Five Wishes for the 2021 NRL Season

With the NRL season nearly here, Nothing But League has put together a wishlist for 2021, including representative footy.

1. A Fresh Premiership Winner

While the Melbourne Storm and the Sydney Roosters are two of the most consistent teams in the NRL era, watching them play ‘grand final tag’ can get boring for neutral fans.

Fun fact: since 2012, the Storm and/or Roosters have played in seven grand finals, winning six of them. The Storm also made four straight grand finals from 2006 to 2009 (despite their two premiership being stripped in 2010), and the Roosters made three straight from 2002 to 2004.

As for 2021, will the Storm struggle without Cameron Smith? His refusal to make a decision on his future has reached soap opera-levels of farce. And was the Roosters’ late fade out in 2020 a sign of the future or an aberration?

There’s a few non Storm/Roosters contenders in 2021: Canberra, Penrith (while they dominated the 2020 regular season, they couldn’t beat the Storm when it really mattered), and Souths. Canberra are a big chance to break their 27-year premiership drought, while a young Panthers side could be fired up to go one step further. Souths have played – and lost – the last three preliminary finals: surely they’re due some good luck?