PREVIEW: 2025 City of Moreton Bay Dolphins
Where to for the NRL's newest team?
To the extent anyone outside of these pages paid any attention to the Dolphins, it was when they crushed the cross-town rival Broncos, 40-6, justifying their entire 2024 campaign and the baffling call to move Jake Averillo to five-eighth.
For those whose sense of the NRL is more than a handful of premiership contending protagonists and rivalry embarrassments, there was a sense that the Red Fish had let an opportunity slip by not qualifying for the finals in their second season. I thought that making that an expectation, rather than a stretch goal that might be nice to achieve, was setting the bar too high. Pre-season, I thought they would be 11-13 and finish 12th (the Dolphins went 11-13 and finished 10th1) and that would be fair enough.
Most expansion teams take a while to do anything and the Dolphins already had a bunch of highly visible scalps to build up a bit of a rep. Let’s comparing how the Dolphins fared in the second year compared to other recent expansion teams. Not everyone is the early Storm or the early Broncos, and not everyone is the early Cowboys or the returned Souths.
The Dolphins are in the middle, right on where the Reds, the Titans and Knights were after two years in the league. I think we can rule out the Western Reds as a point of comparison, and perhaps we’ll revisit this once the Western Bears enter in 202-whatever, but sitting next to the Knights and the Titans provides some food for thought about what was realistic for a second year expansion team and the possible futures ahead of this club. I did say the NRL should look for another Titans, not another Broncos2.
None of this is to comment on the Dolphins’ capability. 12 would have been enough wins to qualify for the finals with a nil difference in points, and Moreton Bay racked up 11. In more than a few games, the Phins were a Tom, either Flegler or Gilbert, short of the effort to push them over the top. One win from any of the four narrow mid-season losses would have been enough. It is a stretch to call this disappointing per se but it was most definitely an opportunity proffered but not taken.
In this club’s case, moreso than any other in the NRL, the difference between the record of last year and the prospects of this year could not be more stark. It’s a “rookie” coach following one of the all-time greats whose successors often fail to live up to the standard set. It’s still a new venture and doesn’t have the historical touchstones or rigidity of culture that they might otherwise fall back on. We have a pretty good roster with what I expect, but don’t know, to be a pretty good coach but not much more to go on.
In what will be a recurring theme of these club previews, especially the south-east Queensland ones, I don't know what to expect so I am not expecting much. Another season of survival, to set the bar and to have the organisation coalesce into what its going to be seems the minimum. The finals seem possible if Woolf gets comfortable quickly in the big chair, the roster finds a groove and avoids the injury plagues of the last two years but I would want to see something before I staked my life on it.
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Deep Dive
The traditional Deep Dive into the 202X NRL season has been split up a little this year. Each of the Q4 will get theirs embedded in the longer season preview and then I’ll cover the rest of the league in a Stats Drop.
Explainers for metrics:
More about sims/PRVRS here.
The executive summary for the Dolphins:
That the Dolphins performed at exactly the level of their 2nd order wins, and one win under their Pythagorean expectation, means that what we saw on the field was closely reflected in their record. It would then follow for Moreton Bay to get further up the table will require a real improvement in performance, rather than relying on luck/mean regression.
The Dolphins had one of the most efficient offences in the league, turning their breaks and metres into actual points at the third best rate in the competition. Their overall ratio of production to tries rate was more mediocre, only eighth best. The Phins’ ability to put points on was undermined by a lack of possession: ranking 14th by net time of possession and 16th in net sets started.
The projections for both Toms are 40, because neither played the minimum number of games in 2024 to qualify for a Z score on which to project. If both return to the field at anything like their career averages (95 for Flegler, 70 for Gilbert), then the Dolphins will look a lot better on paper, despite neither of these being particular spectacular levels to aspire to.
I didn’t include a table of metrics for Kristian Woolf because it would have been all zeros. One day I will be able to link QCup, Super League and NRL coaching together but we are not there yet.
According to the PRVRS ratings and the draw, the Dolphins have a 26% chance of making the finals.
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Notes
Signatures: Lemuelu extends to 26, Donoghoe extends to 25
Farewell to Tesi Niu. You played some absolute blinding football for Norths, so I am willing to call your time in the NRL even.
Farewell to Valynce Te Whare. Let’s hope you return one day because, again, we had some great times in Cup.
Dolphins NRL bid for centre of excellence as if the local government just hadn’t paid for them to get a 10k stadium and not put the name of the city on the team.
‘Time to get it done’: Inside the Dolphins’ long-term succession plan
Anglo American to review De Beers value amid weak diamond demand. We’re doing this again.
Other predictions were not as accurate.
Like many things from 2020, that hasn’t aged… well.