You’re not even Arkansas
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Welcome to The Maroon Observer, a weekly newsletter about rugby league, Queensland and rugby league in Queensland.
The run home
Here are the Broncos remaining opponents by current ladder position: 15th, 16th, 2nd, 10th, 13th, 12th and 2nd. This is not a ‘oh man, how many of these do you think they’ll drop?’ because other than the two games against the Storm (in one of which, Melbourne are likely to rest starters), that’s a slate of five extremely winnable games. Sitting on a 10-7 record, one win behind the Warriors in fourth and two wins behind the Storm in second, that is interesting.
A top four finish is almost a prerequisite for winning the premiership because winning three games in a row is easier than winning four games in a row. Given the way the season has unfolded, every team showing their flaws at some point, it wouldn’t be terribly surprising for fifth- or sixth-placed finishers to feature on October 5, or even win the thing.
This chart is normally behind the paywall of Stats Drop - UPGRADE TO A PAID SUBSCRIPTION TODAY - but I thought I’d update it for our current post-Origin run to the finish (more on Elo ratings).
The Titans’ season is definitely over and the Cowboys’ season is almost certainly over. The Dolphins’ campaign hangs on by a knife’s edge. The Central Queensland Capras couldn’t get it done against the Sharks, and if that’s the Phins’ level moving forward, then they are proably going to miss out.
Of the two remaining teams that are in the top eight hunt that I don’t consider very good, Manly (38% chance of finals) is worse than Cronulla (72%) but whichever gets through will be invited to a week 1 dacking and elimination.
Currently, Canberra has a points difference of +108, which means they’ve been winning their games by an average of just 6.4 points, but are almost a lock for the minor premiership. If maintained, it will be the lowest margin per game for a minor premier since the 2003 Panthers (5.5). Before that? The 1983 Dolphins when tries were worth three points. It is, literally, a once-in-a-generation event to be the best team after the regular season by scoring a converted try more than your opponents.
The Storm, on the other hand, are winning at twice that clip and the form team in the competition. Sportsbet has them at nearly the same probability of winning I do. We wait for bated breath to see if they can maintain this for the next two and a bit months. I forget, do they have a reputation for ramping up or down on the run to finals? Are they consistently well coached and now a couple of their also-rans have Origin experience to propel them into the stratosphere? Ah well, would be appropriate bookends on the Penrith run.
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Hotseat
“Des had won silverware in the past,” Watt said.
“He’s a premiership coach, he has a phenomenal and fearless work ethic. He has left no stone unturned in trying to bring success to this club.
“That was his track record – winning premierships.
“We’re certainly not where we want to be…
“The NRL is a results-driven business, isn’t it … for everybody.”
As I’ve said innumerable times in the past, if you’re hearing from the chairman, it’s not going well, especially when he was a very loose grasp on the club:
“That statement (the Titans road map plan) was made at the time, but if you don’t aim high, you don’t succeed,” Watt said…
“It’s got to be the goal of every team in the NRL to be contending for titles.
“There’s a lot of talent here and there’s a lot of promise here. We’ve just got to turn the potential into results.
“The Titans were never set up to be an also-ran.”
Watt was also quoted talking about the team having “grit”. Are we seriously talking about the same Titans?
The headline for this article was couched in the future of the Titans, mostly following Andrew Webster’s loose scuttlebutt on a podcast no one actually listened to. I think the “sporting graveyard” of the Gold Coast is an overblown cliche. You can check the tape for yourself but the graveyard contains a Giants/Seagulls/Chargers franchise that was set up to fail and did a quarter of a century ago, a NBL team, an ABL team and an A-League club owned by Clive Palmer. The ABL is down to four teams for the 2025-26 season, the NBL doesn’t have viewers despite the obvious popularity of basketball and Palmer’s subsequent track record speaks for itself. The Gold Coast is the country’s sixth largest city, it does not have a transient population and the Suns might actually make the finals this year.
