The first half of the 2022 NRL premiership is in the books after a high-scoring batch of Round 12 matches that largely went to script.
The Storm and Panthers confirmed themselves as a cut above with convincing victories, while the Roosters and Eels carved out excellent away wins over handy opposition to solidify their dark horse billing.
The Broncos avoided a boilover loss – and climbed into the top four – with a 20-point derby comeback and the Rabbitohs hung onto their Top 8 spot with a blowout win after trailing at halftime.
At the other end of the NRL spectrum, a five-strong group of battlers is firming as 2022 failures – but State of Origin has arrived to temporarily put the competition in the shade
1 – Origin Takeover
It’s that time of the season again – the State of Origin monolith is here to disrupt the NRL picture for the next six weeks.
Defending champion NSW named its 22-man squad on Sunday, with Brad Fittler revealing a couple of surprises.
Wing mainstay Josh Addo-Carr – who has played the last 12 Origins and scored 10 tries – has paid the price for Canterbury’s struggles, making way for Roosters veteran Daniel Tupou.
Jake Trbojevic, a 13-match Blues veteran, was another big-name casualty.
Brisbane’s debutant Kotoni Staggs and versatile Canberra star Jack Wighton will reportedly form the new NSW centre pairing with Tom Trbojevic and Latrell Mitchell sidelined, while Parramatta back-rower Ryan Matterson and Penrith centre Stephen Crichton are set to debut off the bench.
Cronulla utility Nicho Hynes is expected to be the Blues’ 18th man. Newcastle prop Jacob Saifiti and teenaged Sydney Roosters back Joseph Suaalii are the other untried players in the 22-man squad.
Queensland’s squad, named on Monday, includes uncapped Broncos Selwyn Cobbo and Patrick Carrigan and Cowboys newcomers Reuben Cotter and Jeremiah Nanai in the game-day line-up for the June 8 series opener.
The Panthers will be without up to seven stars for its Round 13 clash with the lowly Bulldogs and will have weary troops backing up three days after Origin for the fixture against the equally-awful Warriors.
Representative-heavy teams Melbourne, Parramatta and Brisbane get timely byes this week.
The Cowboys, who also have Valentine Holmes in the Maroons’ starting team and Tom Dearden, Murray Taulagi and Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow in the extended squad, will be depleted for Thursday’s encounter with the Titans and back up only 48 hours after Origin against the Dragons.
2 – Big Dogs Bark
Penrith ($2.50), Melbourne ($3.75), Sydney Roosters ($8.00) and Parramatta ($10.00) occupy the first four lines of NRL premiership betting – and the heavyweight quartet flexed with impressive Round 12 wins.
Melbourne bounced back from a dismal fortnight with an authoritative 28-8 defeat of Manly with Cameron Munster in vintage touch.
Penrith ruthlessly shut out a North Queensland side that had scored 30-plus points in five straight games 22-0.
Astonishingly, the Panthers have lost just two games total in the first half of the past three seasons, few champs in the NRL era have looked to have suffered less of a premiership hangover.
Last week’s 20-point loss to the Panthers illustrated the 7-5 Roosters are a second-tier contender at present, but they are heading in the right direction if their 36-16 beatdown of Cronulla is any indication.
Canberra came into Sunday’s home game on the back of superb 20-point defeats of the Sharks and Rabbitohs, but the 8-4 Eels snared an important 28-20 win – with the brilliance of Dylan Brown and Mitch Moses coming to the fore – in a high-quality encounter at GIO Stadium.
The sheen of the Sharks’ rousing start to the season has worn off somewhat.
They haven’t won back-to-back since Round 5, their last six wins were over bottom-half teams and their five losses have come by an average margin of 14 points.
After this weekend’s bye, Craig Fitzgibbon will be expecting three straight victories over the Warriors, Titans and Bulldogs before the Sharks face the current top three in consecutive weeks.
3 – Queensland Clubs On Track
After several seasons in the doldrums, North Queensland and Brisbane round the NRL season’s halfway marker nestled in the top four.
The Cowboys’ six-match winning streak met a brick wall in Penrith on Friday night.
But with in-form veterans Jason Taumalolo and Kyle Feldt sidelined, they nevertheless enhanced their reputation with a gritty showing in the face of an opponent who had 57 percent possession and dominated territory.
The Broncos’ 35-24 win over Gold Coast, their sixth in a row, left a fair bit to be desired, but following the Payne Haas news bombshell and with Adam Reynolds still out, recovering from a 20-point halftime deficit was another big tick for the evolution (and depth) of Kevin Walters’ side.
The Sunshine State rivals are both 8-4 – eclipsing their 2021 win tallies already – and have both had their Top 8 odds slashed to just $1.14, while both remain value Top 4 options at around the $2.20 mark.
The 2017 Dragons are the only team in the past 13 seasons to win eight or more of their first 12 games and miss the playoffs since the Titans failed to go on with the job in 2008.
4 – Spoon Battle Takes Shape
We’ve seen some remarkable late-season rallies to reach the NRL finals over the years, but at the halfway mark of the 2022 premiership it’s almost safe to draw a thick red line through the Top 8 ambitions of five clubs.
Canterbury’s previously listless attack has produced 46 points in two games since Trent Barrett’s exit, but the Bulldogs have leaked plenty in losses to Wests Tigers (36-22) and St George Illawarra (34-24) to remain last with a 2-10 record.
The 3-9 Tigers led Souths at halftime but crashed to a 44-18 loss that has again turned up the blowtorch on Michael Maguire.
The 3-9 Titans slipped to 14th courtesy of their second-half collapse against the Broncos with shaky defence yet again their undoing.
Battling Newcastle joined the Warriors – who are beset with off-field discord, have the worst defence in the competition and have won just one of their last seven – on four wins courtesy of a 24-18 result when the teams played out a low-quality affair in Redcliffe.
The quintet of also-rans is all $15 or more to make the Top 8 and are all realistically out of the running with 12 games to go.
5 – Wing And A Prayer
Punters who took up the cautious odds on the NRL’s wingers in the tryscorer markets over the weekend cashed in. A whopping 18 of the 32 players who started on the flank dotted down in Round 12.
South Sydney’s Alex Johnston grabbed the headlines with a hattrick against Wests Tigers, passing Nathan Merritt to become the Rabbitohs’ greatest tryscorer of all time in the process.
With 147 tries in just 178 NRL games, 27-year-old Johnston has Ken Irvine’s premiership record (212 tries) in his sights and has scored 64 tries in his last 54 outings.
Currently injured Melbourne fullback Ryan Papenhuyzen remains on top of the NRL’s tryscoring charts with 12 from just nine appearances.
Hot on his heels, though, are six wingers: Johnston, the Storm’s Xavier Coates and the Panthers’ Taylan May on 11; and Ken Maumalo – a superb effort in a Tigers side that has scored only 32 tries – and Broncos duo Selwyn Cobbo and Corey Oates on 10.
Boom Cowboys back-rower Jeremiah Nanai is the outlier in the mix, crossing for 10 tries – twice as many as the next best forward.