2025 Season

Gee, I know Haas played an immense game.
But the turning point in that game was down to Hunt’s fake to the right, out the left, that Cleary stuck a hand out for - falling straight to Willison. If the pass finds the man, I think Penrith were marked up. But the way it fell, they parted like the Red Sea.

Bit of an anticlimactic way to change the tide of the match for me.

I think Cleary had an off game, too. Which probably helped. His end of set options in the second half weren’t his usual standard. Even their last set, he committed too far forward and realised way too late that it was the last tackle, I think. I don’t know if he lost count, if he was going for the jugular and decided last minute they should try for 2.

Walsh - fantastic player. But boy he just rubs me the wrong way. Noticibly in this game he watches the clock count down, and then pushes the dummy half out of the way so he can get the final carry and showboat. Don’t love it.

I think I’m still anti-Brisbane from the NRLW game before.

Have been listening to 167 podcast and have quite enjoyed listening to Paps, Hughes and Munster so hoping they get the job done.

Carrigan back will be a big boost.
 
A bit disappointed, thought at half time Panthers had it but to Broncos effort victory, critical decisions, Panthers not taking the penalty goal shot and then coming up empty, Ezra tackle on Cleary was illegal and then he lashed out while Cleary more pushed off, yes Martin was silly to attack but the first instance should have been the penalty to Penrith, other incidences may have occurred but looking through Panthers eyes means you see what you want.
Feel sorry Panthers lost, they have rebuilt over the last few years while staying at the top, they should be proud of this years achievement.
Moving on to G/F my hope is Storm because I don’t like Broncos and Storm have a couple of ex Knights that would be good for them to win
 
Just seems so petty and mean-spirited to care so much about whether teams other than the one you support win.

Unless it's one of the teams I specifically hate, in which case, it's just a logical reaction to those teams existing.
 
Broncos will be very hard to beat with Carrigan coming back. He's arguably just as good as Haas in many ways (for the Broncs). They missed him immensely today.

Mam will be better for the run.

Maguire will hopefully realise that Reynolds and Hunt cannot form a fluent partnership - it just doenst work at all. And I'd expect Mam to come in around the 20th minute instead of the 30th. Hunt to 9 for 60 minutes is an acceptable ask.

Storm can score from anywhere and will exploit technical defensive errors, so there should be plenty of points, a rare thing for a GF
 
I’m imagining Ezra will start at 6. He didn’t look at his absolute best but it didn’t look like he had any trouble getting through the game.

But yeah there is a huge difference in how potent and fluent they look with Hunt at dummy half (have always thought that was his best position), Reyno just steering them around, finding Walsh early and often wherever he wants the ball, and Mam playing off of that in his direct style, vs when it’s Reyno & Hunt halves and they look for interplay in shape between the two old blokes.

It’s interesting that they looked so much better with Walters at 6 vs Hunt, but I guess Hunt’s ability to attract defenders & create space has been built on his running game, which isn’t what it was, whereas Walters has never been dynamic like that so has had to make sure he doesn’t overplay his hand.

It all looks like a cheap imitation of the 2026 Knights’ Arthur/Smith/Brown/Ponga spine to me though, pretty pathetic from a so called big club.
 
9. Smoothy
7. Reyno
6. Mam
1. Walsh
14. Hunt

That’s what I think they should go with, and they should just pull Smoothy off after 20 and have Hunt play the game out. Tyson can sit on the bench and provide forward cover if someone gets injured but otherwise I don’t think he should come back on.

Rough on Paix to miss out but Hunt is their best hooker. He’s just old. I think they came into the season with the theory Hunt would start games at 9 then play as a floating playmaker when the bench hooker came on but I reckon for them that gums up the works. All the extra ball playing they actually need, they get from Payne and Patty. Anyone else they add means the ball is getting to Ezra, Staggs and Walsh more slowly.
 
So when Nathan batted that pass down and Willison scored untouched. I see Yeo just could not move the poor bugger. I've never seen that from him. Just shows him needing a break and he can't do 80 minutes at lock anymore. Panthers will have to find a way to get that extra gear if they are to win more premierships.

I'm going for the Bronx in the gf. I can't stand the storm in how they cheat pretty much most rules of the game defensively although the attack I've seen from them is just next level. Brissy will have to find another cog to beat them.
 
