This is your weekly dose of NRL truth-telling, as tipster and rugby league raconteur Nick Tedeschi tears through the good, the bad and the indefensible, with absolutely no regard for bruised egos.
Shane Won’t Survive April and May Not Survive The Week
The word leaking out of the Dragons two weeks back was that the board were giving Shane Flanagan a month. They almost certainly won’t give him that after the abject humiliation the Dragons endured losing 26-0 to the Cowboys at home in arguably the most insipid performance of the season. St George Illawarra were booed at halftime. The decibel level went up 20-fold at fulltime. The Dragons were so utterly horrific that the Red V faithful are likely begging to have Shane back. To nobody’s surprise, the over-the-top veterans that are sucking up a huge portion of the cap have been utterly diabolical. Dan Atkinson is a robot who is malfunctioning with zero feel for the game. The halves continually hit edge forwards and never get it wide. Nobody can kick. Nobody can create. The team plays like they have been given zero instruction. And all of this is Flanagan’s doing. He is a domineering coach who has been central to the roster build. He won’t bring in a strong half to compete with his son. He wants to rely on veterans because he does not trust kids. He holds none of those veterans accountable while wingers are regularly made the scapegoat. He has never been at the helm of a team that has had any semblance of creative attack. The time for change is now and those at the Red V almost certainly know it.
The Real Key To Penrith’s Dominance
The Penrith Panthers are playing truly elite football. In a competition built on parity, they are so far ahead of the rest of the competition that if they maintain their current form no team will get close to them. We could be witnessing the greatest side perhaps ever. They are well coached. They have some superstar players. They are relentless in their efforts and hungry from the opening kickoff to the final siren. They have a cohesive system that flows down to their juniors. The absolute key to Penrith’s success though is their ability to get the most out of their worst players. Rugby League is a weak-link sport and games are won and premierships are claimed not by the brilliance of the superstar but by the level that the weakest players play at. There has been no team in my near four decades watching Rugby League that have come close to doing what Penrith do with their supposed weakest players. Tom Jenkins is the perfect example. He was not named for Round 1 before being a late inclusion. He not only has 12 tries but has at least 17 runs in four of his five games while topping 189 metres in four of five games. The likes of Jack Cogger, who struggled at Canterbury and struggled at Newcastle, play a role and play it well at Penrith. Ivan Cleary has done a remarkable job in making sure the weakest players not only aren’t exposed but are held to a standard and they keep to it. It has allowed this Panthers run to be sustainable with no signs of abatement coming. The likes of Edwards, Cleary, Yeo and Martin are just elite players, among the best in the game, but what separates Penrith from other sides is the work they put into making sure the weakest players are not a weakness at all.
Enough With The Katoa Gushing
Isaiya Katoa is a solid-enough young halfback who is quickly on the Jarrod Mullen path of being an overrated bust by the age of 23 thanks to the completely unfounded, fully fabricated, wildly fictional analysis of him that has him earmarked as the second-coming of Andrew Johns by nearly every commentary team that calls a Dolphins match. It is infuriating to listen to with the love afforded him akin to the unwarranted obsession Fox NRL executives have with Steve Roach. Katoa has five assists in five games including none in his last two. He almost refuses to run the ball, failing to run for 75m in four of five games this year. He has just six tries over the course of his career. He has averaged at least 3.1 missed tackles a game every season. He has not forced a single drop out and has just a single grubber kick in five games. These are not the numbers of a superstar in the making, a game-changing halfback, a player who is anywhere near the reputation that has been given to him. He is a bang average halfback with a good game in him who has been built up and built up and built up as so-called Rugby League experts try to make him something he is not. Most in the game hopes he continues to improve and becomes a very good top grade halfback but the current gushing over him is nothing short of absurd.
Vale, Neville Glover
Rugby League lost one of its truly good blokes last week with the passing of former Parramatta winger Neville Glover, whose infamy followed him for the remainder of his life despite a decorated football career and a successful post-football run as a police prosecutor. Glover, of course, is remembered for a dropped pass with the line wide open in the dying minutes of the 1976 Grand Final that would have put the Eels ahead and with one hand on their first ever premiership. It is a moment he said in 2008 some 32 years after the drop that it is not “brought up daily but certainly once a week it gets a mention”. Glover was much better than that single moment though, going on to represent Australia twice in 1978 while playing for NSW and City along with being named in Parramatta’s Team of the Century in 2001. Rugby League can be a cruel and unforgiving game but Glover rose above one moment to enjoy a bountiful career and a life that contributed plenty to society.
