Campo’s Corner NRL season previews: Broncos, Sharks, Sea Eagles Eels
Manly deserve to be firmly in the conversation for NRL favouritism. But 2020 could well and truly be their year... if they can stomach making one easy change, writes NICK CAMPTON.
Eels
Don't miss out on the headlines from Eels. Followed categories will be added to My News.
We’ve made it everybody.
The long, horrible, rugby league-less summer is over, and the greatest game of all is just about back.
Time to stop not thinking about the grand final and sink our teeth into the 2020 season, and all the things that might happen.
Campo’s Corner returns with a four-part season preview that touches on every NRL club, and tries, once again, to decide who will drink from the keg of glory and take home the title this year.
Please remember that the real premiership is the friends we make along the way.
PART ONE: Dragons need finals to stop fan revolt
PART TWO: How Mitch Barnett explains the Knights
BRISBANE BRONCOS
I struggle to recall any team of recent years with more young talent than the Broncos.
There was plenty of talk about Penrith’s endless parade of youngsters, and the Tigers had Mitchell Moses, James Tedesco and Luke Brooks all come through at once, and the Warriors once made four Under 20s grand finals in five years, but it wasn’t like what the Broncos have now.
Payne Haas might be the best teenage player of all time. That’s not an exaggeration, that is not hype running wild, that is the truth. If Haas never improves from what he showed in 2019, if that is his baseline for the next 12 to 15 years, he will retire as one of the great props of the modern age. No forward in the competition made more metres than him last year, and he was 19 years old.
Watch the 2020 NRL Telstra Premiership on KAYO. Every game of every round LIVE & Ad-Break Free during play. New to Kayo? Get your 14-day free trial & start streaming instantly >
If Haas is the best young forward in the league, David Fifita is a close second. Haas’ brilliance comes from his consistency – he can bust a tackle and make a break, but his greatest strength is that he never, ever stops, he is always going and always running and always churning out the metres – while Fifita’s brilliance is more explosive. He only started 14 games last year, but broke the second-most tackles of any forward in the league (behind Haas) and the second most line-breaks of any forward in the league. He covers ground so smoothly the blades don’t seem to move.
And that’s just the start. At any other team in the league, Tevita Pangai Junior would be the best young forward by the length of the straight. At most other teams, Pat Carrigan and Thomas Flegler would be starters. Plus there’s Jake Turpin and Tom Dearden, Kotoni Staggs and Xavier Coates, Tesi Niu and Herbie Farnworth. Even players like Corey Oates, Anthony Milford and Joe Ofahengaue, all experienced campaigners with at least five years of first grade under their belts, may still have their best football in front of them.
FOOTY TIPS! Join Australia’s best footy tipping competition for your chance to win big. Add our experts to your league and join now at TIPS.COM.AU.
When you break it down and look at it from player to player, Brisbane shouldn’t just be in the premiership race this year, but every year for the foreseeable future. It is a frightening thing, what they’ve put together up there. The time draws near when Brisbane won’t just have the best forward pack in the league, they might have one of the best of recent years.
But if talent alone equalled success we’d be living in a world where Dave Taylor and Feleti Mateo had a swag of Dally M medals. As good as Haas was last year, and as much as Fifita came on, and even though Jake Turpin emerged as the club’s hooker of the future and Kotoni Staggs looked like a future representative centre, Brisbane endured one of their worst ever seasons. They still made the finals, of course, but this is the Broncos, the richest of the new money, and such is the expectation that comes with their clout their valleys could be other club’s peaks. A Tigers fan or a Titans fan or a Knights fan would have gladly taken an eighth-placed finish and a week one exit. For Brisbane, it was the height of misery. They were saved by their level of individual talent, and by individual players making plays rather than a team working together.
That was exposed by the deeply embarrassing 58-0 loss to Parramatta in the first week of the finals. The Broncos had beaten those same Eels just two weeks before, on the back of a man-of-the-match display from Fifita. It was the heaviest loss in Broncos history, the worst loss in the history of finals football. It continued a worrying trend of finals beltings – in their last three playoff losses, the Broncos have been outscored 136-18.
Brisbane have the highest ceiling and the lowest floor of any team in 2020, and that can come down to the exuberance of youth, as the future of the club moves away from the likes of Andrew McCullough, Darius Boyd and Matt Gillett and towards the new generation. But some of it must land on Anthony Seibold, who had a terrible time of it in his first year with the Broncos.
That Seibold copped heavy criticism should come as no surprise. Every coach Brisbane has ever had wears it, even Wayne Bennett, because the pressures of coaching the biggest game in town just isn’t like anything else. Bennett helped build the club from the ground up, he created the legends and won the titles and everything else, and he still got run out of town, twice.