Does this mean a premiership is imminent for the Titans? Of course not. They’re still the Titans, the NRL’s soft landing for its failing coaches, retire home for its aging players and mattress to protect the rest of the clubs from falling too far. While owning the Titans is now lucrative enough their financial problems are firmly in the past, and relocation is a waste of time to even broach (I think its likely Ipswich gets NRL20 in the next, next broadcast deal, and if anything the Titans should consider a merger with the Knights to control the catchment from Wyong to Beenleigh), it also means that displacing these particular owners is not going to be the work of five minutes.
On that uplifting note, we look at the contenders to replace Hasler:
The push is on - from the common fan to experienced voices - for the Walker brothers to coach the Gold Coast Titans…
“I am absolutely certain we would win a premiership at the Titans,” Ben Walker said.
I will leave you to read the rest but the amount of hype is interesting. Those of us who know ball will note the complete absence of any commentary on the Brothers’ post-premiership performance, and will recall that the Jets were often both boring and terrible towards the end of their tenure, and note the Titans are about to fire that other pioneer of short drop outs, Des Hasler. The Titans might still buy it anyway. What do they have to lose? Elsewhere:
“All a club has to do is call me,” Slater told Locker Room.
No, the triumphant Queensland coach wasn’t talking about his own coaching career.
He was talking about the bloke standing a few metres away holding a can of XXXX and with the maroon-coloured blazer on, Slater’s assistant coach, Josh Hannay.
Hannay seems to be firming as consensus pick, although they are now racing the Knights:
Newcastle Knights powerbrokers have begun making internal plans to part ways with coach Adam O’Brien at the end of the season after six years at the helm…
There is a push internally at the Knights for assistant coach Blake Green to take over next season. Green is the attack coach at Newcastle and despite the team’s struggles with the ball in 2025, is highly regarded by officials and players alike.
There is also a push from sections of the club to pursue Cronulla and Queensland assistant coach, Josh Hannay. The club declined to comment when contacted on Monday afternoon.
Plan A might be Hannay with Walker Brothers as plan B or some other candidate whose agent hasn’t bothered to create some smoke in the media. I thought the Frizelles would throw a big ass load of money and some equity at Slater himself, who seems to be being rather coy about the whole thing, because the man’s ability to Queensland remains unquestioned after that series victory. More than anything else, the Titans could use a bit of Queenslanding. Queensland.
Around the grounds
I didn’t have a lot of fun this weekend. Fake crowd noises in the broadcast drove me to write an essay that almost drew a straight line from that to the ongoing rise of fascism and the deterioration of society, so you tell me if I’m taking it well. We are in that phase of the season where things start to get loose.
Sharks 24 defeated Dolphins 12. This was like watching the Dolphins playing the Knights: physically painful. There was very little there when the opportunities presented. Many players seem to have forgotten how to run hard and straight. Katoa regressed hard to his early season form sans Nikorima. Cronulla’s struggles to put away a Capras side should be clearly recognised for what they are but won’t be for a few more weeks.
Cowboys versus Knights (W). While this was the second game chronologically, it was third in my order of viewing and it would be hard to identify which was the most uncomfortable to sit through. “Error-ridden” buries of the lede of the Cowboys erring at exactly the least opportune times. Throw in penalties and it became an steeply uphill slog. While the Cows showed that they have the tools to compete (and the Knights are better than I thought they would be), they also showed that they are as familiar with as cow tools. Any attempt to get back into the contest just made it worse. Maybe this is just papering over a less than effective offence.
Bulldogs 12 defeated Cowboys 8 (M). A real HIA-a-thon that will probably be an exhibit in a future class action lawsuit against the NRL. Zac Laybutt sucks, sorry, but the rest of the Cowboys barely pulled their fingers out. We got club Dearden again and the delta was noticeable. Five or six minutes of effort from the Dogs was enough to overturn the Cowboys’ other 75 minutes of nothing. I’d be astonished if the Bulldogs aren’t out of the finals by week 2. More to come in the next Bovine Bulletin, although I can’t imagine I will expand greatly on this game.
Broncos 44 defeated Titans 4 (W). This fixture last year was the second biggest win in NRLW history at the time and had the exact same scoreline. The Broncos should have cracked 50 to join the Sharks at Canberra as the only team to have done it (twice). Lily Patston didn’t sign up to get murdered for this. The ref had no idea about policing ruck interference. A sloppy affair for such a high score and it’s hard to know whether to be concerned about that. Tamika Upton injured? Season over for Broncos. After back-to-back Queensland defeats, might be season over for the Titans too. There are already too many injuries and too many children playing (Takoda Thompson didn’t look great).
