by Round 20, the club will have been relocated to the Central Coast and rebadged as ‘North Sydney’s Amends’.

Brisbane. After their pre-season of promise, their much-vaunted recruitment drive will be considered more criminal than the purchase decisions made on a Titans’ Saturday night. Have a geeze at the passenger terminal!

Anthony Milford, Darius Boyd, that bloke from the Tigers etc. It’s nothing more than a fateful spree of greed that will trigger the club’s ultimate demise.

Like a helpless old man being paddled around the scone, in the middle is Wayne Bennett, a man unfairly cruelled by his own decisions. With the game having certifiably passed him by, he will be replaced by Anthony Griffin before Origin, then find himself in a humiliating gratis advisory role for Mal Meninga by game two, then drinking vitamin shakes with Toovey in Dee Why by the spring.

Then the club will fold by season’s end and merged with the Brisbane Roar after shattering the Magpies record of shame from 1999.

Bulldogs: Despite rallying late inside a Qatari football arena, they’re overrated. Upping your Morris by 100 per cent doesn’t guarantee a year of Friday nights, and worse still, the bubble has burst for Josh Reynolds.

It has become patently obvious that he is not comfortable as a five-eighth, as he is more a roughhouse hooker. That should be playing in reserve grade. Inside an octagon.

The winners
Parramatta: In recent years, they’ve trademarked the pattern of an encouraging Round 1 win followed by horse pucky. But dust off your Monaro, because if I’m fair dinkum about pleasing as many people as possible, then this team will qualify as one of four grand finalists this year.

Making their outstanding campaign as runner-up anew even more significant, it will be achieved with Anthony Watmough leading from the front despite a botched boob job.

Souths: The further deprivation of John Sutton’s responsibility will be hailed as another tactical trump from Michael Maguire, up alongside the 2014 masterstrokes like the unearthing of Luke Keary and the masking of various criminal accounts. It’s trans-footy thinking that will ensure Souths do not lose a single game for the entire home-and-away season.

However, with Russell Crowe’s second instalment of his schmaltzy South Side Story franchise to be filmed – the sequel telling the story of ‘satisfaction from Nana Glen to Arizona’- and due to begin production in October, the entire playing squad will be sequestered in makeup on grand final day. Minor premiers though, so the prize money should cover the eyeliner.

Penrith: It’s been seven weeks since Mark Geyer ‘felt something special at the foot of the mountains’, and if my waters are perculating in the correct circular motion, then I reckon he’s probably drunk again. Nevertheless, I am supremely confident that Penrith will be the side that has the most piss taken from the name of its home ground this year, while also definitely making the top ten.

Knights: Saturday afternoon’s committed win against the Warriors – a side incontrovertibly computed for Round 1 failure – sadly confirmed what we’ve known all along. For too long, this place has been shackled by evil hangers-on like Nathan Tinkler, Wayne Bennett and Kurt Gidley.

But never fear, 2015 will be the year of healing. The club will emerge from the Bennett apocalypse in a blaze of Willie Mason-less bravado, turning their home ground back in to the antiquated graveyard from yore and catapulting them in to the top two, thus pocketing the required pittance to barely avoid the ignominy of involuntary administration.

And as for the Brothers Mata..Matu.. whatever.. They’ll be staying now too, so don’t bother calling, Dessie, unless you’ve got a Johns brother to offer.

Who knows?
Melbourne and St George Illawarra: At the time of printing, the Storm were set for another percentage-based year where they’ll track as an early premiership frontrunner before cratering for eighth after impoverished times around Origin.

On the other hand, the Dragons are a young and developing squad which will be given every chance to thrive under the new direction of Paul McGregor, provided that thriving starts before April.

Roarers. What did you see in Round 1 that will shape a season? Who’s gonzo? Who’s the premier? Who’s in crisis?