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Round 16 saw blowouts, bludgers, a Broncos win and perhaps some big decisions in the offing. Here’s the talking points from the weekend as Origin 3 looms.
Two close games don’t cover up the floggings
The debate over the size of winning margins this season reignited in Round 16, with ‘Super Saturday’ turning into a 146-6 bloodbath across the three games. What was most concerning was that apart from the Bulldogs v Manly game (more on that below), the other two seemed relatively close on paper.
Coming on the back of two one-point results on Friday night, Saturday was particularly jarring. But the push from some folks to pretend those two thrillers meant people’s concerns with the way the NRL is headed were off track was completely tone-deaf.
Beltings are nothing new, of course. But the margins we’re getting this year are on the precipice of unprecedented. As shown by NRL Fanalytics on Twitter over the weekend, this season, 62 per cent of games have been decided by over 13 points. That’s basically two of every three.
Just when you thought it couldnand#39;t get any worse… #NRL #NRLAnalytics pic.twitter.com/pajs0sqkzj
andmdash; Fanalytics (atNRLFanalytics) July 2, 2021
Something needs to give, but who knows whether that means more rules to clean up the mess we’ve got now, or reverting back to what we had at the end of last year. I’ll lean toward the former, because Peter V’landys finds it harder to say “I was wrong” than Arthur Fonzarelli did.
The Storm are in cruise control
The reigning champs are the first team in rugby league history to score 40 points 10 times in a season – and they’ve done it in 16 games. This Melbourne side is absolutely incredible. They made the Roosters look like fools on Thursday night.
The scary thing about this is they’re doing it without Ryan Papenhuyzen and Harry Grant, who both will probably come good just in time for the finals, you’ll be thrilled to hear!
Great teams with premiership aspirations tend to pace their seasons to peak at the right moment, and no one does it better than Craig Bellamy’s mob. The Storm have eight games left in the season and with a top four (if not top two) spot essentially sewn up, they can afford to rest the odd rep player here and there. This might result in a down week or two, which inevitably will bring all the ‘Storm are cooked’ headlines.
Don’t buy into that. They know exactly what they’re doing.
Mitchell Moses can easily cover the New South Wales halfback spot
With Jarome Luai hurt on Friday night and ruled out for a spell, reigning Dally M medallist Jack Wighton was a given for the New South Wales five-eighth job. The weekend duly turned into a Mitch Moses v Adam Reynolds battle for the Blues’ halfback jersey. Going on the weekend, you’d say Moses was right to be crowned the ‘victor’ when he was named for his Origin debut.
Moses’ origin credentials have been pushed for a while, but he was never going to get the call over Nathan Cleary, given Cleary has long since been appointed the saviour/long term/lifetime halfback. He’s got a history with Brad Fittler, playing for Lebanon at the 2017 World Cup, and Freddy has made no secret he thinks he could handle it.
Mitchell Moses offloads the ball. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
What better way to make an Origin debut than in a dead rubber in your home state against a completely helpless opponent? In any event, all the NSW halves need to do is give the ball to Tom Trbojevic or James Tedesco and get out of the way.
Personally, I’d love to have seen Mitchell Pearce get a crack, just for the chaos…
The Panthers can cover Cleary, but what about Luai?
With Nathan Cleary out thanks to that shoulder injury, Penrith scrapped and scraped to a somewhat fortunate – but very well earned – 13-12 win over the tenacious Eels on Friday night.
While some eyebrows were raised about the Panthers’ below-par score, it’s the one against them that will have fans reasonably satisfied they can keep their heads above water until the co-captain returns.
The injury to five-eighth Jerome Luai poses a different challenge. A few weeks out with a knee concern will likely see Tyrone May get a bit more of a run in the halves, possibly alongside the outgoing Matt Burton.
The Panthers have suffered a bit without the stars in the halves in the Origin period, but they’ve got enough wins in the bank to finish top four, and an outstanding defence that is still intact.
If they’re serious about grand final vengeance, they will be able to navigate their way until the big stars return.
