This egg wrapping is clearly outdated…. The NRL logo has obviously changed since then!

Well friends, we have arrived at the Easter long weekend, and the main highlight of this past week has been the Wests Tigers being a meme club once more, as they unveiled their ANZAC Day jerseys, with the only problem being that they depicted American soliders instead of Australians, forcing a redesign, and capping it off that jersey was being modelled by Englishman John Bateman, who had no idea what was going on.

That just confirms once and for all that the Wests Tigers are, definitively and absolutely, UN-AUSTRALIAN.

As for Round 5, thought I might be looking okay for a 6/8 after Manly saved themselves in the Game of the Year against the Knights in Mudgee, but the Warriors stunned the Sharks in The Shire, coming from 20 points down to win in the last minute as the driving rain kicked in, and the Bulldogs bested the Cowboys thanks to a couple of late tries to tie the scores, then Matt Burton did the deed in golden point.

Still, the ultimate highlight of this week had to be Jaeman Salmon, in his first game in Canberra since being described as a “Weak-gutted dog” by Ricky Stuart last year, scoring the last try of the game to bring up the half-century for Penrith in their almighty ball-tearing of the Raiders, sending Paul Kent into lunacy on NRL 360 defending his mate Sticky, as he blamed Ivan Cleary for Penrith’s apparent lack of class.

A mug comment from a mug scribe.

So looking at the Easter weekend

– Easter Thursday sees the Storm play the Chooks at AAMI Park, a fixture that produced a thriller last year as Easts won narrowly in Round 24 and helped cost the Storm a Top 4 spot

– The annual Good Friday game between the Bulldogs and Souths, and we’ll see another example of the Bulldogs being what they hope they can be, and Souths being what we thought they weren’t going to be…. Does any of that make sense?

– Good Friday night has a clash between the North & the South of the Sunshine State as the Cowboys host the Dolphins, who copped their first ball-tearing in the NRL thanks to a St George team that apparently hate their coach

– A good match-up on paper sees Penrith play Manly, now that we definitely know Penrith are back and firing after seeing that 2nd Half in Canberra, and Manly will have to be a shitload better defensively

– The ladder leading Broncos host the Raiders in a game where one team had a monster win and the other one had a monster defeat…. So it’ll probably be decided by fewer than 30 points.

– The Titans and Dragons meet for the second time in 5 weeks, this time the Titans hosting on the Gold Coast as I still try and figure out where the hell either team is at this season

– The 2nd-placed Warriors travel to Newcastle to play the Knights, and whatever Andrew Webster has done to the Warriors has given them a toughness that we haven’t seen from a Warriors team since Ivan Cleary’s tenure finished.

– And finally we have the traditional Easter Monday clash between the army-hating Wests Tigers and the Parramatta Eels, and this time last year Wests stunned the Eels at the death to win 21-20 in one of the rare highlights in their spoon-winning season, whereas this time the teams have a combined 1 win from 10 games… which went to the Eels by a point.

Now, enough rambling, here are my Succinct Tips for Round 6, and it appears Round 5’s success was a blip on the bleak horizon, because once again…. it was 4/8.

Round 5 Score = 4/8, Progress Score = 23/40 (57.5%)

And now for the Round 6 LOCK OF THE WEEK, and last week’s Lock went both ways, as Manly were ultimately able to salvage a 32-32 draw against the Knights in Mudgee, meaning we can’t say the Lock was beaten, but we can’t claim a win either, so we’ll call it evens and move on.

So, THIS WEEK, Saturday evening, Suncorp Stadium, the Brisbane Broncos are low altitude FLYING, and based on exposed form, I think they’ll be leaving Sticky singing Kermit the Frog in his press conference…

Because when it comes to the Canberra Raiders in 2023, IT’S NOT EASY BEING GREEN.