Broncos versus Titans (M). Means more. Sorry, means what exactly? This isn't the SEC (or Liverpool, I guess) and you’re not Alabama. You’re not even Arkansas. It's a bit rich for the Titans crowd to boo Mam when cocaine trafficking is at least 50% of the Gold Coast’s economy. That’s Sydney cuck behaviour. Jaylan de Groot looks like a misplaced Inbetweener. This was a classic in the genre of “jfc, is this over yet?” games. Broncos looked terrible - you’d think Walsh had played Origin from his fatigue levels - but managed to string enough together. Titans can start thinking about their spoon, although they have two games against the Tigers and one against Souths to look forward to.
Intermission
A real Chris Pine moment for Murray here, except he has no one else to blame.
Meanwhile, hey what's it like watching the QDub?
I tuned in at Norths 32-Ipswich nil, saw this and tuned back out again.
Programming notes
This is the time of year that the rugby league news slows down and we can’t even rely on expansion chat to pad out newsletters anymore. With the end of season in sight, some part of my mental capacity turns to what might be in 2026. While there is two and a bit months of work to do, and months more of downtime to be spent formatting statistics, the potential for change helps keep things feeling fresh. This is my ninth season writing about rugby league and what I’ve done has always changed from year to year. One way to think of this is ‘constantly evolving’ but another is ‘has no idea what he’s doing’.
Here are some of the things I’m thinking about:
The average newsletter is pulling something like 10-15% more views than last year, without a semi-viral hit, and there’s been a 25% increase in total subscriber numbers. 2024 was roughly comparable to 2022 on PythagoNRL but the landscape for getting clicks has changed so significantly since 2017 that deciding what constitutes good is hard to ascertain.
5% of the subscriber base is paying, which aligns with other, much larger newsletters’ rates, and is exactly what I expected when I turned them on.
One or two emails per week seems optimal for open rates and views. While more emails would probably generate more views in aggregate, it would be diminishing returns for my time. Views are not the be-all, end-all but it’s not clear what the relationship would be to subscriber numbers or overall reader satisfaction but it’s probably neither here-nor-there.
The Pony Pic and Bovine Bulletin have dipped a bit in views compared to last year. That’s not surprising because even the merest whiff of a paywall puts people off. I also feel like the idea of these sections is important - there are vanishingly few sources of dedicated Cowboys content, even if it is written by a Broncos fan in Brisbane - but the quality and balance of the content (doubling up Around the Grounds and the Diary feels increasingly reundant and planning four games in advance is a waste of time) isn’t quite there.
I am not a particularly disciplined writer, as evidenced by 3000 words of sentences with fourteen different sub-clauses, but there might be room to do monthly newsletters for all four Queensland clubs (very reluctantly in the Titans’ case) if they were shorter (<1500 words). Conversely, with the likely reintroduction of the NYC and the extension of the NRLW, most of those clubs will have three teams to talk about for most of the season, so there might be more of thematic interest than the last three or four men’s games. Is there an opportunity there? I am not sure.
That would then leave a question of when to do Stats Drop, which has been relatively well received and the balance of unpaid and paid content feels good (i.e. you’re missing out if you’re not paying, but not by heaps). There probably should be more of this (especially as it tends to be more NRL general than Queensland specific) than club newsletters.
The format of this weekly newsletter isn’t changing.
I have toyed with the idea of running a promotional tipping competition (working title: ‘The World’s Most Annoying Tipping Comp’) but I don’t think I have the energy. I am not starting a Discord server, as there are not enough of you to form a community. It is unlikely, in the absence of an order of magnitude uptick in paid subscriptions, that there will be a podcast.
So I’m throwing it open to you, to see if anyone has any ideas. I am highly suggestible so if you do make a recommendation, I might end up listening to it on the basis that you represent a significant, more silent portion of my readership. You can largely blame one reader - Kyle - for paid subscriptions existing at all.
In case you don’t feel like hitting reply, comments on this post are open to anyone. Let me know what you might want to see from The Maroon Observer in 2026.