If that wasn’t enough, what ever could be?
At South Sydney, for example, even if the Rabbitohs struggled, there are half a dozen other teams around the city that take some of the spotlight and the scrutiny. In Brisbane there is nothing else. It’s all on you, all the time, and that focus never dims even for a second and the great Broncos of the old days are never shy about speaking up about the aura the Broncos once had, which seems to be perpetually lost, regained and lost again. Seibold has the weapons at his disposal to build a perennial premiership contender, but the road is not easy and the price of failure will be high.
THE TEAM
Matt Lodge was excellent last season, but the Broncos are well placed to cover his injury. It may stop Pangai Junior from setting up on the edge full time – a move that is a long time coming – but it allows Seibold to avoid the awkward conversation surrounding new captain Alex Glenn. Glenn has been a fine player for a long time, and it was touching to see his genuine emotion at being named captain of a club he loves so dearly, but the fact of the matter is he’s probably not in Brisbane’s best XIII anymore.
Joe Ofahengaue or Pat Carrigan feels like the right choice to start if Lodge is down for an extended period. Ofahengaue is fully capable of playing longer minutes – his strength is his workrate, and he gets better the longer he goes – and, if the reports from Brisbane can be believed, Carrigan can help lock down the middle of the field defensively.
Jamayne Isaako’s move to fullback seems to have stalled, with Jack Bird firming for the job with each passing day. Bird has the physical gifts to play anywhere from fullback to lock, but he’s played 17 games in two years, is coming off a serious knee injury and his experience at fullback is limited to some junior games and two NRL matches almost three years ago. He may well make a success of it, but it won’t happen overnight and patience is in short supply in Brisbane.
That same dynamic puts enormous pressure on Brodie Croft. The former Melbourne halfback is not without his talents, but this may be a case similar to Ben Hunt and Kodi Nikorima where Anthony Milford’s halves partner is too similar for the combination to succeed. Croft will need to vastly improve his kicking game if things are to work out the way the Broncos want, and if the season starts poorly it will be Croft who wears much of the blame as the calls resume for Tom Dearden, who still may not be ready for first grade, to be promoted.
Regardless, Croft seemed an odd choice from the start. The Broncos didn’t need another project player who is growing into his role in the team – they have a whole bag of them already. With Dearden coming down the line, signing someone like Croft as a long-term halfback creates a problem down the road when the club will have to choose between one or the other. Signing someone like Aidan Sezer, who has the playmaking skill to offset Milford and the experience a lot of the Broncos other spine options lack, might have been a better option.
Jake Turpin is a player Broncos fans should have high hopes for, and the sooner he becomes the starting dummy half, the better. Turpin made a good fist of the halves last year, but hooker is his true home, and as reliable and consistent as Andrew McCullough has been over the last decade, Turpin could provide a little more attacking spark. James Segeyaro is gone, but if you remember how much he was able to boost Brisbane at times last year you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Milford still shapes as the club’s key attacking player, so much of their success will depend on what he can generate down the left edge. Corey Oates will continue to be Corey Oates, but Darius Boyd slotting in at left centre may be an issue. As we saw in the Broncos’ trial win over the Cowboys, Milford excels when there are bodies in motion around him, and if Boyd can’t act as a legitimate running threat and put doubt in the defender’s minds, Milford will once again be on a hiding to nothing.
THE TIP
Nothing would surprise me with the Broncos. Their man-to-man talent should be enough to keep them in the finals, and if things go right the top four is not beyond them but I don’t think it will all come together this year. Currently I have them finding a spot from 7th-9th.
CRONULLA SHARKS
When the Sharks won the competition in 2016 their squad had an average age of 27.57, making them the oldest premiership team since 1980.
It makes sense Cronulla were older, because they played old. They were grizzled and tough and hard-nosed, and they would happily drag someone down to fight them in the gutter, because that’s a fight the Sharks could always win. They were a fine attacking team as well, James Maloney and Valentine Holmes and Ben Barba made sure of that, but at their core they took on the traits of their captain, Paul Gallen, and they were built on fighting every battle like their lives depended on it.
That’s the reputation and ethos the Sharks built under Shane Flanagan, and that’s the kind of team they’ve been for a long time. It’s served them well – it won them their first premiership after all – but things have changed for them all at once.
Because the Sharks were an older team when they won the comp, it was always going to end quickly. Of the 24 players they used in 2016, Chad Townsend, Andrew Fifita, Wade Graham and Jayson Bukuya are the only players still at the club. To compare, the Cowboys still have eight players from their inaugural premiership squad the year before.