The Worst Decision of All-Time
Selwyn Cobbo knocked back a $4 million four-year contract with St George Illawarra to showcase his talents on a one-year deal with the Dolphins. It is not going well with his market value declining significantly through five weeks.
The Second Worst Decision of All-Time (Or Close To)
Canterbury’s decision to re-sign Connor Tracey presumably on a deal to play fullback for the next two seasons given the makeup of the current roster is just the continuation of a roster build that has absolutely zero strategy or understanding of the market behind it. Tracey is typically solid but turned in a genuine 0/10 game against the Rabbitohs where he was out of position all day. There are so many talented fullbacks not getting a run. Trai Fuller – hello! The rush to sign Tracey without a market was just idiotic.
Sack Sutton
Gerard Sutton should have been removed from the field immediately after absolutely stealing a beautiful try off the Titans. Sutton ruled a forward pass not because he was in a position to call it but because the pass was so good he could not believe it. It was utter highway robbery.
Sickening Beat of the Week
Gold Coast +12.5 punters not lobbing when the Titans failed to kick a penalty twice after the full-time siren.
The Willie M Team of the Week – Round 5
This week’s team of fools and flops:
1.Connor Tracey (Bul)
2.Selwyn Cobbo (Dol)
3.Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad (NZ)
4.Valentine Holmes (Dra)
5.Roger Tuivasa-Sheck (NZ)
6.Lachlan Ilias (GC)
7.Dan Atkinson (Dra)
8.Emre Guler (Dra)
9.Damien Cook (Dra)
10.Josh King (Mel)
11.Joe Chan (Mel)
12.Connelly Lemuelu (Dol)
13.Morgan Knowles (Dol)
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14.Tyran Wishart (Mel)
15.Marata Niukore (NZ)
16.Sean O’Sullivan
17.Tom Flegler (Dol)
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Coach: Krisitan Woolf (Dol)
Referee Gradings
This week’s officiating grades:
Grant Atkins (C+)
Todd Smith (B-)
Ashley Klein (C-)
Wyatt Raymond (C+)
Gerard Sutton (F)
Ziggy Przeklasa-Adamski (C)
The 2026 Field Goal Update – 3
Sadly another weekend without field goals.
Fun Fact #1
Jake Trbojevic had 10 runs for 75 metres in the final three games under Anthony Seibold before having eight runs for 81 metres in Kieran Foran’s debut as coach.
Fun Fact #2
No New Zealand-born coach has ever won an NRL premiership.
Fun Fact #3
Just 13 coaches have won the 26 premierships since 2000.
Moronic Coaching Decision of the Week
Cameron Ciraldo has completely lost the plot. He is giving every appearance of someone too smart to be stupid but too stupid to realise he is not that smart. Rather than just bring on Bronson Xerri – a left centre – when left centre Stephen Crichton went off injured, Ciraldo thought a complete rearrangement of the backline was in order despite the six-man bench being instituted for the very reason of helping ensure a team not need a wholesale reshuffle. Sean O’Sullivan came on. Lachlan Galvin shifted to five-eighth. Matt Burton was moved to centre. Ciraldo seems to think that completely rearranging a team that is struggling for cohesion midgame will prove some magical elixir. The coach most likely to purchase magic beans is Cameron Ciraldo.
The Coaching Crosshairs
There is growing pressure on Kristian Woolf at the Dolphins after another inauspicious start to the year that resulted in an utterly humiliating 52-18 defeat in a scoreline that flattered the Dolphins, who trailed 52-0 and could have been beaten by 70. The Dolphins played like a team totally unprepared with as much enthusiasm as a Hungry Jacks aficionado about a 20km run. Per the great Mike Meehall-Wood, no team has slower line speed, while the lack of verticality with the ball defies belief under the current rules. One example: Luke Brooks’ inability to catch kickoffs is so renowned and so obvious that his own fans at Brookvale Oval provide a Bronx cheer every time he catches a kickoff, which until the Dolphins game, was every kick off. Yet despite kicking off six times in the first half, not a single time was the ball kicked at Brooks. If Kristian Woolf does any forward scouting for an opponent, it certainly does not show with the Dolphins seemingly completely unprepared on how to beat a team who was soundly beaten three times already this season. Woolf has been given a lot of rope but that rope is quickly starting to tighten.
Watch It
The Adelaide Rams did not win often during their two-year existence, going 13-28-1. Their most memorable win – and most indelible moment – came midway through the 1998 season when the Rams defeated the St George Dragons 22-20 made famous and etched into history by Tony Iro running backwards to wind the clock down in a moment of absolute genius. Watch that run from 19 minutes onwards here.