Just three rounds into the 2024 NRL premiership, North Queensland Cowboys are the only undefeated side and embattled South Sydney Rabbitohs are the sole 0-3 team.
The weekend’s football included five margins of 20-plus points for the first time since August 2022 and just one head-to-head upset, but no shortage of drama and stirring performances.
Rockin’ the suburbs
The NRL Multicultural Round was a glowing endorsement for the sense of community among the NRL fanbase – in its traditional heartlands and outposts alike.
The schedule got underway with 20,089 Penrith fans cheering on a Nathan Cleary masterclass as the Panthers powered to a 34-12 grand final replay victory over a depleted Brisbane Broncos outfit.
A 17,249-strong sellout in Christchurch – timely with two NRL franchise bids from the region currently in the expansion mix – rivalled Mt Smart on the decibel metre as the Warriors got off the mark via a tense 18-10 defeat of the plucky Canberra Raiders in the only Round 3 match held outside NSW.
Sydney Roosters’ biggest win over bitter rival South Sydney since 1997, a 48-6 beatdown that could have huge ramifications for the Rabbitohs, occurred in front of 37,584 supporters at Allianz Stadium (though a handful spoiled the occasion with some drunken biffo).
The smallest Belmore crowd in six years (12,037) made enough noise for it to feel like Terry Lamb’s heyday as Canterbury-Bankstown opened its account for 2024 via a 32-0 rout of hapless Gold Coast.
The round’s lowest attendance (9,252) at Jubilee watched St George Illawarra blow a 14-point lead in a 46-24 loss to North Queensland.
The crowd highlight was surely the 15,990 Leichhardt Oval faithful willing Wests Tigers to a shock 32-6 victory over previously unbeaten Cronulla.
The 20,000 mark was breached at CommBank and McDonald Jones Stadiums as both home teams saluted in Sunday nail-biters – Parramatta 28-24 in arguably the match of the season to date against Manly, and Newcastle 14-12 for its maiden win of the season over injury-hit Melbourne.
Benji’s brood must back it up after watershed win
Benji Marshall enjoyed one of the all-time great maiden wins as an NRL coach, Wests Tigers blitzing hot favourites Cronulla 32-6 on the Leichhardt Oval stage he lit up so many times as a player.
With skipper Api Koroisau producing a mesmerising display and recruit Justin Olam providing backline authority on club debut the Tigers haven’t enjoyed in years, the club’s next-gen stars flourished.
Teenaged No.6 Lachie Galvin shone alongside steady veteran Aidan Sezer, prop Stefano Utoikamanu enhanced his Origin claims and fullback Jahream Bula underlined his massive potential with two of the Tigers’ five tries – against a Sharks side that leaked just three in the first two rounds.
Junior Tupou and Fonua Pole also looked superb grasping a rare opportunity to play in a team on the front foot.
It was a huge fillip for Marshall after getting unfairly dragged through the press before his team had even played a game.
But we’ve been here with the Tigers before. Ten months ago they demolished the Cowboys 66-18 at Leichhardt to record their third win in four weeks after a 0-7 start. The Tigers won just one more game in 2023 to finish with another spoon, prompting Marshall’s premature elevation to the coaching hotseat.
The next few weeks – with the Tigers taking on the Eels on Easter Monday, the Dolphins at Suncorp and the Dragons at Campbelltown – will tell us more about the Benji-led rebuild than a familiar, one-off Saturday night fairytale at their spiritual home.
Battered Broncos’ backs to the wall
While Penrith shortened to $3.50 in its pursuit of a historic fourth straight premiership, closest rival Brisbane eased out slightly to $5 following the heavyweights’ Thursday night showdown as they navigate a superstar-stacked casualty ward.
Already without linchpin Adam Reynolds and front-row behemoth Payne Haas for the grand final replay, the Broncos lost hyper-influential fullback Reece Walsh to a gruesome facial injury after just four minutes – effectively ending their hopes of an upset at the foot of the mountains.
The Broncos’ 1-2 record amid a gruelling early-season draw won’t overly concern the Broncos.