As such, the nature of the team has to change. It’s only natural, because the players who created that old team – like Paul Gallen, Luke Lewis, Michael Ennis, Matt Prior – are all gone. Flanagan is gone as well. The Sharks can’t keep being like they were, because it’s all new players and it’s much harder to twist talent to fit a system than twist a system to fit the talent available.
So what will the new Sharks look like? In a total departure from what they have been, the new Cronulla can be one of the league’s most explosive attacking sides. On their left side they have Graham feeding Bronson Xerri, on their right side they have Shaun Johnson with Briton Nikora and Jesse Ramien.
Cronulla were never total cavemen during their most successful times – in 2016 they scored the third most points of any team in the competition – but their ability to score was always an ancillary focus, a secondary weapon for when they couldn’t grind a team into a fine powder.
And the Sharks still have the forward pack that allows them to do that. Even if Fifita’s knee problems stop him from ever being the force he once was, that’s not a death knell even accounting for Prior and Gallen leaving. Jack Williams and Braden Hamlin-Uele emerged as two of the teams best forwards last year, and Aaron Woods is still here and so is Jayson Bukuya. It’s not the dominant, bone-chewing pack of the past, but it’s enough to hold its own and set things up for the backline.
But the tables might need to turn, and it’s a subtle shift for the secondary weapon to become the primary one. Making that shift is a subtle and difficult thing, and it’s doubly difficult for a coach of John Morris’ inexperience, but it’s what the Sharks need to do if they want to keep their run of finals appearances going. That’s not to say Cronulla should lose completely what they have been, but it’s time to let the horses run.
THE TEAM
The Josh Morris situation and the Josh Dugan furore have made the last few months difficult for the Sharks, but I am confident they’ll come out better for it. If Morris stays, he’s the kind of player who will still show up every day and play well, and if he goes they might get a complimentary piece in return. Likewise, it would not surprise if Dugan has played his last game as a Shark, and even if he was to return it’s doubtful he’d be in the club’s best 17 any more.
Jack Williams was somebody who impressed me enormously last year, and I’m expecting him to become Cronulla’s most important middle forward this season. That’s a huge jump from 2019, when he only started three of the 24 matches he played, but his motor, tackle-breaking ability and power running, especially given his size, can make him an immediate success. In style, I would liken him to Parramatta’s Nathan Brown.
There should be high expectations of Cronulla’s right-edge attack, where Shaun Johnson lurks with Briton Nikora and Jesse Ramien. Injuries might stop Johnson being the running force he once was (he averaged a career low 38 running metres per game last year) but he still excels at feeding his outside men and his combination with Nikora was one of the best things about the Sharks last year. Nikora’s consistent line-running opens things up for his centre, and as badly as Jesse Ramien’s move to Newcastle went that doesn’t mean he’s lost what made him such an enticing recruit in the first place. On the other side, Graham and Xerri can continue to build on what they developed last year, which should give them great balance.
Blayke Brailey could become an important part of the team very quickly. In his limited showings last year, Brailey the younger showed he had the confidence and willingness to attack from dummy half, and while he may not be as stout as defender as his older brother he may give the Sharks a greater attacking threat from dummy half which adds another weapon to an already stocked arsenal.
Matt Moylan is something of a forgotten man in the Shire, and his hamstring problems have made him a question mark week-to-week, but if he can stay on the field at fullback it helps diversify Cronulla’s attack even more. At this point it’s clear Moylan might never be a genuine running threat week to week any more, if he ever really was, but his ball-playing can make him a nice cog in the Sharks machine.
THE TIP
Cronulla lost seven matches by six points or less last year – the Raiders had a similarly poor record in close games in 2017-18 and when they turned it around they were able to make the grand final. That’s not to say another premiership is Cronulla’s ceiling this year, but if even a few of those close losses turn to close wins, they’d have been a top-four side. A finals berth should be their absolute minimum.
MANLY SEA EAGLES
To look at the competition now, there are six teams that have the roster, experience and pedigree to win a premiership, and Manly are one of them.
It was easy to be sceptical of Des Hasler’s return to the Sea Eagles – I certainly was – and even if the two-time premiership winner recaptured some of his old magic, the Manly roster just wasn’t there yet. It was too top heavy, too reliant on the best players in the team, and should injury strike any of their key men it would surely spell disaster.
Injury did strike, all year, but it didn’t matter. Tom Trbojevic only played 12 games, Dylan Walker missed eight games and Daly Cherry-Evans missed five, they cycled through five-eighths all season, by the end of the year they were throwing one-game debutants into the front row of finals matches.
