Close margins were in short supply in the abbreviated NRL Round 16 schedule, but highlights, headlines and shocks were nevertheless plentiful across five matches that left multiple teams’ finals ambitions in disarray.
Meanwhile, it was a big weekend for teams at opposite end of the premiership ladder.
Storm’s staying power
Melbourne Storm’s campaign is yet to hit any genuinely great heights, but an extraordinary ninth top-four finish in 10 years seems virtually assured and their fifth minor premiership in nine seasons is looking increasingly likely.
Despite Cameron Munster’s absence – among a host of injury setbacks – since Round 11, as well as Origin taking Harry Grant and Xavier Coates out of the team last weekend, the Storm continue to get the job done.
A 30-24 victory over the fourth-placed Dolphins in a Suncorp Stadium barnburner capped a huge fortnight on the road for Craig Bellamy’s side.
After a best-on-ground display in a come-from-behind win in Auckland six days earlier, Jahrome Hughes underlined his class with the big plays against the Dolphins – highlighted by a heads-up kick to Will Warbrick, who gave him the return pass to level the scores just before halftime.
Meanwhile, Ryan Papenhuyzen made a tryscoring return from injury as a key piece of the Storm’s premiership puzzle slots back into place.
Yet again, the plethora of pundits and punters (this writer included) who predicted that this would finally be the year Melbourne came back to the pack have been served up another hefty slice of humble pie.
Cellar dwellers shine
What a weekend for teams entrenched in the bottom four.
Gold Coast Titans got the ball the rolling on Saturday afternoon with a barely comprehensible 66-6 annihilation of the Warriors, smashing club records for biggest winning margin and highest score.
It was also just the third time in premiership history the team running last on the ladder has won by 50-plus, while Jayden Campbell (26 points) set a new Titans record and Alofiana Khana-Pereira (four tries) equalled a long-standing mark.
While the spectacle later that evening was an eyesore, Souths’ 14-0 shutout of similarly Origin-depleted Manly was hugely satisfying for a team that conceded 26-plus points in 10 of its first 11 games. It was also their fourth straight win as an unlikely finals charge starts to materialise.
Wests Tigers continued the upset theme with Sunday’s round closer, smashing Canberra 48-24 to halt a 10-match Campbelltown Stadium losing streak.
The massive for-and-against swings saw the Titans and Tigers leapfrog the now last-placed Parramatta Eels, who had the bye. The trailing trio is a mere three wins outside the Top 8.
Souths incredibly are just four points shy of the five-team logjam in equal-sixth, rapidly burying the painful memories of the 1-9 start that got Jason Demtriou sacked. The Rabbitohs enjoy their last bye this weekend before a month of very winnable games against the Eels, Dolphins, Tigers and Raiders.
Big movers in the title market, the Rabbitohs have been backed into $67.
Wahs’ 2023 fairytale descending into 2024 nightmare
Gold Coast deserves every plaudit for an astonishing performance, but the Warriors’ capitulation is up there in the annals of the most horrific team performances of the NRL era.
The Titans were coming off a fortnight where they leaked 46 points to Souths and helped the Tigers end a nine-match losing streak with an insipid defeat at Leichhardt.
A massive Kiwi contingent turned out at Cbus Super Stadium to cheer on an assumed Top 8 claim-staking display, following the Warriors’ hearty three-match winning run and somewhat honourable loss to the ladder-leading Storm.
What instead unfolded was a club-record-equalling loss and 11 tries conceded to a club that had never scored more than eight in its 18-season history.
The defensive ineptitude, succession of unforced errors and – most concerningly – apparent lack of effort defied belief after a hard-fought opening period, conceding more than a point a minute from the 15th.
Linchpins Shaun Johnson and Wayde Egan, close to the best in their positions in the NRL last year, were in near career-worst touch, but the Warriors were awful from jersey 1 to 17.
The Warriors have blown out to $51 in the premiership market, but the finals remain very much a possibility given they’re only three points adrift of the Top 8 in a phenomenally even competition where several other mid-table teams are tripping on their shoelaces on a weekly basis.
But Andrew Webster has to be prepared to make some tough calls to get the campaign on the rails. His best team on paper has routinely struggled all year, while second-stringers have engineered some of the most courageous, folkloric wins in Warriors history.
The Warriors’ run home is quite palatable and they still have two byes to come…but this Saturday’s home showdown with an Origin-weary and out-of-sorts Broncos outfit is firming as must-win.
Raiders unravel
Canberra is emerging as the NRL’s most inscrutable team of 2024.
A home assignment against the tackle-shy Cowboys and a trip to Campbelltown to take on the lowly Tigers shaped as a gift-wrapped section of the schedule designed to consolidate a place in the Top 8.
Instead they’ve tumbled to 10th with a minus-79 points differential after losing 34-16 and 48-24, respectively.
The scoreline at Campbelltown flattered the Raiders, who were held scoreless in the first half and were down 42-4 before producing a three-try burst in six minutes during the last quarter of a horror afternoon against a Tigers team that had been averaging less than 16 points a game.
Fifty missed tackles.
Such is Ricky Stuart’s capacity for inspiring a turnaround, however, that the Raiders shape as a highly dangerous proposition for the Storm at AAMI Park this Saturday, despite being installed as $5 underdogs.
Bunker’s stocks continue to plummet
Inconsistency and outright incompetence from the NRL Bunker are nothing new, but it continues to be a weekly blight on the game – and it seems only a matter of time before it ruins a team’s season.
Just two weeks after Chanel Harris-Tavita and Chad Townsend were the victims of the softest double sin-binning in the history of the game, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck spent 10 minutes in the sheds for a tackle that was unlucky to be penalised in the first half.
Two prior hip drop tackles in the same game – for which we’ve seen a multitude of sin-bin punishments since the crackdown started last year – were deemed penalty and report sufficient.
Meanwhile, Sam Walker’s reflex high shot on Jacob Kiraz on the Central Coast also escaped sin-bin sanction…despite it being nearly identical to Dallin Watene-Zelezniak’s clumsy effort in Round 15 that earned 10 minutes and a one-week holiday.
It’s impossible to get it right all the time, but the proportion of times the Bunker gets it wrong flouts all commonsense.