NRL Winners and Losers: Dreadful Dragons, Roosters bounce back and refereeing blunders

Just when you thought you were out, they drag you right back in.

The NRL had looked like a procession in Round 1, nothing but blowouts and disappointment, but it roared back with a bang in Round 2.

Manly? Lost. Penrith? Lost. Brisbane? Lost. Naturally, the big winners were Melbourne – who didn’t play at all – and confusingly, Canberra and Newcastle, who are 2-0 for reasons nobody really understands.

Even the Wests Tigers – yeah, them! – won comfortably, though they were helped by an increasingly hopeless Parramatta. Remember when they sacked Brad Arthur and got in the next big thing, Jason Ryles? Those middling BA seasons seem like the salad days.

It’s a lot to get through on a sweltering Sydney Sunday, just your casual 36 degrees in the shade, so let’s get to it.

A good week for…

Underdogs, with the Sydney Roosters leading the charge and Canberra backing it up.

A story appeared late last week about how much the bookies had lost in Round 1, with Melbourne’s win over Parra paying big time for everyone who backed the Storm and any whole host of try scorers, as there were nine of them.

They made it all back, however, by Friday evening with first Manly, then Penrith going down, sending accas swirling down toilets everywhere.

It started early, too. The night before, unbackable favourites Carlton had been 40 points up on Richmond in the AFL, only to collapse. For those who don’t follow Aussie Rules, that’s like Wigan being 22-6 up at home to Hull FC and…oh wait.

Easts were the biggest shock. They are already in a transitional year, then got belted Round 1, then lost players to injury. Penrith away – even if that currently takes place in Parramatta – was about the toughest ask possible.

Yet the Chooks gave it the reddest of red hot cracks and came through. It won’t be the most glamorous win in the history of the Roosters, but for a team ill accustomed to being underdogs, it might be their grittiest.

Then we got Saturday night in Canberra. Matty Nicholson kicked it off with a double, before a typically defiant Raiders performance overwhelmed a flat Brisbane side. Amazingly, the team tipped to finish last are 2-0.

A bad week for…

The Cowboys and Dragons, again. The 0-2 crew also includes Parra – who we’ll get to in a minute – and the Dolphins, who have the mitigation of a cyclone blowing away their ground.

North Queensland and St George Illawarra have neither. Manly whacked the Cowboys last week, which can happen in Round 1, but for the same to happen in favourable conditions at home to Cronulla was a shock.

NQ were horrendous, going down 36-12 to a Sharks side that barely got out of second gear. Coach Todd Payten already dropped Jeremiah Nanai to send a message, but things got no better.

The Dragons have had two home games against Sydney rivals, but also find themselves winless. This weekend’s edition was a disaster, throwing away a 24-12 lead with a quarter of an hour left to play to go down 24-25 to South Sydney.

Coach Shane Flanagan was given a free hit last year to get the Dragons’ house in order, but with experienced players on deck and favourable fixtures, they have been dreadful.

Standout…

Kalyn Ponga might have been spooked this week by the signing of Dylan Brown, who next year will usurp him as Newcastle’s best paid player and, indeed, the top earner in the whole game.

Instead, he responded with a performance that reminds the Knights what they are paying for. Newcastle scored four tries in the first half hour on Thursday against the Dolphins and Ponga had a hand in all of them.

This was Ponga at his elusive best, using his physical attributes of speed and evasion but also his un-coachable talent, with deception and movement that left defenders standing. Herbie Farnworth, usually one of the best, did not have an answer.

Washout…

In Round 1, Parramatta were on a hiding to nothing in Melbourne and somehow came out worse than expected. In Round 2 at home to serial wooden spooners Wests Tigers, they plumbed the depths yet further.

Jason Ryles has had a full off-season to work on a new style of play, but you’d be hard pressed to guess what it is: even when they need to chase the game, nobody was taking charge and there seemed to be minimal willingness to deviate from drives and kicks.

There were long periods where it looked like they couldn’t score if the Tigers went off. It took until the 73rd minute for the Eels to record a line break. It was rotten, rotten stuff from Parramatta.

Everyone is talking about…

Dylan Brown, who has signed a $13m, 10-year deal with the Knights starting next year.

This being the most expensive contract in NRL history, it has been hotly debated – not least because nobody really knows what to make of it.

For Brown, there are 13 million reasons to sign, but for the Knights, the move is baffling. They already have a highly-paid, run-first operator in Ponga, plus a gun young 6 in Fletcher Sharpe.

What they don’t have is a halfback – or, more accurately, they have several and none of them are good enough. Is Brown going to play 7? Is Sharpe? Will anyone pass the ball ever again?

It’s a reflection of the paucity of halves that Brown can get paid so much when he’s done nothing to suggest that he is in the level of his club teammate Mitch Moses or international teammate Jahrome Hughes, and that’s before you get to the highest echelons of Nathan Cleary, Tom Trbojevic and the like.

Good gig if you can get it, however, so fair play to Brown. For Newcastle…less so.

But nobody mentions…

The refereeing is usually high on the media agenda and almost never mentioned in this column, because refs cop too much most of the time.

This weekend, however, there were some very curious performances that merit discussion. On Friday, Manly deservedly lost to the Warriors, but would certainly have cause to query an 11-2 set restart count in favour of their hosts.

On Sunday, there was a farcical situation where the most obvious forward pass of all-time was missed to gift Parramatta a wholly undeserved try, only for Kasey Badger in the Bunker to be thrown a hospital pass to find a reason to disallow it.

On neither occasion was it critical to the result, but they were just two completely opaque moments that could well be problematic down the line.

Forward pass

All eyes are on the first game of the round, a Grand Final rematch with the rested Storm – they had the bye – against a wounded Panthers. Penrith travel as underdogs, but they’ve done that a few times and come home with the points. Class is permanent.

Our unbeaten teams are the ones to follow.

Souths have a tough assignment in the Shire and will look to prove that their two wins weren’t quite as lucky as they looked, while Newcastle go to the Gold Coast to face a Titans side who were shellacked in their opener at Canterbury.

Those Dogs are the best bet to make it 3-0 as they run into Parramatta, while Canberra go to Manly for what could be a cracker to finish the week. Last year, Manly led 20-6 at half time and lost to an Elliott Whitehead-inspired Raiders.