Players like Jack Gosiewski and Brendan Elliot and Corey Waddell and Brad Parker and Moses Suli were not just regulars, they were relied upon.
And even then, after reaching a point where many other teams would have sputtered and died, Manly refused to break. All those things went wrong for them, but for 25 games and 65 minutes they were preliminary final bound until a late collapse against a desperate South Sydney side did them in.
The Sea Eagles beat Melbourne in Melbourne – the only other teams to do that were the Roosters and Raiders, who made the grand final, and Manly beat the Raiders twice. They did it once at Brookvale, when Daly Cherry-Evans went down in the first half and Tom Trbojevic wasn’t playing at all, and they did it once down in the capital, when the Canberra wave was just starting to crest. The howling Viking crowd held no fear for Manly.
Accounting for all that, and accounting for how much Des Hasler got out of his team under those circumstances, and accounting for how much more he can get out of them after another pre-season at turning formless clay into exactly what he needs it to be, Manly are one of those special six.
For any team to win a premiership, or make a grand final, they need a few things to go right. That’s not to cheapen any achievements, it’s just a fact. Maybe it’s luck with injuries, or maybe it’s one 50/50 call that goes their way at just the right time, or maybe it’s just a team they’re playing having a tough day at just the right time.
These aren’t things within anybody’s control. All you can do is clutch the rosary beads and hope for the best. But if these things do break for Manly, if Tom Trbojevic stays fit and they weather the storm of the early rounds, when they’ll be without several of their key forwards, and guys like Suli and Parker and Waddell can find the same things they found last year then a premiership is within the realms of the possible.
THE TEAM
Is Martin Taupau the third best middle forward at Manly? He might well be, given Jake Trbojevic is one of the best locks in the competition and Addin Fonua-Blake made everybody stand up and take notice with a truly excellent season in 2019. Taupau is still a handful, and an offloading savant to boot, but he legitimately might be the third wheel here, and therein lies Manly’s strength. They have three representative level middle forwards, and that’s a foundation on which everything else can be built.
In defiance of the low-risk, negative style that punctuated his final years at the Bulldogs, Hasler’s new Sea Eagles were second in the league for offloads last year. That makes sense given they have players like Taupau, Sironen and Fonua-Blake, who are all so adept at it, and as such once Manly get going in the middle there’s not a whole lot of ways to stop them.
Losing Manase Fainu is a blow – the Tongan international was one of their best players last year, and was poised to become one of the game’s top hookers this season – but Danny Levi can play a similar sort of style. Levi seems tailor-made for the magic Hasler touch – his talent has never been in question, but he became a big fish in a small pond up at Newcastle, stagnated badly and needed a change of scenery. I’m expecting him to be one of the bargain buys of the season.
If there was one move Manly could still make it would be to land on somebody else to play five-eighth and moving Dylan Walker back to centre. Walker is a serviceable five-eighth, but that’s because he’s a talented footballer in general. Centre is his natural spot, and that’s where he’s best suited. Perhaps it’s Cade Cust, maybe it’s someone the club lands on a mid-season transfer, but the Sea Eagles don’t need a star to partner Daly Cherry-Evans, they just need someone to be solid enough and smart enough to link everybody together.
THE TIP
I’m still trying to decide if I’ll put the hex on Manly and pick them to win the premiership, but such high achievement is their level in 2020. Keeping their best 17 on the field might be a challenge, but Hasler has put them in the position to succeed and if they show up with the same application as last year then there are no limits to what they can do.
PARRAMATTA EELS
Think, just for a few minutes, what it’s like when Parramatta are flying.
It hasn’t happened often lately, but just think about what it’s like.
There are so many Parramatta fans out there. For the lack of success they’ve had since the 1980s it’s remarkable. Those premierships that were so long ago now created a generation of fans, and even things like more wooden spoons than finals appearances over the last ten years didn’t drive them away.
And once Parramatta start winning? Brother, when they start winning the blue and gold starts coming out of the walls. The crowds get huge. The passions run high. The jerseys fly off the shelves down at Peter Wynn’s. Think about what happened with Canberra last year, but there’s more of them.
Some of the league’s most popular teams are in Sydney, but Sydney is the most apathetic sporting city in the country. Unless a team is winning, the punters will not show up – and even then, sometimes it’s not enough. Just ask the Roosters.
But if it’s Parramatta? If there’s a chance that 1986 can come again? All bets are off. Remember what it was like in 2014 for Souths? Or in 2010 for the Dragons? Or 2005 for the Tigers? That’s the sort of thing that can happen, when it feels bigger than a team and bigger than a season.
