Jed Stuart shows his disappointment after the loss to Cronulla. Photo: Jayzie Photography.
So, that’s it. A dodgy call by Ashley Klein goes against us, the players deflate and 31 years of pain continues for Canberra Raiders supporters.
But should an unlucky bounce of the ball in one finals match be able to negate 27 rounds of dominance?
It highlights the folly of a flawed NRL season structure that fails to reward week-in, week-out effort, instead handing its ultimate prize to the team that happens to hit form and remain injury-free for one month of the year.
Canberra has been the best side in the league by a country mile in 2025. We were the pacesetters since March and ended the season having won two more matches than second-placed Melbourne. Unlike our rivals, such as Canterbury-Bankstown, we weren’t aided by a favourable draw and had the best record against other top-eight sides.
That dominance continued for most of their first finals match against the Brisbane Broncos. But a series of contentious decisions in the closing moments led to perhaps the unluckiest defeat in modern memory.
In the blink of an eye, the Raiders found themselves in the same sudden-death boat as Penrith, a side that finished a full 11 points behind it on the ladder and only limped into the top eight after coming last mid-season.
Exhausted and demoralised after a 94-minute marathon loss, Canberra were rocked by a freak illness to a star player and predictably ended their season against an in-form Cronulla side that had benefited from an extra day’s rest.
As veteran commentator Tim Gavel said, there were still a lot of positives to take out of a stellar season in which some experts predicted they’d win the wooden spoon. But who’s going to remember it?
Even a casual observer of the sport could tell you that Penrith Panthers have won the last four premierships and made the last five grand finals. Can you name the last five minor premiers? I didn’t think so.
The optimists say this young Raiders side will only get better. But the reality is – Penrith apart – a team doesn’t get many genuine shots at winning a premiership in any given era. Nobody can predict how injuries, form and the loss of key players will impact the side in the coming years.
This just underlines the injustice of it all – zero reward for our best overall performance since 1990.
All those wins during the season have counted for little. Photo: Jaye Grieshaber.
The world’s most popular sporting competition, the English Premier League, doesn’t have a final series at all. The minor premiers are the premiers and get all the plaudits. This increases the value of every game during the regular season and properly rewards the side that consistently performs from game one.
In the NRL, a lot of the matches during the home and away rounds barely matter. Penrith could have stayed on holidays until May and still had a shot at being premiers. For the top sides, the only thing that counts is their form in September, and for the sixth year in a row, the Panthers are fortunate enough to go through the final series relatively unscathed by the injuries that have plagued other sides.
While our sport needs a finals series, the NRL should consider a better way to recognise the team that does the hard yards of finishing at the top of the ladder at the end of the season. I assure you, the game as a whole will benefit beyond appeasing the sour grapes of a sore loser.