Upcoming Slate
Bears versus Tigers (W), Saturday 1pm, Pizzey Park
I didn’t get to watch the game but in last week’s matches, Burleigh defeated the Northern Pride and their Cowboys players, 26-16, off the back of a Zara Canfield hattrick in the last 20 minutes. That’s a big win for the Bears who come into this game against the undefeated Tigers missing only Dannii Perese. The Tigers are not a surprise packet - I called that shot pre-season - but are leading the competition and this is the second last tough game on the schedule with only the Devils, and maybe the Clydesdales, posing a threat from here until finals. A win here goes a long way to a minor premiership. Tip: Tigers
Devils versus Cutters (M), Saturday 5pm, Bishop Park
The Devils arrested their slide against the Titans-studded Jets and after what one hopes is a temporary drop in form, to be only one win behind the Blackhawks is not a bad result, especially if the team has readjusted to the presence of Jack Ahearn. Having said that, second rower Lachlan Lewis is playing left centre this week, a position that Rohan Smith seems unable to find someone to fill, constantly tweaking his lineup. Meanwhile, there are currently four teams with seven wins, occupying seventh through tenth on the ladder. One of those teams is the Mackay Cutters. After a slow start, the Cutters strung together four in a row before falling to Wynnum last weekend. A good performance might set the tone for a run to a much-needed finals appearance. Tip: Devils
Broncos versus Roosters (W), Sunday 1.45pm, Langlands
The men’s game could only dream of such a blockbuster. Tamika Upton still being alive only makes this contest more engrossing. Can’t wait for Mele Hufanga to run over Isabelle Kelly on the way to a try and a swaggerly celebration. I’ve been pretty happy with the performance of Tara McGrath-West to date and if she survives this, she’s locked down a place in one of the best teams in the league. Crazy that Annetta-Claudia Nu'uausala isn’t in this team. Also, some bird jerks from Sydney are playing. Tip: Broncos
Note: no bonus stars for the Q4 in the NRLM this week. They haven’t earned it.
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The Sportress: Six, Again: The Real Footy Begins
Storm Machine: Game 730 – S28E19 Review
Notes
Dolphins: Finefeuiaki and Nicholls to miss Round 20. 8-9 is not getting better anytime soon.
Super League could expand to 14 teams in 2026 but crucial vote awaits. Lost this in the wash but it had been a while since we heard from Super League. Looks like the anti-NRL/anti-IMG coup is succeeding. Business as usual has shown commercially dismal returns. The NRL and IMG seemed to have sensible possible futures to offer, but the clubs seem to be prefer BAU. Good luck to them.
Relatedly, Would more foreign players enhance Super League or impede youngsters? The article doesn’t really address the headline but talks about the mooted increase of foreign quotas for Super League clubs (up from 7 to 10), allowing England to raid state cups looking for players just below the notice of the NRL. Caius Fatili, formerly of Wynnum and Sunshine Coast, gets a good wrap. With the expansion of the NRL (double the effect if NRG and/or a return to the NYC get up), the collpase of Super League’s commercial viability while extending both foreign quotas and increasing the number of teams, the rugby league labour market is going to experience a huge amount of flux, which is going to have direct and immediate consequences on field at multiple levels of competition. Queensland’s minor league clubs seem most likely to eat shit as a result, as is typical, but this is a far more real threat than whatever the AFL is cooking up for western Brisbane.
Nathan Cleary engages lawyers to pursue legal action over fake flyers left on Origin fans' vehicles. A strange example where the loser energy is emanating from whoever made the flyer and not Nathan Cleary.
This week in PNG: Two dead after State of Origin
Reminder if that if Buzz is writing about it, there is no “code of secrecy” in place around broadcast negotiations. Loose lips sink ships, champ.
Nickelware
Bonus nickelware, just for this week. Queensland managed to level the Interstate Championship for the first time but as per traditional Origin rules, a drawn series returns to the previous title holder: New South Wales (boooooooo).
Content the algorithm is hiding from you
MO is one of the only annual subscriptions I’ll happy to pay.
I’m also counting this name drop as part of my membership perks - better than a scrolling list of “producers” on a YouTube video.