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Opinion
Newcastle wound the clock back over a decade with a full house at McDonald Jones Stadium on a Sunday afternoon with the Knights putting in a tremendous team display to make it seven wins on the trot.
They were very impressive in their “must win” game against the Rabbitohs who were far from their best and only have one game left to make the finals let alone make a premiership charge.
Star fullback Kalyn Ponga has been player of the match in nearly every one of their run of victories and he was instrumental in most of their left-edge attack against the Bunnies.
You know someone is a quality player when the opposition does their “homework” and they still come up empty, which is what happened to South Sydney’s right edge on several occasions on Sunday.
The speed and execution of the Knights attack was great to watch and they are finishing the year very strongly.
Greg Marzhew scores. (Photo by Scott Gardiner/Getty Images)
Other than Newcastle, If you’re looking at form over the past three weeks, I’d have Brisbane and Penrith in that order and then Cronulla.
And that’s a helluva turnaround from a few weeks ago when it looked like the Sharks were dead and buried.
They were far too good for the Cowboys at QCB Stadium on Thursday night and they’re back to playing the type of footy that Craig Fitzgibbon wants.
They’re competing on every play, their back five are giving them a lot of momentum to start their sets and Nicho Hynes is back to playing like he did last year when he won the Dally M.
Ronaldo Mulitalo. (Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)
Cameron McInnes is tackling everything that moves but he’s also hitting the ball up with intent. They’re getting quality minutes from their forwards with guys like Royce Hunt, Toby Rudolf and Jack Williams stepping up and Wade Graham going on a bit of a final fling before retirement.
This time of year is all about the teams that are prepared to work the hardest no matter what and Cronulla are rolling up their sleeves, saving tries, showing commitment with their goal-line defence and taking the tough carries.
Connor Tracey has been a revelation at fullback with Will Kennedy out injured, I think he made 200-plus metres the other night and made a few crucial tackles, plus Braydon Trindall is complementing Hynes in the halves nicely.
They seem a pretty galvanised group so they could be dangerous in the finals.
The Cowboys haven’t recovered from that run of six, winning games where they pulled themselves back up the ladder and it looks like they’ve run out of energy a bit the last few weeks in losing to the Titans, Broncos and now Sharks.
They have a slight chance of making the top eight but they haven’t been able to find the magic elixir to get their season back on track.
The Warriors played well to get past a desperate Manly side but I thought the Sea Eagles were a trifle unlucky with the call that went against them late in the game when Reuben Garrick was flipped in a tackle by Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad.
It was great by the Warriors to show desperation to charge down the Daly Cherry-Evans field goal and by the letter of the law in the rulebook, Nicoll-Klokstad was entitled to tackle Garrick because he wasn’t jumping to catch a kick, but I thought it could have been a penalty.
Anthony Seibold wasn’t too happy about the call and if I was in his shoes, I would have felt the same.
The NRL can justify the decision to say it was accidental but in the context of the game it was critical.
The Warriors still did well to then march the ball down the other end of the field and come away with the win.
Their form hasn’t been quite as strong over the past few weeks but they have a couple of weeks before the finals to get back to their best.
It was a good example of what I wrote last week about how teams who drop off at this time of year – Manly competed for most of the match but couldn’t quite go the distance and the Eels are now goners after getting beaten by the Roosters.
It wasn’t surprising to see the Wests Tigers bring Benji Marshall’s time as head coach by 12 months.
Their win over the Dolphins wasn’t the greatest advertisement for rugby league but when you’ve lost 10 straight, you will take any win you can get and it was pleasing to see Api Koroisau’s long-range penalty goal from out wide just sneak over.
Poor old Tim Sheens has been moved on and it’s a common occurrence in rugby league that the coach gets the blame while the coach and CEO keep their gigs.
Marshall can make a good fist of it if he can have a high level of autonomy surrounding recruitment and coaching staff.
Even as a rookie coach you need to have a strong say on who you have around you and how you do things.
You inherit player contracts that you might not be too enthralled about and you have to build your relationship with the player managers and all the many stakeholders in a club to give yourself the best shot of succeeding.
There’s a range of different areas that you’ve got to have your eye on but the good NRL coaches are the ones who can focus on preparing the team on the field every week because they have people they can trust looking after all the peripheral stuff like recruitment, strength and conditioning and so on.
I’m a little bit more optimistic about the future for them now too.
Benji Marshall. (Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)
St George Illawarra are back playing with plenty of spirit over the second half of the year since Ryan Carr took over as interim coach when Anthony Griffin got told his services were no longer required.
Most teams, given their situation, against Melbourne could have not really had a dig but they took that match down to the wire and it could have been a different result if Ben Hunt had managed to land a conversion from the sideline late in the piece.
I don’t think he would have kicked one from there since he was playing for the Yeppoon Devils under 14s way back when.
They’ve lost a fair few matches by less than 10 points this year and with Shane Flanagan coming in next year, Hunt sticking around a bit more experience in their key positions there’s a bit more hope for the future.
Michael Hagan is a former dual-premiership winning first grade player and current assistant coach of Australia's Kangaroos team. Hagan played 183 games for Canterbury and Newcastle and represented Queensland five times. He transitioned into a successful coach and took the Knights to a premiership in his first year in charge back in 2001. He went onto coach 205 NRL games and six times for Queensland in Origin.