NRL Conclusions: Storm warning, Panthers pants and Walsh wipeout

Round 6 was brought to you by the Qantas Frequent Flyer programme – we went from Perth to Darwin to Melbourne and Newcastle on Saturday and Sunday, artfully skipping Sydney entirely on the way.

We started with another Panthers disaster. The ignominy of losing five on the spin – and to the Dolphins at that – was lessened by the disastrous showing from Brisbane on Friday. We should credit the Roosters, who were excellent, but really, the Broncos are no great shakes on this form at all.

On the far flung fields, Cronulla downed a poor Manly and the Cowboys recorded a third straight win over Souths, while in the Top End, Parramatta recorded their now annual defeat.

Canberra, on this occasion, were the lucky side to get the chance to travel north for the most guaranteed two points of the year.

The Tigers grabbed some revenge on Newcastle for their Round 1 defeat, too, increasing the league’s most fragile confidence, while in Melbourne…well, let’s start there.

A good week for…

The Storm, who underlined just how much better they are than everyone else by crushing the previously rated Warriors.

In isolation, we shouldn’t be that surprised: Melbourne have now won 17 on the spin against New Zealand, the longest such streak in the entire NRL. Last time the Wahs downed the Storm, Sam Tomkins was in the side and the first Minions movie was in cinemas.

As ever, it’s the manner of these things. It was 36-0 at half time, a true beatdown. The only question was how much the Storm would win by and, really, they put the cue in the rack to only finish 42-14.

Canterbury got the bye this weekend, so we can’t judge them, but at the moment it does seem like it’ll be those two in the Grand Final and Melbourne winning it. Everyone else isn’t close.

A bad week for…

Penrith, obviously.

Every red pen available has been put through the Panthers for 2025 following a fifth successive defeat.

While that is a little premature given their status as the best knockout team in living memory, it’s not without reason.

For a side that has always been system first, they look like a team of individuals. Nathan Cleary remains the best player in the world, with Isaah Yeo second place, but the supporting cast is now sufficiently poor that it doesn’t really matter.

Cleary is now trying so hard to lift the other blokes that he’s making errors that he’d never otherwise make. Yeo made 20 runs and 51 tackles, but you can’t help but think it limits the other good stuff he can do to have to make so many efforts.

Izack Tago, who looked like a world beater previously, has fallen off a cliff. Isaiah Papali’i was the premier backrower in the competition in 2022 at Parramatta, but looks half the player he was.

Then you chuck in all the young guys who are still finding their feet.

Not to single Tom Jenkins out, but that he plays now tells you a story. The Panthers were more than happy to let him go once upon a time.

The quality in the teams suggests that they should get enough to be finals adjacent, but it also means that the Panthers will inevitably lose Origin players regardless of how badly they’re running.

It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Standout…

Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow.

The fullback has been the best thing about the Dolphins since they came into the NRL and there’s an argument that this season was his first loss of form in their existence.

If you can remember back to their inaugural game, nobody expected anything of the Hammer. This was a guy who people thought was fast but limited, a bit of a headless chicken. Certainly the Cowboys did not think much of letting him go.

Tactically, the Dolphins have depended on Tabuai-Fidow to provide creativity. Everyone else does the grunt work, either Hamiso or Herbie Farnworth make something happen. That’s reductive, but not completely untrue.

Naturally, when either or both had an off-night, it was damaged. That didn’t happen against Penrith.

Hamiso scored a hat trick, topped the metres and set up two line breaks too. Everything went through him. The Panthers had no answer.

Washout…

Reece Walsh, who is a good cipher for what is happening in Brisbane.

The Broncos benefit massively from scheduling, in that they get games with the Dolphins and Magic Round as bonus home games every year – they’ll play 14 this year compared to Cronulla’s 10 – which means that it is really, really hard for them not to at the very least make the finals.

This year, they’ve combined four home games to two with a very soft start. Of their six games thus far, all bar one have been against a side in the current bottom five – and they lost the only game that wasn’t, against the also quite average Raiders.

So when everyone talked them up as a Premiership contender, bear all that in mind. It was a shock that the Roosters turned the Broncos over – especially given the towelling up delivered at Allianz Stadium in Round 1 – but it wasn’t that surprising.

Defensively, they’re paper thin.

Walsh does enough in attack to remind you of his potential, but is worth a few tries the other way through kick defence and poor positioning.

The job of a fullback in organising a line is massively underappreciated by the public at large, and it seems like a skill that Walsh had never had to learn.

No side with title aspirations can concede such soft points near their own line. Angus Crichton and Nat Butcher scored very easy efforts this week, as the Tigers did a week before.

Brisbane, essentially, have the deck stacked in their favour and enough good players to beat bad teams fairly consistently. Walsh is, often, that guy.

But as long as he lacks the more mundane aspects of fullback play, they’ll not be much more than flat track bullies.

Everyone is talking about…

Expansion, again.

Last week we told you it was off, thanks to Peter V’Landys attempting to bleed the Western Australian Premier, Roger Cook, dry. Cook, who has to spread his state’s money across hospitals and schools as well as NRL clubs, wasn’t having it.

Nobody in Australia ever criticises PVL, but this was quite obviously the NRL’s fault and thus there were some squeaks that the Dear Leader might have erred in his negotiating tactics.

That culminated in Cook turning up to the double header in Perth, whereupon the deal was back on. You can work out for yourself who backed down.

Either way, if it ends up with the Western Bears in the comp, then happy days. That seems more likely now than it did last week.

But nobody mentions…

Super League.

It made the news for one night on Monday – if you were watching the right channel at least – but then disappeared into the news cycle without much comment.

It’s bizarre from a UK perspective. If the NRL did invest, it would be the biggest move the game has made since the Super League war in the 1990s, and would likely wipe out the profit margin of the Australian game entirely.

That isn’t a problem if it leads to future cash down the line, but it does seem like the sort of thing that should be discussed a lot more widely than it is.

Forward pass

Easter is always a much anticipated weekend, with two major rivalry games, and this should be a belter.

Canterbury come back from the bye and straight into their traditional Good Friday clash with Souths. They’re expecting 60,000, such is the form that the table-topping Doggies are in, plus a positive mood among the Souths faithful.

To close the round on Easter Monday, the rising Wests Tigers face Parramatta in what should be a sell-out. The last two editions at CommBank Stadium have been settled by a single point, so expect a belter.

In between, there’ll likely be a full house at Brookvale on Thursday for Manly’s clash with the Dragons, the Broncos go to Auckland and the Panthers look to snap their streak against the Roosters.