Biggest blowouts in years turn NRL into a big, fat borefest
We’re just four rounds into the year but already a giant problem in the NRL has been made abundantly clear.
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Biggest blowouts since 2004 turn NRL into a big, fat borefest.
We’re just four rounds into the year but already a giant problem in the NRL has been made abundantly clear.
The chasm between the contenders and pretenders in the league is wider than we’ve seen in years — 17 of them, to be exact — and there’s no reason to expect the worrying trend won’t continue.
A series of blowouts over the Easter long weekend saw a total of 209 points decide the eight matches from Thursday-Monday, as the average winning margin (26.13 points) reached its highest level since Round 16, 2004, when the figure stood at 29.57 points.
Penrith hammered Manly (46-6), Souths put Canterbury in the doghouse (38-0), Melbourne embarrassed Brisbane (40-6), Cronulla heaped more misery on North Queensland (48-10) and the Roosters dusted the Warriors by 20 points.
It’s only added weight to the belief aired by multiple pundits in the opening month of the competition that, barring some massively unexpected developments, you can already predict who the top six and bottom six will be by season’s end.
The Sea Eagles have been abysmal, going winless across four matches while conceding 156 points. The Bulldogs have failed to score a single point in three straight games, becoming just the third team in history to be guilty of such a sin.
You have to go back all the way to 1928 — that’s 93 years ago — to find a team (Glebe) that has scored fewer than the 16 points Canterbury has managed across the first four rounds of a season.
Todd Payten’s reign in Townsville couldn’t have started any worse, the Cowboys giving up 141 points in four successive losses as the bottom three teams all have points differentials worse than minus-100.
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