NRL Wrap: Time to go Loz, Jason Ryles on the brink and the Panthers are purring

This weekend was the final of the Origin period, and thus the start of the run-in. Good job, too, because we got all the results we needed to create a good old fashioned finals logjam.

Cronulla beat Redcliffe, Penrith got the two against Parramatta, Easts snuck past St George Illawarra and the Broncos did the business on the Gold Coast, creating a clear hierarchy within the ladder as the whips get cracking.

In the spirit of the Tour de France happening on the other side of the world, we’ve got a breakaway four of the Raiders on 14 wins, the Bulldogs and Melbourne on 12 and the Warriors on 11. Barring catastrophe – and given the injuries in Auckland, that’s possible – they should be the top four.

Behind them, the peloton is forming nicely.

We’ve got six teams between eight and ten victories, fighting over just four places in the post-season.

Brisbane are leading out, but have been known to crack before, while Penrith have the palmares, but nobody knows if the legs are still there.

Manly and the Roosters are puncheurs, great on their day but maybe not up to the mountains to come, and the Dolphins and Sharks are super domestiques, who might become good but haven’t proven anything yet.

If you don’t like Le Tour, apologies for that confusion. The point is that it’s all very balanced, and we should be in for a few crackers to come.

A good week for…

Penrith, who made it five wins on the spin to catapult themselves into finals contention.

They did so by beating a poor Parramatta, but let’s look through that: this run has been achieved entirely during the Origin period, when they have been down bulk players, and against opponents that they, in their current state, have little right to beat.

Winning away in New Zealand without their stars was superb. Turning over the high-flying Bulldogs was even better. In between, they snuck past the Eels (the first time) on a back-up weekend and the Tigers in a tight one.

This is the NRL, and wins don’t come for free.

Five on the trot puts Penrith behind only the Raiders in the form table – and their next month goes Bunnies, Tigers, Titans, Knights.

It’ll be nine in a row before you know it, and after that, it’s Storm into Raiders into Bulldogs. Mouthwatering stuff.

A bad week for…

St George Illawarra, who were the masters of their own downfall at Kogarah Oval on Saturday teatime.

The Dragons had plenty go for them against the Roosters, but proved incapable of picking up a result that could have drastically changed their prospects for the season. Instead, they head to the last chance saloon against the Bulldogs next week.

Both sides defended horrendously to start the game, and the points were beating the clock well almost all the way to half time.

St George Illawarra were leading 18-12 when Sam Walker was sent to the sin bin for a cannonball tackle.

While he was off the field, they conceded a try. When he returned, the halfback slotted a field goal before the break. After it, Walker laid on another for Billy Smith. The 18-12 had become 25-18.

Most notable was the paper-thin defence.

Smith’s try was beyond easy, with Luciano Leilua sleeping on the inside and Jaydn Su’A left grasping thin air.

Prior to that, Tyrell Sloan had given the most Tyrell Sloan performance possible, showing great toe for his try but acting like a training cone as Daniel Tupou ran past him twice.

For all that Shane Flanagan has tried to harden up this side, they’re two wins down on where they were after 15 games in 2024 and 2022 and one back on where they were in 2021.

The difference was 2023 – the year the coach got sacked after ten matches. The club, really, has gone nowhere since.

Standout…

Nicho Hynes takes a kicking at times, and in general, it’s pretty fair.

His Dally M winning season of 2022 looks more and more like an argument about how silly the voting system is – be the best player on a middling team appears to be the recipe – and his pay packet, secured that year, also looks increasingly generous.

Nicho didn’t vote in 2022 and he didn’t offer himself a million dollars a year, either, so it’s harsh to blame him for either. But nevertheless, both brought expectations that, really, haven’t been delivered upon.

This weekend was a timely reminder of the talent that the halfback has.

Cronulla were in desperate need of two points against a direct rival in the Dolphins, and they needed their main playmaker to show up.

That he did, scoring the opener with a trademark dart at the line, then adding another in similar fashion after Redcliffe had staged a comeback.

Hynes then produced an outrageous pass for Sione Katoa late on to send the Shire punters home happy – a statement showing from the Sharks 7.

