Here’s your repeat set for Round 20:
That’s a wrap for the bottom eight
Wildly silly idea
It was a round to remember for…the New Zealand Warriors
It was a round to forget for…the Sydney Roosters
Play/s of the Round: Rabbitohs
Annesley’s Briefing Summary
That’s A Wrap
The 2020 season is all over for eight teams after 20 rounds. For some, the end couldn’t come soon enough while one or two teams could have chased down a finals spot in any other season.
Brisbane Broncos
It was the season from hell for the Broncos. Their worst in club history, and one that they could still be feeling in years to come with David Fifita heading down the M1 for 2021 onwards.
With the worst attack scoring just 13.4 points per game and the worst defence at 31.2 points conceded per game, the Broncos deserved to end the 2020 season holding the wooden spoon.
Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs
Once again, a genuine lack of talent kept the Bulldogs firmly planted towards the bottom of the ladder. Kieran Foran and Raymond Faitala-Mariner developed a promising combination. However, Foran’s injury issues kept a lid on any overall improvements for the team. Trent Barrett has a lot of work to do when he arrives at the club for his first preseason in charge.
North Queensland Cowboys
Paul Green is gone but the Cowboys have an excellent replacement in Todd Payten arriving for 2021. He takes over a squad that has grossly underperformed in 2020. Injury issues or not, there is plenty of talent on the roster. This group should have finished a lot higher up than 14th.
Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles
There is no question that missing Tom Trbojevic for most of the season significantly lowered Manly’s season expectations in 2020. They looked like a different team throughout the first five rounds with Trbojevic fit. We caught a glimpse of how much his presence adds to the Sea Eagles attack in Round 19, too.
However, the toughness and ability to grind out promising results despite the injury toll that we saw in 2019 wasn’t there in 2020. While injuries can justify a portion of a disappointing season, Manly took a large step backwards this year.
St George-Illawarra Dragons
Another year of mediocrity has cost Paul McGregor his job. Anthony Griffin takes over a side in 2021 that has shown the odd glimpse of good form in 2020, but ultimately lacked consistent quality in key playmaking positions.
Matthew Dufty finally played the sort of footy many knew he could. Although, he became less effective as the season went on with defences soon adjusting for his long passes out wide. Like the Cowboys, the Dragons list is one that should have much higher expectations in 2021.
Wests Tigers
You can almost cut and paste any Tigers review from the last five years here. An inconsistent attack and poor defence meant the Tigers dropped too many games against beatable opposition to fall three wins short of a spot in the finals.
Josh Aloiai stood out amongst an otherwise poor pack that struggled to contain top tier teams in the competition. From there, Wests edge defence allowed far too many points to be scored through them, undoing a lot of the good work the likes of Benji Marshall and David Nofoaluma produced in attack.
New Zealand Warriors
You’re not going to find a more impressive 10th place finish than what the Warriors achieved in 2020.
Gold Coast Titans
Any other season and the Titans would be fighting for a spot in the Top 8 right now. Winners of five on the bounce to end the season and looking better every week, Justin Holbrook has worked some magic with this group over the last two months.
With AJ Brimson already changing the dynamic of the attack and with David Fifita and Tino Fa’asuamaleaui to arrive in 2021, the Titans will be a popular pick for the Top 8. There is always one team the talking heads hype up too early, but this group feels like one that can continue to improve and return to finals footy.
Annual wild idea time
Something like this comes up every season.
As the games become less important and everybody starts to look ahead to the finals, desperation to fix a problem that doesn’t really exist sweeps over a section of rugby league fans and media.
This year: Wild Card Round.
Sure, Round 20 didn’t feature any must-watch matchups. But who outside of Brisbane didn’t sit back and quietly enjoy the Broncos being handed the spoon?
The Rabbitohs running up 60 points on the defending premiers?
How about a bunch of relatively no-name Raiders beating a Top 8 side?
The up and coming Titans dismantling a Knights outfit preparing to play finals football for the first time since 2013?
You don’t have a rugby league heart if you weren’t warmed by the Warriors ending their unprecedented season with a win for them to finish at 10th on the ladder.
They might have been ‘dead’ games, but Round 20 had plenty to offer. Too much to warrant a single Wild Card Round and lowering the value of every round before it.
The Sharks finished with 10 wins, 10 losses and a 0 points differential. They are perfectly average and playing finals footy this season. Plenty argue that the floor to qualify for finals football is already too low.
It’s always difficult to gauge how serious these leaked ideas are. Perhaps it was put out there to keep the conversation alive during a quiet week. However, as we’ve seen over the last 12 months, these wacky ideas are being implemented more and more depending on who supports them. Let’s hope an exciting Round 20 and a perfect example of a mediocre team qualifying for the finals puts the wild card conversation back to bed.
It was a round to remember for…
The South Sydney Rabbitohs put 60 points on their biggest rivals. They’re not going to forget this past weekend any time soon, but we will get to them. Instead, it’s a round to remember for the New Zealand Warriors.
A round that brings the end to a season like no other. If Oxford Dictionary circles ‘unprecedented’ as the Word of the Year for 2020, you can put the Warriors season right there in the example sentences supplied with the definition.
Determined to stay focused and perform as well as they could right through to the end of Round 20, the look of relief on the player’s faces following their 40-28 win over the Sea Eagles on Sunday said it all.