Canterbury deserved everything they got… and more
One somewhat overlooked point of Saturday’s pathetic offerings was that the Doggies brought their 0-66 pasting entirely upon themselves with the week they had.
It’s one thing to be a dud team on the field, but to have a dud team off the field in this COVID-19 climate is unforgivable. Players on the cans when they’re supposed to be in the bubble can be disastrous for the competition.
After giving the Dogs a $50,000 fine, the NRL said the club “failed to effectively communicate the restrictions to ensure players and officials understood exactly the obligations placed on them”. And this was the day AFTER the NRL had issued their instructions!
It’s just amateur stuff. Actually, no it’s not – amateur clubs are better organised.
There’s no sympathy at all for Dylan Napa, Brandon Wakeham, Aaron Schoupp, Corey Waddell and Sione Katoa. They were dumb and should have known better. I like to think athletes are not complete morons but on occasion you have to wonder.
If you are in the gutter, you’ve got to at least act like you want to get out of there. The Bulldogs had a complete shocker, from the suits to the boots. And in the gutter they stay.
If you love the Raiders, Ricky…
Set them free. Canberra have been beaten by bigger scores over the years, but what we saw on Saturday night’s 6-44 pasting by the Titans – yes, the Titans! – was a team completely bereft of ideas, fitness, and most importantly, heart.
Canberra became one of the NRL’s premier teams of the competition on the back of an uncompromising defence and an efficient attack that did everything it needed to in order to win. Before the COVID-19 shutdown, they’d beaten the Storm three times in a row and twice in Melbourne, including a qualifying final and a comeback from 0-16 down with two sin-binnings. They came into 2021 still in the top few premiership fancies for the pundits.
Those days are long, long gone.
Ricky Stuart and the club have faced some serious problems during the pandemic, not all of them self-inflicted. But what they laid out on Saturday shows a club at the bottom. The talent is on the roster, but the direction isn’t. They’ve been shown up again and again as being unable to adapt to this faster, fitter new world of rugby league.
It kills me to write this because I love him, but Ricky might need to have a serious talk with Don Furner about where he goes from here.
The Knights might have something in 2022
You can write 2021 off for Newcastle for a variety of reasons, but it was interesting to note coach Adam O’Brien’s relief-cum-excitement at being able to roll out his preferred spine of Mitchell Pearce, Jake Clifford, Jayden Brailey and the mercurial Kalyn Ponga to plough over the Cowboys 38-0.
O’Brien pointed out it’s the first time since Round 2 last year, before the COVID-enforced shutdown, he’s been able to play his first-choice halfback, five-eighth, hooker and fullback. He’ll nanded them to stay fit and firing too, because after thsizeigin bye, Newcastle have Melbourne, then the Roosters, then Canberra.
Kalyn Ponga sprints away from the Cowboys’ Tom Dearden. (Photo by Ashley Feder/Getty Images)
Newcastle will play finals again at some point, but it’s tough to say they’ve advanced too much on their seventh-placed spot last year. There is a glimpse for fans, though, that there might be a light at the end of a long, long tunnel… assuming everyone who matters stays fit and the club doesn’t bugger up their contract negotiations…
Channel Nine’s fake crowd is still better than Fox’s
Last year, Channel Nine took the early lead for canned crowd noise when the NRL kicked back up after the enforced hiatus. Their tech was context-sensitive, being that it didn’t oversell or overpower what was happening on the field; in comparison to Fox League, who memorably made a Raiders try against the Storm made it sound like Melbourne’s stadium was packed by 80,000 screaming Canberrans.
Fortunately, we got real crowds back by the end of the year. But with no crowds in the stands for Sydney games this week, canned crowds were back. And Nine still have the right idea.
Fox League’s effort still leaves a lot to be desired. As Manly ran in try after try after try against Canterbury it sounded like a packed Stadium Australia in full delirium. Even the most modest of plays was met with grand final winning kind of cheers. That’s not how it works.
Use fake crowds properly or don’t use them at all. Some of us like hearing the whack of the contest anyway.