The ten-round NRL review: Why your team won't win a thing

What gives, rugby league? Ten rounds of footydata is supposed to give us a settled snapshot of affairs, not a competition table with enough bottlenecks to give Sydney’s inner-west a run for its money.

Season 2015 has delivered us an egalitarian nightmare that is hell-bent on denying the right to brag and gamble with any confidence, and with Origin on our doorstep, Round 13 and the season’s first sacked coach to come, it’s set to get even more ridgey-didge ridonkulous.

Never fear though, as poor man’s prognostication will see you right.

With 10 rounds of evidence behind me, I’m able to tell you how your club has fared and where they are headed through the heavy duty rapids that await them. Warning: she’s ugly.

Dragons
The stale stench of failure at St George Illawarra has been overcome by the Febreze coaching of Paul McGregor. But does he possess the odour-eliminating molecules required to completely neutralise their bedded-in pong once and for all, or will it resurface again to create a mutant funk of fresh laundry and failure?

One thing’s for sure; their fairytale start is showing stacks of parallels to the goings-on of the Tigers 2005 premiership year. Based on this, they’ll ramp-up hope before limply exiting in the finals, leaving us to place all blame on Nathan Brown and Trent Barrett.

Prediction: A home final berth followed by a week of debate on venue policy.

Bulldogs
With four wins from ten games and no tweak of strategy, I’m sensing that Des Hasler has run out of ideas.

Shipping out tonnes of beef and a militant as your five-eighth every week makes it gravely apparent; the coach has given up the ghost and decided that if you can’t beat them, just arrange to have them beaten.

Prediction: May sneak in to the eight with good behaviour.

Roosters
They’ve won 50 per cent of their games and are coached by a man who sits on a committee that shapes the laws of the game. Instead of waiting for his team to click back in to playing like 2013’s gazillionaires, why isn’t Trent Robinson abusing his rule-changing power by amending the law to allow the Roosters to field 22 players at all times? ‘Game’s sharpest mind’ my hat.

Until this occurs, they’ll remain upscale also-rans.

Prediction: First week finals fodder.

Rabbitohs
Everyone shut up, especially Souths fans. I don’t care that Adam Reynolds is returning at some point and that the Burgess brothers can’t play like ballerinas forever, because Michael Maguire has made it abundantly clear that he is filthy on Issac Luke for his decision to part ways at season’s end. There’s no way he’s letting him leave with a premiership.

Prediction: A probable prelim, but no helicopters on the six o’clock news this year.

Cowboys
Not to mount unfair pressure, but with their ability to score like Vladimir Putin in a crooked Russian ice hockey match, this club should relinquish their licence if they don’t go deep this year. When their maestro Johnathan Thurston has them on-song, they are a fluid attacking force with enough artillery to smash records without getting out of second gear.

In saying this, people said the same thing about the 2001 Parramatta Eels.

Prediction: Can go ‘all the way’ if ‘all the way’ finishes in Queensland.

Tigers
Full credit, they’ve shown some exciting spurts of life. But as the season stretches on, it’s becoming clear that this young side is a good 18 months from seeing some darker shoots in its peach fuzz. Until that happens, they simply can’t be relied upon to complete basic daily tasks.

For example, take last weekend: they were slothing around, reading Zoo magazine, wallowing in the stench of Lynx Africa, and Bam! – they lose a scrum against the feed.

Prediction: Nothing is achieved in a year of self-discovery other than blisters.

Panthers
Ronnie Palmer is magical. From defying gravity with his retaining wall of hair to the surgical removal of those size-00 pants from his backside every day, he is a master whose teams I refuse to write off… except for this one.

I don’t know what he puts in his shakes, but his state-of-the-art conditioning program at Penrith is plain voodoo. It must be running the Valium gland in Ivan Cleary’s head close to dry by now. Title challengers? Let’s just concentrate on producing a bench.

Prediction: No finals, but still ahead of schedule on Gus Gould’s supposedly non-existent five year plan.

Eels
This season has been business as usual for Parramatta as their players swap fluid, crash other people’s cars and refuse to complete a set, and it’s about to get a whole lot worse. Unluckily, they face a tough draw that sees them scheduled to play NRL teams for the rest of the year.

Prediction: Will retain their NRL licence.

Cronulla
Credit where credit is due, after their announcement that the ongoing and unresolved Michael Gordon saga is a thing of the past the Sharks are now approaching 16 hours without a workplace incident.

With this watershed moment, they are now finally ready to cause problems for someone other than themselves, at least until Paul Gallen’s contract talks stall and Shane Flanagan offers him up to Parramatta in exchange for camel.

Prediction: No chance, but nothing like the compost of years past. This alone deserves celebrating.

Manly
Due to their brittle pack, disloyal halves, a chalky backline and a peaceful administration, the sheet was pulled up over the Sea Eagles campaign a few weeks back. There’s been a few signs of arousal from underneath since, but it’s turned out to be the corpse bloating before the first stages of rigor mortis set in.

Prediction: Could still make the finals. Won’t.

Titans
Despite having Buckley’s chance of winning anything this season, 2015 has been a raging success for the NRL’s Jordan Belfort.

Recently coke-riddled and financially reckless, they are now 74 days sober and back to throwing around millions despite being barely solvent in the summer. While there won’t be any celebratory midget-throwing this year, watch for those famous super-imposed crowds to flock back to C-Bus Stadium in their tens of hundreds in 2016.

Prediction: No September, but easily the third-best team in Queensland.

Newcastle
The Knights have started wildly, going WWWW to LMFAO in the space of a couple of months. I can’t see replacement messiah Rick Stone pulling this one out of the fire, especially considering the recent loss of playmaking talent to injury and eBay.

Prediction: Could win the spoon, but it wouldn’t be disastrous. At least they can pay their wages.

Warriors
“This could be the Warriors year!” – Every footy fan, every year since 1995.

Sure, the Warriors are lurking and primed to bank breezy credits in the false economy of the Origin period, but I wouldn’t trust this team to go all the way even if they were leading in the grand final 40-0 with 10 to go against witches hats.

Prediction: Will be falsely advertised as Melbourne’s bogey team some time before the end of the year.

Raiders
They’re already the feel-good premiers of 2015, but Ricky Stuart won’t be resting on his laurels. He’s hell bent on producing a finish to this NRL season so twisted and unforeseeable that M. Night Shyamalan couldn’t have written it.

Make no mistake, they aren’t here to make up the numbers. This team is dead serious about capturing the game’s biggest prize, and they’ll stop at nothing until they get what they came for: a Friday night game on free-to-air.

Prediction: This year, the kangaroo cull won’t be the ACT’s biggest topic of conversation. Finals.

Broncos
Good times are back in Brisbane. With a focus on galvanising defence and occasional threats to Sam Thaiday’s livelihood, Wayne Bennett has finally flushed the town clean of the memory of Ivan Henjak. With seven wins under the belt, they should be able to graft enough 0-0 draws to finish inside the final eight.

Prediction: Too dour to win it all, but 1.01 to win a Friday night ratings slot in the 18-35 demographic.

Storm
Forget about their superb start, let’s pay tribute to one of history’s more remarkable playing groups.

Not only are they disciplined, committed and super-smart, they have the ability to continue calmly purring along while their coach screams at them like Gordon Ramsay standing over a cold Parmi. They’re so exceptionally elite that it makes me sick.

Prediction: It’s been a while since they’ve won one. They’re probably due.