Thought I'd write a little bit about my takeaways from Round One of the NRL Season. Managed to watch the majority of almost all of the games so let me know what you think. Tried to stay as rational as possible given it's only been one game but I am only human.
Latrell Mitchell's Performance
My biggest surprise from the season opener on Thursday night was the performance of Latrell Mitchell, who hit the ground running with 19 runs, 180m, 11 tackle breaks, a try, try assist, line break and line break assist. Trell has traditionally been a bit slow out of the blocks to start the season and coming off a lengthy injury lay off against the defending Premiers, I was expecting a fair few cobwebs. Instead, we got one of the best games of his young career at fullback, as he looked far more involved than he has previously and terrorised poor Reimis Smith and George Jennings on the left edge. Even though Souths weren’t great for most of the match and couldn’t end their drought in Melbourne, I still think Rabbitohs fans will walk away feeling incredibly positive about their prospects for this season with Latrell in such good shape.
Kevolution Episode 1 - A New Hope
Now I did do a pisstake tweet following the Broncos 24-16 loss to Parramatta suggesting that pride was more important than winning (concerning how many thought this was genuine), but I do think there were a lot of promising signs of out of their round one defeat. Anthony Milford finally woke from his two-year slumber (conveniently when he’s off-contract) and looked very good in the first half, while their backline (particularly Isaako) and overall attitude was significantly improved. The second half fade out was still there, but with the injuries to Lodge, Coates and Asiata as well as the effect of the new rules, it didn’t have the same weak feeling that it did in 2020. I still don’t think they’ll be a great side this season, but I think they’ll be closer to 8th than last if they can replicate that performance on a consistent basis. BONUS TAKE: I thought it was bizarre that Tevita Pangai Junior played just 38 minutes across three stints. Not sure how much of this was to do with the forced reshuffle of the pack but it will be interesting to monitor his minutes over the next month. Also, get the Cooper Cronk mannequin out of the 7 jersey and put Tom Dearden back in please Kevvie, there is no logical reason for this.
Long Way To Go For The Bulldogs and Titans
Two teams that came into round one with significant hype despite missing the finals in 2020 were the Bulldogs and Titans, and both significantly underwhelmed in their first hit out. The Bulldogs were dealt a tough hand with the conditions but did themselves no favours with some awful handling errors and soft defence. Their forwards were played off the park by a Knights pack led by an impressive Daniel Saifiti and I thought their much-improved back five failed to deliver on expectation. I’m not too sure why Corey Waddell is playing more minutes than Raymond Faitala-Mariner or why Nick Cotric is playing as a hybrid centre/wing, but I did think Kyle Flanagan actually looked decent with ball in hand. They’ll need to be significantly better to even compete with Penrith this weekend.
I don’t think the Titans were quite as bad as some people are suggesting, but they lacked a lot of polish on the end of their sets and were never able to capitalise on their dominant periods of the match. The knives are already out for new recruit David Fifita (although mostly from salty Broncos fans online), but it will obviously take some time for Holbrook to work out how to best utilise his skill set and Fifita to become comfortable on the left edge. While it’s definitely not panic stations yet, they’ll be desperate to knock off Brisbane this weekend to avoid the media blowtorch that will be applied if they go winless in the opening fortnight.
Payten Press Conference
Maybe the biggest talking point out of the weekend was Todd Payten’s press conference following his side's 24-0 loss to Penrith, where he spoke at length about Jason Taumalolo’s future role and singled out some of his defensive efforts. While I thought his honesty was refreshing and incredibly insightful, I was surprised to see him put his marquee man on blast publicly, when his 17 currently has so many passengers in it. Payten obviously knows JT far better than me (hot take) and I imagine he wouldn’t have done it unless he believed it would send a message to both Jason and the squad about the standards he expects from them. Regardless, I hope he privately blasted Josh McGuire for moving like a Mack Truck with flat tyres in defence and Coen Hess for impersonating a first grader, just to make sure they got the message as well.
On Taumalolo’s role, I’ve got no problem with his minutes being capped at the 50-60 minute mark, as long as they’re maximising his production in these shortened minutes. I'd still love to see them play with more variation in his carries (use him as a wide runner at times rather than just a battering ram), so it will be interesting to see how he responds over the next month.
Joseph Tapine
On a more positive note, I just had to give a mention to Raiders lock Joseph Tapine, who picked up right where he left off with his performance against the Tigers in round one. His rise over the last twelve months has been truly astounding and it was incredibly pleasing to see that his 2020 form now looks like the expectation rather than the exception, with 131 metres, 3 offloads, 1 try assist, 1 line break assist and 29 tackles on Sunday. Stats aside, I’m not sure if there is a more difficult player in the competition to bring to ground at the moment and his ability to stand in the tackle and provide a late offload or quick play the ball is incredibly beneficial to Josh Hodgson and the other Raiders middles. BONUS TAKES: The Ryan James try was the highlight of my weekend (a genuine goosebumps moment), Hudson Young’s potential is terrifying and Ryan Sutton’s continual improvement is such a nice under the radar narrative in this stacked Raiders pack (easy to forget that he was left out of the Raiders side in the 2019 GF run).
Leiliability
I have defended one Joseph “BJ” Leilua more than any mentally sound individual should have over the last five or so years, but his performances over the last 18 months have been downright disgraceful. I was hoping he’d bounce back this season given he’s worked his way back into shape, but his performance on Sunday both on and off the field suggested that he’s got no interest in being the player that he once was in Canberra. His work rate in yardage has fallen off completely, he seemingly gets no good early ball in attack and any discipline that he’d built up under Ricky Stuart both with and without the ball seems to have gone as well. I won’t lose any sleep over it given he’s no longer on my team, but it’s just disappointing to see such a talented player dish up what he has been recently. With his age and locker room history, there’s a fair chance he'll be out of the league soon if he can’t get his head together (please don’t let it end like this Joey).
New Rules
I don’t want to rant too much on the new rules again as I’ve already had my boomer takes about them broadcast on Fox Sports over the weekend, but I can’t talk about the opening round without touching on them. As a fan, I absolutely hate the ‘Six Again’ for offside, as I think it essentially encourages teams to infringe in the first two tackles as the punishment isn’t a genuine deterrent. Some of the defensive sets from teams trying to pin their opposition in their own 20 over the weekend were obscene, as players raced offside, daring the referee to call six again. As much as I didn’t love the initial introduction of the set restart as much others, I actually thought the balance between penalties/set restarts was fairly good by the end of last season. The addition of a set restart for almost every infringement this season feels completely unnecessary and I’m not sure if it’s sustainable for NRL players for an entire season (let alone the poor semi-professional players in Reserve Grade). Fortunately, rugby league and particularly the current administration have a fetish for changing rules as they go, so maybe I’ll send PVL a poorly worded fan letter and get them all changed back. BONUS TAKE: I actually don’t mind the new video referee decision making system, I just think it will take some getting used to. I’m glad to see they’re fixing the issue of lost minutes during this process though, that issue over the weekend was so village (to use a Cricket term).
