Melbourne have lost their greatest weapon
Melbourne have legitimate excuses. Craig Bellamy’s illness is desperately unfortunate, injuries have bitten and players unexpectedly disappeared for the season, but excuses cannot hide the deeper problem: Melbourne have lost their identity.
They were once the best-educated football team in the competition. Whatever happened, every player understood the moment and made the right decision. That certainty has vanished, and Sualauvi Fa’alogo captures the contradiction. He is unbelievable with the ball but a liability without it, regularly out of position and arriving just late enough to look involved without stopping the try.
That makes him a coach killer. He must score one or two tries merely to balance what he concedes, and no serious fullback can build a career on that equation because the game remains 50 per cent defence.
Billy Slater set the proper standard. Most remember the brilliant attack, but he could also get beneath a player in the corner and prevent the grounding. Fa’alogo is not responsible for Melbourne’s collapse, yet if he keeps bringing a duck egg defensively, he must reassess his game. Talent does not excuse contact avoidance.
The Roosters and Sharks are coming
The Roosters are the side nobody has watched closely enough. They are only two points behind Penrith, everything seems to be coming together at the right time and Trent Robinson has repeatedly shown he can drive a team into September with momentum.
That matters. Teams that idle at a high level all year can reach the finals with nowhere else to go, while Brisbane kept improving last season, found ways to win and let the momentum snowball. I think the Roosters are very good at building that same pressure. I like them.
Cronulla are coming from the other direction but landing in the same dangerous place. They have won eight of their past nine, Nicho Hynes is running the ball again and Braydon Trindall runs the side, which has stripped away much of the noise around Hynes and underlined Craig Fitzgibbon’s coaching.
Cronulla do not have a player among the game’s best 10. That strengthens the argument, not weakens it. Hynes and Trindall are better than average, Blayke Brailey contributes at hooker and good players keep doing their jobs. Star power attracts headlines. Coaching wins football games.
The Knights’ premiership punch has been ripped out
Newcastle have excelled, and I thought a couple of rulings against them on Friday night cost them victory, but losing Dylan Brown and Dylan Lucas together is a savage blow at precisely the wrong time.
One is an international and the other has played Origin. With Newcastle fighting for a top-four position, that is not ordinary injury damage. It strips the side of the punch required to make a genuine finals impact.
Sandon Smith provides cover, but let’s not pretend he provides an equal replacement. This is his most consistent season in first grade and he can play, yet he remains on the improve and his best football is years away. Brown was already doing a great job.
Justin Holbrook will find a workaround because good coaches always do, but he cannot manufacture the same class. Newcastle probably needed Brown and Lucas to challenge for the premiership. Without them, the ceiling drops brutally.
The Tigers failed coaching 101
Adam Doueihi was mistreated. Benji Marshall should have attended his judiciary hearing, supported one of his key players and then personally told him he had been shifted from the starting side before the team was announced.
Instead, Doueihi successfully fought his charge, received no congratulatory call and discovered from somebody else the next morning that he had been named in jersey 22, with rookie Javon Andrews at seven. That is coaching 101 butchered.
Moving Doueihi to lock made the insult worse. He had played every game that season at halfback, had appeared only twice at lock for the Tigers and was carrying a shoulder injury. An attacking lock can operate at first receiver, but defending in the middle with a busted shoulder is another matter.
Then Pat Richards proposed a meeting involving Doueihi and Benji but excluding Doueihi’s manager, Isaac Moses, as well as chief executive Shaun Mielekamp. That was astonishingly naive. A player at that level is entitled to representation, particularly when his future and treatment are being challenged. The Tigers keep writing new chapters in the book on how to stuff up management.
That empty statement fixed nothing
Shaun Mielekamp walked out of the meeting and delivered 21 seconds of corporate fog. It was supposedly positive. Supposedly productive. Adam Doueihi would train the next day. Everything else would stay behind closed doors. Spare me.
There was no resolution. No acknowledgement of fault. No explanation of what changed. A serious club fronts the mess, owns its mistakes and tells its supporters how it will move forward. The Tigers hid behind secrecy because they could not present a united position without somebody blowing it apart.
The lead-up was just as clumsy. Pat Richards initially sought a meeting with Doueihi and Benji Marshall while leaving Isaac Moses and Mielekamp out. That plan was killed, and rightly so. Then the full group met and still produced nothing concrete.
Now comes the theatre. Cameras at training. Forced handshakes. Convenient laughter. Happy-family footage served to desperate supporters while the dispute keeps boiling underneath. Doueihi also received support from several teammates. This is not one disgruntled player screaming into the wind.
I give Doueihi little chance of staying long term. The statement was meant to kill the noise. It amplified it. The Tigers did not settle the dispute. They merely postponed the next explosion.
Manly got comfortable and paid for it
Manly have taken their eye off the very habits that revived them. Kieran Foran initially dragged them back into the fight, made them understand nothing could be taken for granted and demanded the effort that started producing victories.
Now the air seems to have escaped. They have lost three of their past four, won only two from eight and were flogged on the weekend, although the earlier defeats were close enough that there is no single fatal pattern.
I think they probably began resting on their laurels, assuming the methods would keep working without the same hunger underneath them. Football punishes that arrogance quickly.
Fatigue or the length of the season might be contributing, so Foran was right to give them several days away before an extended preparation. They do not need a revolution. They need clear heads, fresh legs and a brutal reminder that effort created the improvement in the first place.
Hannay has exposed the three-year rebuild excuse
Josh Hannay has done a magnificent job with the Titans because he rejected the lazy coach’s favourite alibi: give me three years to fix the roster.
The roster looked out of shape, so Hannay moved the pieces, settled positional questions and found speed. That is coaching. The modern game demands players who can score from distance; without them, you are dead, and the Titans now have genuine class emerging while Oliver Pascoe continues to improve.
The Dragons wasted their opportunity against them. They were at home, on a ground they enjoy and opponents dislike, yet the Titans arrived ready while the Dragons were flat. That is inexcusable when both rosters began well behind the competition.
The Titans are now fifth-last and sit above Brisbane, while Parramatta remain nowhere after two years of rebuilding. Dean Young has also embraced youth and I think he can produce similar improvement, although it will take longer. Coaches are paid to maximise the players already in front of them. Hannay has exposed every bloke asking for three seasons and a shopping spree.