But with Haas slated to be out until Round 8, and Reynolds and Walsh listed TBC, the ladder pressure could get very real for a team that made the grand final on the back of a 5-0 springboard in 2023.
The Broncos are underdogs at home to the unbeaten Cowboys this Thursday, before heading down to Melbourne in Round 5. Lose both of those and suddenly subsequent clashes with the Dolphins, Raiders and Tigers start shaping as must-win.
Tristan Sailor is an absolute luxury to be able to bring at fullback…but it’s a big ask for halfback Jock Madden and a young front-row contingent that also lost Tom Flegler over the off-season to steer the Broncos through these choppy waters.
Demetriou lost in Wayne’s world
Alone at the bottom of the table, South Sydney is reeling from a 42-point thrashing in a marquee match-up with Sydney Roosters.
The eight-try procession was the worst defensive display yet in a 16-match stretch in which the Rabbitohs have conceded 29.2 points on average and won just four times.
Strong (and underperforming) personalities seem to be at the heart of Souths’ staggeringly poor start to a season that promised a top-four return.
But the buck stops with coach Jason Demetriou, who appears destined to become the latest coach to fall victim to the poisoned chalice of following in Wayne Bennett’s footsteps.
Since stepping up from his role as Bennett’s assistant for a team that made the 2021 grand final, Demetriou has taken the Rabbitohs to seventh- (a campaign inflated by a prelim run) and ninth-place finishes, and now an 0-3 start to 2024.
It’s a classic post-Bennett trend:
· Ivan Henjak oversaw a club-record 56-0 loss to Canberra before Brisbane recovered to reach the 2009 finals; the following season the Broncos missed playoffs for the first time in 19 years and Henjak was punted weeks out from the 2011 season’s start.
· Highly-rated St George Illawarra assistant Steve Price took the 2010 premiers to ninth in 2012 and 14th in 2013 before being shown the door midway through 2014.
· Knights predecessor and successor Rick Stone lasted less than a season after inheriting a mess from Bennett in Newcastle, axed with six rounds of 2015 remaining as the club lurched to the wooden spoon.
· Dally M Coach of the Year as a rookie at Souths in 2018, Anthony Seibold swapped places with Bennett and the Broncos scraped into eighth in 2019 with more losses than wins before a finals record 59-0 defeat to Parramatta. He exited midway through Brisbane’s maiden wooden spoon campaign in 2020.
The Rabbitohs have drifted from single figures in the pre-season to $21 in the premiership market and are $2.50 to make the Top 8. Staying employed beyond this campaign is becoming a more pressing concern than September football for some at the club.
The traditional Good Friday clash with Canterbury is no longer the gimme it shaped as a month ago (though Souths are warm $1.46 favourites), while subsequent clashes with the Warriors, Sharks, Storm and Panthers could consign the club to its worst start since last collecting the spoon in 2006.
Dessie’s Titans headed straight for iceberg
Des Hasler was trumpeted as the coach to bring the hard edge the Gold Coast Titans have arguably struggled to find since their 2007.
Two games into his tenure, Hasler’s charges have been outscored 60 points to four by 2023 bottom-four battlers St George Illawarra and Canterbury – both of whom lost their other two games so far this season by at least 18 points.
The tone was set for the humiliating 32-0 loss to the Bulldogs at Belmore by retrenched centre AJ Brimson’s bombed try in the early stages, while the defeat was compounded in horrific fashion by a season-ending ACL injury to captain and front-row spearhead Tino Fa’asuamaleaui.
Hasler’s arrival appears to have stifled the Titans’ trademark freewheeling attack – scoring just one try from a kick in 160 minutes of football.
Meanwhile, diabolical defence, a perennial weakness the two-time premiership-winning mentor was tipped to rectify, made the apparently toothless Bulldogs look like an attacking juggernaut in a six-try onslaught.
wThe Titans are now favourites in the most losses market ($3.00) ahead of Queensland derbies against the Dolphins and Cowboys over the next fortnight.