The two teams left are the ones with the most dynamic attacking players, which feels right given this PVLball era - most good teams these days are ones that are really good at absorbing pressure then taking advantage of momentum swings, due to having the best strike weapons. It's just that the huge, huge exception to that is the one which happens to win every year: this ball-in-play, grind you down, keep moving the defence sideways, very systematic Penrith team. It'll be fun to watch probably the two best highlight reel teams go at it for once.

The Storm spine quartet needs less go forward to make stuff happen than any other team in the comp. All four spine players, Katoa, Coates, to a lesser extent Warbrick and Howarth. With Brisbane it's all about Walsh, they go as he goes, the next best guy at just making **** happen is Staggs, Ezra clearly isn't 100%, and Reyno atm just needs to be a good role player, but capitalise on all the attention Reece draws if there's something on. But Haas & Carrigan, with Willison in the kind of form he's in - that's a crazy amount of go forward that will be very hard to handle for Melbourne's more workmanlike forwards.

If the Storm pack contains the go forward long enough, they'll have too much strike for the Broncos to hold out. But Brisbane have shown that they literally only need about 20 minutes to blow the doors off if they really get rolling.

If you run the rule down all the grand final winners of the NRL era, when you look at the two sides and note that one side has a notably better forward pack - that is almost always the team that wins. The sides with weaker packs who've won though, have almost always been wearing purple.

In conclusion, rugby league is a land of contrasts.
 
If Klein is the ref and he's actually brave enough to use his whistle to get some speed in the ruck the GF could be a really exciting contest.

If it's Atkins or a Klein told to leave the whistle at home Storm should do it easy.
 
Nah slots, Trent Loiero is tackling opposing middles about two metres into their carries because he's simply the most impressive athletic specimen we've ever seen. He covers 10 metres in 0.06 seconds. A true freak of nature.
 
How come Nathan Cleary and Burton aren't launching giant bombs
They were impossible to catch but no nrl players are even doing them anymore

I think Panthers this year 5th tackle the ball always went to Cleary even Talagi got tackled on 4th tackle.
It was just too one dimensional

With Luai they had another option at least

Brisbane had options with Hunt, Reynolds, Mamm, Walsh.

Panthers had just Cleary.

Edwards too one dimensional and looks to be busted with the way he plays as a battering ram
 
Just the nature of finals footy though tbh. In the regular season you are trying to win as many games as possible, let's say going too hard with the towering kicks or chasing line drop outs nets you five more wins, but also loses you two games - that's a fair trade.

But in a high pressure finals game, high pace, trying to execute under fatigue, and where some kicks which go wrong mean your season is over - the calculus is different. Similarly I feel like teams run it on the last more in these games, because a kick going dead is such a huge momentum swing. Don't have a stat in front of me for that but I feel like when it gets to squeaky bum time, Cleary is the main guy still trying to force repeat sets usually - others are looking not to make a horrible mistake. And that finals fatigue, man, even Cleary put in some shocking kicks in the second half on the weekend. And it messed up Fogarty so badly IMO. Both finals games.
 
For me they felt the loss of JFH. He was one of the key cogs in their style, that is pounding teams into the dirt then running over the top of them.

They can still do it to plenty of teams but not as effectively without him. Now that opposition teams aren’t completely destroyed physically, players like Edwards are nowhere near as effective.

In the past, it was much easier for Edwards to just run his 250 metres because he had little resistance. Now without a weakened opposition, he’s running isn’t as effective and he’s lack of other skills is exposed.

Add to the that, they’re not as young as they used to be. When this all started they were such a young team but now Yeo is getting on and frankly he must be physically cooked from playing such long minutes in the middle for the past 6 years.

It’s still incredible they’re as good as they are after so long and with losing so many players. They may have to change up their style a bit next so they don’t have to be as reliant on physically exhausting opponents but can score some easy points instead.
 
Tackleslikeagirl said:
Anyone else finding it funny that there is zero backlash re Teddy pulling out of the Aussie team but they blew up delux about KP 🤣
Click to expand...
Age is definitely an element, Teddy is 32 and Ponga was only 26. Generally it feels like people over 28/30 are entitled to stop playing rep football if they wish.
 
Kalyn can now switch his eligibility to New Zealand if he wants, there's the easy solution to that stupid Kangaroos drama. He clearly doesn't want to play for Australia and only had that as his eligibility because of Origin.
 
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