The short round deserves a short recap. Melbourne and St George Illawarra played out a defence-less try-fest that was extremely entertaining, although not a game for the purists, and the Dragons left Melbourne with another loss. Penrith demolished the Warriors at home with the New Zealanders not being offered a look in against their Origin… Read More NRL Recap – Round 17, 2018

I don’t even know why we bother playing the full eighty minutes (and by “we play” I mean “I watch, you do”). Most of the games this weekend were decided in the last fifteen to twenty minutes, negating the previous hour of play. And in most of those cases, the previous hour did little to… Read More NRL Recap – Round 16, 2018

It wasn’t a particularly close round with a number of teams stamping their authority on the opposition. I don’t actually have a lot to say about it other than repeating “x team was in control against y team but may have let in a few late tries”. It wasn’t the greatest advertisement for rugby league… Read More NRL Recap – Round 15, 2018

We had a delayed start to round 14, with play between Penrith and Canberra not getting underway until the Friday pub slot. The Raiders faded, as they are wont to do, and let Nathan Cleary slot the winning field goal in the closing minutes, securing two wins in the week for the young halfback. Souths… Read More NRL Recap – Round 14, 2018

A shortened round 13 began on Thursday and reminded me what life was like outside the NRL bubble. The Cowboys looked a little like their old selves on their way to beating the Sea Eagles. Souths, despite losing their top four players to Origin prep, managed to keep a lack lustre Cronulla side at bay… Read More NRL Recap – Round 13, 2018

The Broncos kicked off round 12 with an extremely flat win over the Eels in a game that excited no one. Canberra managed to avoid fading away in the dying minutes by taking the lead only in the dying seconds of the game over Manly. The Storm kept the Cowboys at bay with a single… Read More NRL Recap – Round 12, 2018

I spent the weekend in Melbourne – drinking beer at GABS Festival, which Sydney peeps should get around when it comes to town – so I didn’t watch a whole lot of rugby league compared to a usual weekend. Look, it was probably not quite four games with the second half of Toronto-Toulouse thrown in… Read More NRL Recap – Round 11, 2018

I’m not going to sugarcoat it: it wasn’t a great round of football by any stretch of the imagination. I think the see-sawing battle between the Panthers and the Cowboys, with North Queensland picking up a much needed victory, was the closest we could come to enjoying the on-field product. As if we needed a… Read More NRL Recap – Round 9, 2018

The Anzac round stretched over an enormous five days and feels like it has been running since the Gallipoli landing. Nonetheless, on the day itself nearly a week ago, the Dragons carved out a convincing win over the Roosters while in front of sell out crowd in Melbourne, the Storm completely dismantled the Warriors with… Read More NRL Recap – Round 8, 2018

Round 7 opened with a dour, and that’s being kind, affair between the Roosters and the Bulldogs, resulting in a single try to Easts which was enough to win the game. The Warriors were the better team on the day of their top of the table clash with the Dragons. Melbourne were able to run… Read More NRL Recap – Round 7, 2018