When the Eels won their first premiership they burned the house down, literally. That’s what we’re dealing with here and now Parramatta are everybody’s dark horse for the premiership, that’s the reality we might need to consider. The Eels built their way to a top-four berth in 2017, and they were always a handy side last year, and in 2009 they blew in from nowhere to come closer to a premiership than you remember, but this time they’re a pre-season powerhouse, and that’s a different level of expectation - and expectation might be the hardest thing for them to overcome because everything else is right there.
The last time they had to deal with something like this was 2018, when they backed up a top-four finish with another wooden spoon.
Last year, the Eels were in the unusual spot of being too good for most teams and not good enough for others. They were comfortably the fifth best team in the competition, but even if you took five Shaun Lane’s and stacked them end-to-end they wouldn’t be able to reach the teams in front or behind them. Parramatta were too crazy for boys town, and too much of a boy for crazy town.
That’s how we end up with situations where they beat Brisbane 58-0 on a golden afternoon at Bankwest and get mashed into the AAMI Park turf by the Storm 32-0 the following week. The Storm, Rabbitohs, Raiders and Roosters were a bridge too far, and they had gears Parramatta couldn’t match, and they knew how to fight harder, and for longer.
That’s the final step for Parramatta. They can run up a score and feast on the corpses of lesser teams, but until they learn to take that on the road with them and they understand that Mitch Moses kicks aren’t always going to be enough, they won’t be able to jump to that top level.
But the Eels can do these things. Brad Arthur is that kind of coach, and he’s built this roster into exactly what he wants it to be. The four teams ahead of them last year could all slide down a notch, and Parramatta can rise up and meet them halfway.
The Eels are big and strong and fast and skilful all over the park and they play with a width and willingness to promote the ball that makes them a nightmare for teams who get stuck in the mud.
Bankwest Stadium is their special weapon, and if they start the season well it’ll be one of the most intimidating places to play in the league. There is so much talent here, and so many things can happen, and even though October is still a long way away even the most heartbroken Parramatta fan, beaten down by 34 years of missing out, can be forgiven for dreaming of the old times, because this is the kind of year where it can all happen again.
THE TEAM
No team is perfect, but the Eels are extremely well-rounded. Highlighting their two main off-season recruits, Ryan Matterson and Reagan Campbell-Gillard, shows their balance.
Matterson’s exit from the Tigers was distasteful, but the Eels are the beneficiaries by bringing the former lower-grader back to the club. Manu Ma’u was superb for Parramatta last year, and a constant attacking threat on the right edge with his footwork and offloads – Matterson is not the same in style, he is much more of a power runner, but he’s as good a replacement as any team could ask for. That spot was potentially a hole for Parramatta, one that would be filled by Marata Niukore or David Gower – both solid players, but not of Ma’u’s caliber – and now they have a player who could well make his Origin debut this year.
It’s the same with Campbell-Gillard. There wasn’t much wrong with Parramatta’s middles last year – Junior Paulo is one of the most underrated props in the competition, and a representative level player at his best, ditto for Nathan Brown, and Daniel Alvaro, Kane Evans, Oregon Kaufusi and Peni Terepo are all very capable. But they signed Campbell-Gillard anyway, and even if he never regains the form that put him into rep football that’s not a death blow.
The Eels don’t need him to be the man, they just need him to be one man in a larger unit. Given how much yardage the Eels can get from their back three they don’t even need a top-level pack, but they’ve got one anyway.
For as much as Parramatta did improve from 2018 to 2019, climbing from 16th to fifth, they still have avenues to do it again. Reed Mahoney was good last year, but he’ll be better for another pre-season alongside Moses and Gutherson and Dylan Brown. Brown himself, still only 19, is not getting the full blast of the hype machine, but I hope he’s ready for it, because it’s coming this year and there’s no stopping it.
The young Kiwi is a very special footballer, and everyone’s going to know it very soon – even last year, Parramatta were so much better with him than without him, and he takes pressure off Moses so easily.
The key man is Moses himself. He is in the ideal situation for any halfback, with an excellent pack, fearsome and terrifying backs and a spine that is talented enough to help him share the load. Even his weapons have gotten sharper – Waqa Blake, for example, should improve with a pre-season in the Parramatta system after his mid-season transfer from Penrith last year. He’s 25 with almost 150 games to his name, and he took great strides forward last year. This supposed to be when it all happens.
There can be no excuses for Moses, or for Parramatta. If they’re going to have a time, this is it.
THE TIP
If the Eels don’t make the top four and go deep into the finals they will have underachieved in 2020. This is another one of those premiership squads.
Originally published as Campo’s Corner NRL season previews: Broncos, Sharks, Sea Eagles Eels