Washout…

Jason Ryles, who has now exited the honeymoon period at Parramatta without much noticeable improvement.

There might be an argument that ending Brad Arthur’s decade-long tenure was something that had to happen at some point. His record in Leeds suggests that it might have been premature.

The same could apply to captain Clint Gutherson, who was brutally axed last year when Ryles arrived. As good as Isaiah Iongi has been at times, the leadership vacuum left by Gutho is there for everyone to see.

The sight of senior playmaker Dylan Brown dishing it at hooker against the club’s closest rivals while Joash Papalii, a rookie, ran around at five eighth told the whole story. There is a serious leadership and clarity issue, even if the long-term is being prioritised.

It’s those intangibles that are currently the issue at the Eels. They weren’t close to Penrith at all on Sunday afternoon, and it wasn’t really anything to do with personnel or tactics.

Defence is, like all things in rugby league, highly systematic – but it’s also the area of the game most about buy-in. That bit, currently, is missing.

It wasn’t that Parra players weren’t there to make tackles – a systematic flaw – it was that they just missed lots of them, and at the worst moment possible.

The Panthers have plenty of upsides, but didn’t really need to show them to score: most of their tries, especially in the second half, were softer than soft.

The Eels are lacking Mitchell Moses in attack, but his absence doesn’t explain the horrorshow tackling, falling off tackles and lacking intensity.

Everyone is talking about…

Origin, still.

The inquest is fully underway in New South Wales, with coach Laurie Daley and halfback Nathan Cleary coming in for deserved criticism.

Cleary gave a mea culpa in the sheds after the game, owning his poor performance. He’s got a 0-3 record in deciders and a 8-9 record overall in Origin, so there wasn’t much counterargument to be had and, to his credit, Cleary didn’t attempt it. Contrast Laurie Daley.

The coach had a tetchy moment with a journalist in the press conference and insisted that he is building something with the Blues, a curious take given that a) it’s only a three game series and b) he’s coached six of them now, winning just once.

NSWRL weren’t overburdened with strong applicants after Michael Maguire left – which is pretty much how Daley got the job – and the coach retains enough support on the board and in the media to stay in post.

Daley’s day job is hosting a sports radio breakfast show with a rotating cast of the NRL pundit class, not to mention shouting the odds himself on Fox League, so he’ll always have a lot of supporters in the media. Being a champion player, as Daley undoubtedly was, engenders a lot of public support, too.

But at some point, he might have to face the music that he’s not that good a coach. NSW could and should do a lot better.

But nobody mentions…

Emma Verran – though they should, because for the second week running, GIO Stadium in Canberra saw a stunning solo performance by a fullback.

This time it was the Raiders on the receiving end as the Sharks 1 tore the hosts to shreds.

She scored four tries and probably should have had two more, but passed them on for teammates to finish.

The expansion of the NRLW has been a delicate process, an exercise in gradually expanding the talent pool while maintaining a competitive competition.

Crushing performances like this might point to a gap between the best and worst players that inevitably occurs when you increase the playing group by 20%, but in truth, Verran – under her pre-marriage name of Tonegato – already had form for this sort of thing prior well to expansion.

Even fewer people mentioned Megan Pakulis, but she made a little bit of history, too: the former Canada Raven, Ontario Osprey and York Valykrie is now a Gold Coast Titan.

That makes her the first born and bred North American to play first grade rugby league in Australia since Greg Smith’s appearance for Newcastle in 1999.

Forward pass

Next week is the first official post-Origin round, which means the run to the finals is finally here.

We’ve mentioned the main contenders above, but beneath them, there is a huge cluster of sides who desperately need results to stay in the hunt.

The sudden death starts with the Cowboys v Dolphins on Thursday, then Panthers and Bunnies on Friday, with North Queensland and South Sydney knowing that it’s lights out if they can’t get up. As mentioned, the Dragons are in a similar situation on Saturday against Canterbury.

If any of those three lose, they’d need to go pretty much unbeaten to make the playoffs thereafter – which, on the evidence of the season so far, is too much too ask.

The Tigers and Titans is a bit of a Spoonbowl, but whoever loses that is finished, too, though in fairness, that might have already happened anyway.