It took the Panthers 4 years to pull off a Fourpeat…. this time around it took them 4 games!

Yep, after the Cowboys drove them into the deck of Commbank Stadium, Penrith’s Drive for Five, or One For The Thumb, is looking as perilous a drive as Niki Lauda around the Nurburgring in 1976…

Although, there’s slightly less heat on Ivan Cleary than there was on Niki Lauda.

On another note, it’s no wonder the Panthers are going as poorly as they are when they can’t even remember what day they’re playing their games on, as evidenced by Isaah Yeo’s 250th game jersey last Friday… notice what month they think the game is in:

It would seem the Panthers are still in Las Vegas, using the American dating system.

So other than that, Round 4 was full of wild moments like the Raiders pulling off the Green Machine Special to defeat Cronulla on Thursday night, Souths won the race to the bottom against the Roosters, the Dolphins finally had a win against the typical Titans, the Broncos scored points for fun against Wests, the Storm were 48-10 up on Manly before showing mercy and only winning 48-24, the Bulldogs pitched a 20-0 shutout on the injury-afflicted Knights to stay unbeaten through 5 games.

And Zac Lomax, the Dally M Winger of the Year, went to the Eels from the Dragons so he could play in the Centres, and yet he went back to the Wing on Saturday and sank his old club with the field goal in Golden Point.

So yep, a former Dragon in Lomax, coached by a former Dragon in Jason Ryles, defeated the Dragons to give Ryles his first win as an NRL coach, although Lomax has probably paid the price with a minor foot fracture which will probably end his Origin I chances.

And now here’s a look at Round 6, with this week bringing up the Optus Stadium doubleheader in Perth, forecast crowd 30,000, and here’s a random fact for this week – There won’t be a single game hosted in Sydney this weekend, the first time that’s ever happened outside of Magic Round or the pandemic.

A double-header in Perth, the Dragons playing in Woolongong, the Eels in Darwin and the Knights hosting a game in Newcastle…. HISTORIC.

Now for the games:

– The Thursday night game at Suncorp sees the Redcliffe Dolphins, having finally won a game under Kristian Woolf, take on the aforementioned Panthers who can’t win a game in Australia, and the Panthers have a chance to do something they were aiming for at the start of the season… 5 IN A ROW!

– The Dragons host the Titans in the Gong in the Friday early evening game after both teams horrifically let their supporters down against a pair of winless teams in the Eels and Dolphins… what a great choice, the team that stinks at home against the team that stinks on the road.

– Only 5 weeks after they played in Round 1, the Broncos host the Roosters at Suncorp, and what the hell kind of scheduling is this from the NRL… you get the Broncos and Roosters playing 5 weeks after their last meeting, and next week you’ll have the Roosters playing the Panthers 5 weeks after their last meeting.

– The first game of the Perth doubleheader has Cronulla hosting Manly in the age-old Battle of the Beaches, and this weekend they’ll be trading Cronulla and Manly beach for Cottesloe Beach.

– Part II of the Perth doubleheader has South Sydney hosting North Queensland, as the Rabbits have been absolutely decimated by the injury bug, with Cody Walker, Jamie Humphreys and Mikaele Ravalawa all down with hamstring injuries, joining Campbell Graham and Cameron Murray on the sidelines, which means Latrell Mitchell is starting in the halves, and on the other hand, this’ll be the first time the Cowboys have played a game in Perth since 1997, when they played the Western Reds in Round 7 of the Super League season at the WACA and lost 4-6… by sheer coincidence, the game on Saturday will be played exactly 28 years since that game against the Reds (April 12, 1997).

– The Eels make their annual trip to Darwin to play the Canberra Raiders on Saturday night, and it was in Darwin that Brad Arthur once drank the town’s entire water supply, and subsequently spent the next 3 years on the toilet, only getting off in time to see the Eels lose the 2022 Grand Final:

– The Melbourne Storm host the New Zealand Warriors at AAMI Park on Sunday afternoon, the only sporting game of note in Melbourne this weekend, and on Channel 9 during the week Andrew Johns mentioned that the Warriors are the Storm’s bogey team… there’s only 2 problems with that statement, they being that the Warriors haven’t been the Storm’s bogey team since the 2011 Preliminary Final, and the Storm have won the last 16 games between the teams dating back to 2016.

One those teams is a bogey team, and the other one is the New Zealand Warriors.

– And the lucky last game of the weekend has the Newcastle Knights hosting the Wests Tigers in Newcastle, with the Knights being another team to get smashed by the injury bus, with Jack Cogger (finger), James Schiller (concussion), Jacob Saifiti (calf), Jack Hetherington (shoulder) and Adam Elliott (calf) all missing, while Jarome Luai finally returns for Wests, and once again this is an example of a rematch 5 weeks after the teams last played, considering Wests hosted the Knights in Round 1 at Campbelltown (10-8 to the Knights)… they may as well have played a double-header for shit’s sake!

And now for the Succinct NRL Tips For Round 6!

Round 5 Score = 4/8

Progress Score = 22/40 (55%)

Lock of the Week

I think I’ve now made it a hat-trick of losing Locks of the Week, so let’s make it 4… or 3, I actually lost count.

Anyway, the Horses with No Name to win on Friday night with some kind of a cricket score.