Eight talking points from NRL Round 16

With the NRL’s rep round affording the competition a break last week, everything returned to normal in Round 16, with plenty happening across the league. Here are my talking points.

A Thursday game after rep round is dumb and dumber
No, this is not a case of angry Dragons fan shouting at cloud. This is angry footy fan worrying about the players health and safety. The Dragons, along with the Eels, just happened to be on the end of it.

Let me get one thing very clear first. I was all for the trip to Denver, the explosive Pacific Tests and Origin on a Sunday. I thought the round was a great success, and those matches out at Campbelltown the best atmosphere I have ever been apart of at any sporting event. By a considerable distance as well.

While the rep round needs to stay, playing an NRL level game just four days after Origin and less than 48 hours after players got back from Denver is beyond crazy.

The NRL rightly cancel the Thursday night game after Wednesday Origins, but they would have been well-served to do the same after rep round.

While the Dragons got away with their win against Parramatta, the players coming back from England looked tired, flat and lethargic. To be fair, that was a trend which seemed to continue across the course of the weekend, but at least getting rid of the Thursday game following a Test in America would have given the players an extra 24 hours to recover.

Clubs are never going to be receptive of the idea to send their players to Denver for an exhibition style match, but it needs to happen for the good of rugby league into the future.

It’s just that the NRL need to acknowledge that and manage it correctly.

(Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

Jesse Ramien will continue going from strength to strength
Sharks centre Jesse Ramien has really come of age in 2018, and his signature is one of the more crucial ones for the Newcastle Knights heading into next season.

Ramien has the potential to be one of the most damaging centres in the game and is starting to prove to be this year, scoring another try – ultimately the match-winner – against the Warriors on Friday evening in Auckland.

It continues what has been a stellar season for the centre. While the Sharks have been a little up and down at times, Ramien certainly hasn’t been.

As it stands, Ramien has played 13 of the Sharks 16 games scoring nine tries in that time and directly assisting another three.

While his scoring record is impressive, it’s his running game which has caused chaos for opposition defences. To date, he has over 100 metres per game, averaging about nine metres per carry, to go with a stack of line breaks and tackle busts.

On top of that, he has five offloads, going to show that he really does have the whole package.

Ramien’s defence has also been very good, and while it’s tough to say the centre is a key man for the Sharks in their winning ways, it’s not hard to make the case he adds plenty to their cause, especially on the offensive end of the park.

The fact he won’t be in the black, white and blue next year is a tough pill to swallow for Sharks fans, but the Knights have made a very good purchase here.

Canterbury had to move on the anchors
The Bulldogs might have been playing the Knights, but their performance against the Knights on Saturday was the best they have put in for weeks.

While there was nothing good about fullback Moses Mbye leaving the club, they looked like a different side on the weekend, given Kieran Foran and Aaron Woods were also missing.

While Foran is still with the club, he will miss the rest of the 2018 season through injury, with Woods heading to Cronulla during the week.

It’s hard to assess exactly where a team is when they play the Knights, but for a Bulldogs team who only last week were fielding questions such as ‘will they win again this season,’ a convincing attacking performance was exactly what they needed.

Tough matches will lie ahead, sure. They aren’t going to make the finals, sure.

But with players out the door, some contracts being paid in advance to ease salary cap pressure into next year and beyond and the Bulldogs playing with an air of freedom about them, the worst days may even be behind them, even if bad days lie ahead.

Lachlan Lewis was a breath of fresh air for the club as well.

(AAP Image/SNPA, Adam Binns)

Melbourne win scrappy again, but the Roosters attack continues to falter
The Storm just aren’t the Storm this season, are they? Another scrappy win over the Roosters on the weekend, but as only the Storm can do, they pulled the game out of the fire to win by a point in a low-scoring affair.

If Melbourne continue to play that way, it’s hard to see them winning the competition, but then, no team has been even close to the level they set last year.

In any other year, the Storm are playing pretty good footy. It’s hard to say that when you remember exactly how they ran through the competition with their eyes shut last year though.

While the Storm have their problems, they pale in comparison to those faced by Trent Robinson and the Roosters.

Just when you think they have turned things around, they find a way to show you they haven’t for any consistent period of time. Sure, rep round was last week and they had plenty of players in the Sunday night Origin encounter, but that’s no excuse.

Coming off a 32-6 win over the Panthers, they had fans crowing, but then they scored eight points against the Storm. That followed low-scoring victories over the struggling Knights and Tigers.

It’s all about consistency for the Roosters. For James Tedesco and Cooper Cronk’s combination to improve in particular, and for their forwards to do what they should be doing – dominating.

Regardless, it’s hard to see either of these sides winning the premiership this season.

