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Opinion
After five rounds of the NRL there are two clubs well and truly setting a cracking pace.
And for the first time this decade, the Panthers are not one of the sides setting the standard for the rest to envy.
Melbourne and Canterbury have established themselves as the teams to beat, underlining their respective dominance with differing victories on Sunday to account for the Sea Eagles and Knights.
Hopefully, Round 5 was an anomaly for the season due to the crackdown that wasn’t.
Coaches, players and referees themselves were baffled by some of the decisions to use the sin bin for harmless high shots while other hits that clocked opponents flush in the head only yielded a penalty.
In the end, the NRL achieved what it set out to do this round by reminding players that they need to be more careful about high contact but the PR-conscious execs also ensured they avoided the backlash of a full-blown crackdown with a high number of players getting binned.
Here’s how the teams stack up after Round 5.
1. Bulldogs (Last week 1): They just keep their snouts in front of the Storm only because they are the only undefeated team.
To beat Cronulla and Newcastle without Matt Burton and Viliame Kikau has been ultra impressive over the past fortnight – unfortunately they only play Melbourne once this year and that won’t happen until Round 25.
2. Storm (2): They didn’t just beat Manly at Brookvale on Sunday afternoon, they embarrassed them.
Craig Bellamy has an embarrassment of riches with his squad – Moses Leo looks a prospect in his first NRL outing since switching from the New Zealand rugby sevens program – and he was able to hand out early marks to Ryan Papenhuyzen and Jahrome Hughes as they cantered away from the crestfallen Sea Eagles.
Jahrome Hughes makes a break. (Photo by Jeremy Ng/Getty Images)
3. Broncos (6): Slowly but surely Reece Walsh is hitting his straps and even though Adam Reynolds is likely to be out for a week with his hamstring problem, the relationship that those two and Ben Hunt are forming is becoming more potent by the round in Brisbane.
Michael Maguire pretty much have everything else in place for his team to be title contenders this year but they will only go as far as Reynolds, Hunt and Walsh take them, with the rest of their attack flowing from there.
4. Sea Eagles (3): They are probably lucky to still be this high based on their shellacking on home turf on Sunday.
But in their defence, the Storm were red hot and Manly without Tom Trbojevic is not as manly as when their fullback is manning the No.1 jersey.
5. Sharks (4): There’s a pedestrian nature about Cronulla at the moment.
Apart from a couple of scoring blitzes against the Cowboys and Rabbitohs, they have been all too average with their attacking forays this season and even though they managed to poke their nose in front against the Raiders last Thursday they were not able to finish them off and paid the price when they got swamped in the final minute.
6. Panthers (5): For the second week in a row, this is surely as low as they’re going to go.
Nobody saw their upset loss to the Cowboys coming but very few predicted their three previous losses either.
The loss to the Cowboys showed how much they miss Dylan Edwards when he is out and assuming he returns from his groin injury this week, the Panthers will surely start to rise up the ladder again.
But after losing four of their first five matches, their stranglehold on a spot in the top two which has been the case over the past five seasons, is looking very dicey indeed and they are no longer a certainty to finish in the top four, although there’s still a long way to go and plenty of time for their machine to click back into top gear.
Isaiah Tass celebrates scoring his try with Latrell Mitchell. (Photo by Brett Hemmings/Getty Images)
7. Rabbitohs (8): Things looked dire when Jamie Humphreys limped off early in their match against the Roosters and when Cody Walker and Mikaele Ravalawa followed suit early in the second half with the Rabbitohs were trailing by six, it would have been easy for them to accept a respectable defeat under those circumstances.
But with fullback Jye Gray continuing his recent purple patch and Latrell Mitchell adding the finishing touches by playing ad lib footy they scored one of the more remarkable victories of the season thus far and deserve to be in the playoff conversation.
8. Warriors (7): They’ve done well thus far on the actual NRL ladder to be sitting inside the top four but face a litmus test next Sunday in Melbourne.
9. Raiders (11): Just when you think Ricky Stuart’s ragtag bunch are headed for a slide down to the bottom of the ladder they produce a rousing performance like the one that sunk the Sharks in the 80th minute last Thursday in Canberra.
They were unlucky to be without Hudson Young for 10 minutes of the match but the dynamic left edge forward proved the difference in the end to get his team home.
Addin Fonua-Blake is tackled. (Photo by Mark Nolan/Getty Images)
10. Tigers (9): Their 22-point defeat to Brisbane was not entirely unexpected given that Jarome Luai was serving a one-week ban for a high tackle.
The rise of young hooker Tallyn Da Silva continued with another electric display against the Broncos and Benji Marshall will have to figure out a way to give him more game time throughout the season even if it means Api Koroisau playing as a small-ball lock.
11. Cowboys (15): They have resuscitated their playoff campaign in the space of a fortnight with a scrappy win over Canberra and then last Friday’s boilover to knock over Penrith … and they did so without co-captain Reuben Cotter when he was a late withdrawal with a game day illness.
Despite rumblings about the future of Todd Payten and persistent talk that there are problems beneath the surface at the Cowboys they look like a tight-knit group and they continually turned up for each other in attack and defence to thoroughly deserve their victory over the premiers.
12. Titans (10): Just when you thought it was safe for Gold Coast fans, both of them, to think their team wouldn’t not be a laughing stock, they dish up a performance like that to go down 36-10 at home to the previously winless Dolphins.
And the final scoreline flattered them after they ran in two late consolation tries. Des Hasler threw out a smokescreen in the post-match media conference to blow up about the NRL’s latest high tackle crackdown after Tino Fa’asuamaleaui was sin-binned but the referees are not the reason why his team dished up such a mediocre performance.
13. Knights (11): They were probably always going to lose to Bulldogs when they lost Jacob Saifiti and James Schiller for the rest of the match before the pre-game fireworks smoke had cleared.
But the bone-headed trip that Phoenix Crossland served up to earn himself a stint in the sin bin and hand the match to the Dogs on a platter was one of the most amateur professional fouls you will ever see.
14. Dolphins (16): This 36-10 win over the Titans came out of the blue considering Gold Coast had strung together a couple of decent games and the Redcliffe club had started off with four straight losses.
But their forwards more than matched Gold Coast’s big men in the middle and Isaiya Katoa had a field day on the back of that dominance with Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow finally hit top gear at fullback.
15. Dragons (13): That’s two matches that St George Illawarra have lost this year by a point from their four starts and each time they led by 12.
They could be sitting in the top eight with a 3-1 record if not for blowing it against the Rabbitohs and now the Eels.
The chat around Lachlan Ilias’ tenuous hold on the No.7 jersey will not go away when he keeps dishing up blunders like kicking out on the full in extra time which led to the deciding field goal being delivered by none other than former Dragons star Zac Lomax.
16. Roosters (14): It’s always devastating for the Tricolours to lose to South Sydney but when you have a team down to 14 fit players and you’re holding a six-point lead, closing out the victory should not be too difficult.
But the Roosters botched it big time and their lack of polish in attack and frequent lapses in defence add up to massive concern for Trent Robinson.
Zac Lomax celebrates kicking the golden point. (Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)
17. Eels (17): Still at the bottom of the pecking order but a win’s a win and Jason Ryles has the monkey off his back even though they are still last on the ladder and in expectations for 2025.
And what do you know? Ryles bites the bullet and sends Zac Lomax to the wing and their star recruit has his best game of the season. Surely he’s played his last game in the centres at club level now.