So What Did We Learn?

The Sharks celebrating their emotional victory over the Titans

Round 1 of the NRL season is now over and I hope, unlike some of the Aussie cricket team, you all did your homework. What are the takeaways from the first week of matches and what was most surprising?

We don’t want to get carried away by any specific performance or lack thereof, as after all, one match does not a season make and plenty of teams have started slow and ended up having successful seasons. But that doesn’t mean we can’t look at what happened and leave us with some valid thoughts.

For the most part, the games were relatively uncompetitive. The Rabbitohs 18 point victory to open the season on Thursday seemed as though it would leave the Bunnies near the top of the ladder on for and against, but by the end of the round four other teams had won by even more.

So the first question to ask is how bad were the teams that got smashed and does it mean anything?

The Tigers were handed the worst of the thrashings on Monday night by the Knights and looked awful. I don’t think many had huge expectations for the Tigers and a lot of the result comes down to how well the Knights played at home. More importantly, the Tigers were dealing with one of their own passing away only a week earlier in Mosese Fotuaika and I can’t imagine how much that would have been on the minds of the Tigers players. I am willing to give them a pass for their Round 1 efforts, but Mick Potter needs to get his team looking more like a football team in time for Round 2, or else some real questions will have to be raised.

The Warriors are another team with a new coach who looked like they were ill-prepared in Round 1. Matt Elliott would have wondered what he signed up for whilst watching the Warriors inept efforts against Parramatta. Whist Parramatta were clearly on fire, I honestly think this one was more about the Warriors defence than any long term sign about the Eels improvements.

Yes, Parramatta will be better than last year, but I could have made a line break against the Warriors on Saturday given the size of those holes. The Warriors have so much talent and Matt Elliott is a pretty good coach, but it looks like the more things change the more they stay the same for New Zealand. Talent stops meaning much when discipline, effort and concentration go out the window and the Warriors consistently put up efforts like this in away games. The fact the players wanted Tony Iro to get the job over Elliott may mean that Elliott will never really be able to get through to this team, but we will have to see if they can turn it around and make use of the roster they have on paper.

On the subject of discipline, the Roosters have got to be one of the most frustrating teams to support. I am unfortunate enough to be friends with several Roosters fans, frankly it probably would mean I know most of the Roosters’ fans, and they were left shaking their heads at the continued lack of improvement to their discipline.

The commentators during the game had an interesting conversation about why the Roosters have such poor discipline year after year and Gus suggested it could be a lack of respect for authority. I have to agree with that assessment. The Roosters have such a great roster, but they shoot themselves in the foot by thinking they will get away with murder over and over again. They try to make every single play a match winning one rather than just completing their tackles and sticking to the game plan.

The last few years has seen the Roosters have several off field indiscretions and their players tend to get away with minimal punishment. Sure they will stand a player down, but then they bring him back a week later like nothing happened. I’m sure many of you have seen or heard stories of partying Roosters around the Eastern Suburbs as well. That’s fine, but I believe it has a direct correlation with how many penalties they give away on game day.

Change the culture off the field and you will change it on the field.

Trent Robinson will get through to them eventually and I think they’ll make the finals, but it has to start by preaching discipline and patience. They will score a lot of points this season though, win or lose. They have so many weapons.

Penrith handily beat Canberra, with the score blowing out late and I thought Penrith showed clear signs of the culture change Phil Gould is implementing coming to fruition. The Panthers have an ok roster, with some decent additions, but they are still quite a no-frills team. They are only going to win matches by playing harder and smarter than their opponents and I was impressed with their defence against Canberra. They might not have an amazing season, but they won’t go quietly against anyone it seems.

Canberra on the other hand looked poor, but they are an enigma. You count them out and they go on a run to make the finals. You predict them to make the finals and they barely win a game. They always seem to win enough home games to be decent, but I honestly have no idea what to expect from them week to week. Next week they might win convincingly or lose again and nothing would surprise me.

The Manly win over the Broncos was about what I expected. Manly should be a better team than the Broncos, but both teams should be solid enough. I really didn’t take too much out of it besides the fact that I think Corey Norman should be playing at 6 and is wasted at fullback.

The Cowboys win over the Bulldogs was also relatively expected, with all the outs the Bulldogs had. The match was played on neutral ground in Gosford and I think both teams will still be pushing for a top 4 spot by the end of the season.

No result was more obvious than the Storm over the Dragons though. That is what happens when the reigning premiers host a team I think will be trying to avoid the wooden spoon. If you didn’t see that result coming, I don’t know what to tell you.

Finally the Sharks. Bless their cotton socks. The match was a bit weird and had quite a lot of errors and thus few points were scored. But the fans were incredible and I legitimately had goose bumps as they sang ‘Up, Up Cronulla’ after the win. Regardless of what happens with them now, I was really happy for their players and fans that they could at least enjoy that moment. That being said, that game lived inside the vacuum of the moment and I don’t think it can be used to gauge much about either team going forward.

That does it for Round 1 and I already can’t wait for Round 2 to start in a couple of days.

Oh football, how I missed you.