Anthony Milford and consistency will define the Broncos finals push
While Brisbane’s win over the Raiders was on the back of a comeback, there was one defining light in their attack and control of the game – his name is Anthony Milford?

In the first half, Milford tried hard, but executed poorly. The Broncos were behind 16-0 at halftime.

In the second half, Milford turned his game around, laying on tries, scoring one himself and being involved in everything. The Broncos came away with a 26-6 second half to win it 26-22.

That’s the power of Milford, playing on the back of a Broncos forward pack who can more than hold their own.

He has been the key to the Broncos efforts all season. In-form, he has the potential to be one of the most dangerous players in the competition, and showed it against a Raiders defence who were made to look good during the first half on Saturday.

His vision and creativity on the ball is something which can get Brisbane over the line, because the one thing we can count on is a pack led by Josh McGuire being rock solid more often than not. Yet, when they weren’t during the first half, it seemed to be a big part of the reason Milford and halves partner Kodi Nikorima crumbled.

(AAP Image/Dave Hunt)

Gareth Widdop’s role has just become ten times more important
For at least the next few weeks and maybe longer, the job for Gareth Widdop has become a mountain more important at the Red V.

They took the best part of 60 minutes to start clicking against the Broncos, and while the blame can’t be placed squarely on any one player, the form of half Ben Hunt is going to be very interesting to monitor over the next few weeks.

While he was far from poor against the Eels, his effort against the New South Wales Blues in the second game of the State of Origin series was.

Origin is notorious for either making or breaking star players season. You can go into the series playing one way and come out playing the opposite, which is something the Dragons will hope and pray doesn’t happen to their star signing.

Hunt went into the Origin window as one of the competition’s in-form halves, and while he was playing well, the biggest advantage to the red and white was the way Widdop was able to play.

At the very core of the Dragons attacking issues over the last few years has been Widdop’s role. At his best, he is a dangerous running half. He wasn’t allowed to play that role without a genuine organiser next to him in the halves, and so it meant Widdop claimed that role unsuccessfully.

This time around, he has been at the top of his game, playing in a team which is happy and rolling along at the top of the table.

Widdop will have to go up another gear though post Origin, until Hunt is assured to have refound his feat at club level, moving on from his Game 2 horror show.

The Knights won’t win while Kalyn Ponga is injured
This is an incredibly hard pill to swallow for the Knights, who have been a hundred times better this season than what they were 12 months ago.

However, with Ponga now out for a month, joining Pearce on the sidelines for the second half of yesterday’s game and more than likely at least the next week or two, some old signs crept back in. They conceded some very soft tries down the stretch yesterday, almost as if the air had been sucked right out of them.

And that’s not going to change. That mentality of hoping Ponga would produce something in attack has now disappeared, and the Knights will be all the worse for it.

Their defence has had issues all season, which isn’t hard to see when you look at the ladder, which shows them having one of the worst defensive records in the competition, but those issues will only become more prevalent if possession and field territory gets even worse than what it already is.

While their run during the lay-off for Ponga is actually quite a straightforward one, with the Eels and Titans featuring in their next two matches, it’s hard to see them beating anyone right at the moment.

(Photo by Tony Feder/Getty Images)

Is the Titans resurgence temporary?
Two weeks, two big wins, both away from home. There was a week off in the middle, but all of a sudden the Titans look to be playing like the team most knew they could be, but never expected to be.

While there is nothing overly special about beating the Bulldogs last week (like they did at Belmore before the rep weekend), their win on Sunday afternoon away from home at Leichardt over the Tigers with a returning Robbie Farah and new fullback in Moses Mbye was pretty damn good.

Ashley Taylor was again one of the Titans best, leading from the front and sparking their run of points as they came back from 12-6 behind at one point.

Even if the Titans fail to make the finals – which they may well still do given the six-point gap to the eighth-placed Broncos – the form they are showing is starting to show what Gareth Brennan has brought to the club.

There was no question he deserved a gig in the NRL when he was signed at the back end of last year. After spending many successful years with the Panthers in the New South Wales Cup system, the number of players travelling north to play under him spoke volumes of what the coach has been able to do.

That’s starting to show at the Titans. Their effort and willingness in defence, as well as that of staying in games when they fall behind has been admirable over the last two rounds, and it’s one they now need to keep going.

With Taylor and Brimson running the show, there is plenty of youth around the side, and it’s something they can look to exploit in coming years, but taking confidence out of 2018 and giving the finals a shake will be the keys to success in the coming 12 months for the Titans, who won’t win every game to the end of the season, but can certainly mix things up and hang with contenders.

On another note, it’s pretty fair to say the Tigers, along with the Raiders, are hanging by a thread now. Realistically, the top eight is locked and loaded unless there are major changes in fortunes.

Roarers, what did you make of Round 16? Drop a comment below and let us know.