The game itself captured so much of their 2020 season in one.
Tohu Harris was once again brilliant. He has been the best player at the club in 2020 and continues to be the most underrated player in the NRL. Perhaps next year he will crack the Daily Telegraph’s Top 100 list?
Chanel Harris-Tavita handed out four try assists in another mature performance. One of those try assists went to Eli Katoa who continues to prove that he is a player the club can build around.
Adam Keighran came out of nowhere to add instant value to the side. Peta Hiku - who has earned an extension with the club - adjusted well to his change of position, just as so many others have done all season. Kodi Nikorima chimed in with some handy plays.
Perennial underachievers that have regularly had their effort and commitment questioned over the years, the 2020 season can change the perception of the Warriors forever. But the pressure is on for 2021. Expectations have changed.
Initially expecting to take over a side languishing towards the bottom of the ladder, Nathan Brown’s Warriors will have Top 8 hopes given their recent results and the arrival of Addin Fonua-Blake and Ben Murdoch-Masila.
It was a round to forget for…
The Sydney Roosters flew out of the blocks on Friday night. Josh Morris shrugged off Campbell Graham in the 3rd minute to score with relative ease. They almost scored another try soon after. For a moment, the Roosters looked every bit like defending premiers that would start the 2020 finals series coming off a win.
What followed even left Andrew Voss speechless.
The Rabbitohs ran in 60 points. Alex Johnston scored five to take over Kyle Feldt as the NRL’s leading try-scorer in the process. At one stage, the Roosters went 14 minutes while only completing one set.
It’s a performance nobody ever thought this Roosters team could produce.
It’s one they need to forget in a hurry.
Play of the Round
Take your pick, really. The execution the Rabbitohs showed on Friday night could be replayed forever. It could win a premiership.
Cody Walker’s first try is a beauty and once again goes a long way to highlighting the adjustments the Rabbitohs have made since Latrell Mitchell went down.
Adam Reynolds digs deep into the line, and with Cameron Murray putting his foot down at exactly the right moment, Walker breaks the line with ease.
Typically regarded as a left-side player, Walker has been sweeping over to the right side of the field to fill Mitchell-like positions more often over the last month. He sent Dane Gagai over two weeks ago with a similar action.
On both occasions you can see Reynolds and Walker communicating the play just as the settling tackle under the post takes place.
Back to the left side, Walker takes possession following a darting Damien Cook run. Cook engages the marker, and with Sitili Tupouniua not getting off his line at A, Walker is able to get on Kyle Flanagan’s outside shoulder and force the defence to jam in.
Gagai’s pass puts Johnston on the outside with Bailey Sironen continuing his hard decoy run all the way up the field in support.
Minutes later Walker holds his run. He knows the defence will come out to meet him. Once another Sironen decoy run drags in Flanagan, Walker beats the outside defence with a floating pass for Johnston to score his second.
But the leading contender for Play of the Round came in the second half. Cameron Murray gets the Rabbitohs downhill with a carry out of dummy half and a quick play-the-ball. Walker, as he was all night, found himself in the right place at the right time to take advantage, quickly darting from dummy half to settle Liam Knight in the middle 15-metres up the field.
With a late offload, Knight creates the second phase. The aerial angle shows the Roosters defence struggling to keep up through the middle as the Rabbitohs release another two offloads with Murray involved again after starting the tackle. The Roosters are shot by the time Murray finds Allan.
Just as with the other two tries, Sironen runs the decoy and Walker is able to get the ball to the outside for Johnston to score. It’s another example of Allan’s improvements which Oscar expanded on this week.
Now, the Rabbitohs produced one of the all-time great performances in Round 20. It did come just a week after losing to the side running 16th, though. They’re rocks and diamonds at the moment, but their diamonds wouldn’t look out of place at ANZ Stadium on Grand Final day.
Graham Anselsey’s Briefing Summary
Despite not being ones to spend a lot of time focused on referees and measuring the impact a single poor decision can have on a game, we want to offer a summary of Graham Annesley’s weekly reviews that doesn’t deliberately mislead or misuse quotes to generate further controversy.
After giving thanks to everybody involved in getting the NRL season through 20 rounds, Graham Annesley provided some numbers to show the difference between 2019 and 2020.
He had two incidents to show from Rabbitohs v Roosters.
First, Campbell Graham had a try denied in the corner. Annesley played the Bunker audio as Ashley Klein worked through the decision. Not trying to show whether it was right or wrong, he wanted to show how thorough the process is to get to the final decision.
"I'm not prepared to say it's wrong."
Luke Keary tackled Mark Nicholls without the ball. The Bunker can be heard trying to determine who the ball touched and where. In the end, they didn't have the angles to determine one way or the other and stuck with the on-field decision.
Annesley called it a "50/50."
"I don't think the Bunker had any other option than to go with the on-field decision."
To wrap things up, Annesley wanted to "set the scene" for the NRLW competition by showing a promo video ahead of the first game on Saturday.
Asked about hip-drop tackles, Annesley referred back to his comments last week. Despite the predictable angle a lot of people are running with, this sort of tackle isn't a Storm issue. It's an NRL-wide issue: "It's actually been around the last three seasons."
"I'm very concerned about it."