The NRL is doing fairly effectively these days. Final week’s annual report contained numbers any code would crow about. Document income, file TV viewership, file crowds, a booming girls’s sport, an eight-figure surplus, a global sport that’s beginning to look half-decent. No surprise Peter V’landys felt adequate to make extra of his trademark digs at union and the AFL.
Even when V’landys’ simping for Donald Trump to indicate up on the season launch in Vegas pays off and he says or does one thing constant along with his being Donald Trump, it’s arduous to see how the NRL in 2025 can screw up this golden period. The sport is quicker and extra telegenic than ever. There’s just one wrinkle: even on this glittering new age, the sport is threatening to change into predictable.
Since 2021, the NRL has been asking one query: “Who can beat the Panthers?” Yearly, the reply has been the identical: nobody. Penrith have now received 4 premierships in a row. They’ve seemingly overcome the NRL’s built-in anti-dynasty safeguards just like the wage cap, and will effectively fulfil Phil Gould’s prediction in 2023 that they are going to win 5 or 6 in a row.
Comparisons between the Panthers and the Parramatta Eels of the early ‘80s are over. Comparisons with the St George Dragons aspect that received 11 (eleven) in a row within the ‘50s and ‘60s are lower than helpful – again then rugby league didn’t have four-point tries, five-tackle units or the 10-metre offside rule. Two AFL golf equipment have received three-peats this century – Hawthorn in 2013-14-15 and the Brisbane Lions in 2001-02-03. Collingwood managed to win 4 in a row throughout the Nice Melancholy.
To grasp the sheer rarity of what the Panthers have finished (or are nonetheless doing), we’ve to look additional afield. Tom Brady and Invoice Belichick, the most effective quarterback-coach partnership in NFL historical past, by no means received greater than two consecutive Tremendous Bowls. The Kansas Metropolis Chiefs, led by a generational expertise in Patrick Mahomes, received two in a row earlier than spectacularly blowing their likelihood to win three. Steph Curry in his prime took the Golden State Warriors to 3 non-consecutive NBA championships between 2015 and 2018. Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant’s Lakers received a three-peat from 2000 to 2002. The almighty ‘90s-era Chicago Bulls received two, and possibly would have stitched collectively eight championships in a row if it weren’t for Michael Jordan’s two-year stint in minor-league baseball.
The closest modern crew in a significant skilled sporting league with a file roughly just like the Panthers is Manchester Metropolis, the all-conquering, all-hated Goliath of the Premier League. The comparability isn’t actually honest to the Panthers – they don’t have Gulf monarchy petro-dollars, for one. Most of their gamers are homegrown, for an additional. Even when the wage cap didn’t exist, it’s arduous to think about they’d be forking out greater than AU$2.1bn for his or her roster, as Man Metropolis are. Nor have they got allegations of rampant monetary wrongdoing in opposition to them.
Regardless of the causes for it, Man Metropolis’s dominance during the last 13 years has been plain. For everybody apart from diehard Metropolis followers, the numbing predictability of their supremacy has additionally been tortuous.
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The NRL just isn’t there but. However the hole between the highest of the comp and everybody else is now very vast. With the core of Penrith’s squad signed till at the very least 2027, it doesn’t present many indicators of closing. Whereas they’ve misplaced James Fisher-Harris and Jarome Luai, they’ve shrugged off massive losses earlier than.
Apart from the Storm and possibly the Roosters, there are only a few groups which have a practical likelihood of difficult for the premiership. With two extra groups resulting from enter the comp by 2028, the NRL’s pool of gamers is simply going to get stretched thinner. And the Panthers’ manufacturing line of younger homegrown expertise remains to be the ultimate.
The NRL’s biggest power is that it may well nonetheless inform compelling tales. Watching the Warriors go on a dream run in 2023, or the Bulldogs lastly make the finals final 12 months, was monumental – not just for followers of each groups, however for the code’s wider fanbase.
However sports activities leagues dwell and die on their competitiveness. If the Panthers juggernaut retains on rolling, eventually it’s going to get tougher to maintain informal and potential followers . Although they’d by no means admit it, V’landys and co have to be quietly hoping that 2025 is the 12 months somebody – anybody – lastly ends the Panthers’ dream run.
