The Dolphins have shown the way so far this season but there are no guaranteed rewards for adding an 18th, 19th and 20th team Two weeks into the 2023 NRL season and the story that has captured the imagination like no other has been that of the remarkable early success of the Dolphins. The expansion team sit top of the ladder, having become just the third new outfit in 113 years – after the Brisbane Broncos and the Melbourne Storm – to win their opening two games.So followed calls to further expand the competition, according to the Daily Telegraph, which reported that the ARL Commission is planning an expansion to 20 teams by 2032. ARLC chair Peter V’landys has never...
Is this finally Latrell Mitchell’s season, can Penrith do the three-peat, and will Cameron Ciraldo resurrect the Bulldogs?Five off-field issues the NRL and its bosses face this seasonThe NRL’s basket-case club hasn’t played finals since 2011 and has not even managed to win three straight games since 2018 (when Ivan Cleary was coach). This year the 2022 wooden spooners have reunited the forces who won their long-ago 2005 premiership – coach Tim Sheens with Benji Marshall and Robbie Farah as assistants. The word out of Leichhardt is that there’s a personal, cultural and team revolution under way. Continue reading...
The players aren’t striking but questions linger around the Pride issue, a loss of trust in the NRL and the Dolphins’ successWith a new team in the mix and a fresh deal between players and officials on the table, the NRL should be flying into 2023. But for all the blue sky some big storms are brewing.BITTER PAY WAR FINALLY ENDS Continue reading...
Already there have been allegations of secret recordings, two players wrestling in the street and the union threatening to strikeIn rugby league’s roaring ‘70s, players readied themselves for a big game with a jogged lap of the oval and a Rothmans in the car park. Back then, unconventional ‘warm-ups’ such as these were acceptable, just as these days rugby league fans accept unconditionally the need for the NRL to be fired up for a new season with controversy, melodrama, skullduggery and farce.Already we have allegations of secret recordings of a conversation between NRL chief Andrew Abdo and players, two stars of the game wrestling in the streets of Canberra and being arrested on camera, and the players’ union threatening to...
Phil Gould labelled it a five-year plan. He was wrong on the timeline but a decade later this Panthers team is a juggernautThe golden west is now in a golden age. Penrith, just the third NRL team to win win back-to-back unified competitions in three decades, were as close to perfect as they come.Their grand final win was a demolition job, a 28-12 onslaught few teams in history could have withstood – not even the brave Parramatta. Continue reading...