Queensland has long fancied itself as the home of rugby league in Australia. That may well be open to debate, but the state can at least lay claim to being the home for the 2021 finals series.
After 25 gruelling rounds, a mid-season relocation of 13 clubs to Queensland and untold controversy, the finals series has arrived and it will be staged exclusively in the sunshine state. Few would have anticipated at the start of the season that the venues for the opening weekend of the finals would be the Sunshine Coast, Townsville and Rockhampton. Rockhampton had not hosted a premiership game until late-August this year.
An official announcement is yet to be made, but the grand final will almost certainly be staged at Suncorp Stadium, Covid-19 permitting. It will be the first time a decider has been staged outside of Sydney and just the sixth venue to host a grand final in the 114-year history of the premiership. The NRL is finally allowing its most prized game to leave its Sydney cocoon.
The opening weekend of the finals shapes as a pseudo-lab test on the ramifications of resting players in the final rounds. It has been rare that we have seen the full continuum used by clubs. South Sydney and Parramatta rested nearly their entire squads last week. Penrith, the Sydney Roosters, Manly and, of course, Gold Coast played their strongest available teams. Melbourne and Newcastle both rested some players but did start and play a significant number of key players.
The wholesale resting of players in the final round is a relatively new phenomenon and does come with some risk.
It was surprising that Wayne Bennett opted to rest so many stars following the suspension that will rub out Latrell Mitchell for the remainder of the season. Bennett has hinted he has multiple options at his disposal to replace Mitchell but whether he plumps for rookie Blake Taaffe at fullback or Lachlan Ilias in the halves, they will go into their clash with Penrith without a game to form a combination with the lightning Walker-Reynolds-Cook spine.
It was perhaps more surprising that Brad Arthur chose to sideline nearly every player in his best 17 last week considering Parramatta had finally ended a disappointing run with a stunning win over Melbourne two weeks back. The opportunity to build some kind of momentum off such a well-heeled win was foregone.
That approach stood in stark contrast to Ivan Cleary. Penrith may have needed a win to claim the minor premiership but that was unlikely. When kickoff arrived, that was out-of-reach. Yet the Panthers placed plenty of value in the confidence garnered from a big win, even against a depleted team.
Cleary has a far superior finals coaching record to that of Arthur. Both the Panthers and Eels are expected to win this week. Any upset and the finger will be pointed in the direction of the play/rest debate.
Coaching will be critical in September and there is no shortage of experience with four of the 14 most experienced finals coaches guiding their teams to another campaign in 2021.
Bennett, of course, has coached more finals games than anyone else but arguably no coach is feeling the pressure more heading into this year’s finals series. Bennett has coached 71 finals games – for a 36-35 record – but Souths have lost three straight preliminary finals and this is his last campaign with the Rabbitohs and potentially his last campaign as a head coach in the NRL. Adding to the pressure on his shoulders is the fact he has not won a title since 2010 or taken a team to a grand final since 2015.
At the other end of the spectrum, Justin Holbrook will coach his first finals game with a Titans team that has nothing to lose. Gold Coast may have just snuck into the finals on the last day of the regular season but the job the former St Helens mentor has done with the Titans has been remarkable.
Craig Bellamy has never been a student of history but what Melbourne have achieved this season is nothing short of astonishing. It will count for little though without a premiership. This year the Storm equalled the premiership record for most consecutive wins with 19 straight victories. They finished the year with the greatest differential in premiership history. Only the 2001 Parramatta Eels, who played two more games, have scored more points in a season than this year’s Storm. Perhaps most astonishingly, the last of the famed Big Three retired last year.
The finals may seem very different this year. The more things change though, the more they stay the same, and it promises to again be Bellamy, Bennett, Hasler, Robinson and Cleary battling it out to determine premiership glory.
