Where were you when Fozball was born… I was sitting on a couch in Busselton wondering what the hell happened

Some wild scenes on the Easter weekend, particularly on Thursday and Friday..

The birth of FOZBALL as Kieran Foran turned out to be Jack Gibson reincarnated, as Manly officially dumped the Dolphins out of premiership contention by putting 52 points on them before allowing the Hammer to do a bit of stat padding, which could very well make Foran the only coach to score 50+ points in their First Grade coaching debut, and it begs the question… what the **** was Anthony Seibold doing all that time?

Then again, if the first month of this season taught us anything, it’s that sometimes you need a coaching change to freshen thing up.

The half centuries weren’t done as the Panthers did what no team had done to Craig Bellamy’s Melbourne Storm since 2003, dropping 50 points on the Grand Finalists and consigning the mighty Melbourne Storm to the 50 point curse (No team has conceded 50+ points and won the premiership), and the 2026 Penrith Panthers now have the 2nd-best points differential after 5 games in the history of First Grade (+150), beaten only by the 1935 Eastern Suburbs team (+160) which stands as greatest attacking team in history (37.44 points per game) even though they played in the age of 3-point tries, although the Panthers are averaging 38 points per game, and they’d only need to hold that for another 6 months to break the record.

Then the carnage at the Dragons continued as they got shutout at Kogarah by the Cowboys, which is only the fourth time ever the joint venture has been shutout at the ancient home of St George, the Broncos won at great cost as Reece Walsh and Ben Hunt are sidelined, the Knights continue to win, as do the Wests Tigers as they produced another thriller against Parramatta on Easter Monday, with Jock Madden converting a late penalty to send the game to Golden Point, then converting again during sudden death to win the game for the Tigers, who are up into the lofty heights of 2nd on the ladder.

Now, highlights for Round 6 include;

Nathan Cleary’s 200th NRL game as Penrith play Canterbury, and an interesting fact is that Cleary has the second-greatest points per game average of any player with at least 1,000 career points (9 per game)… the all-time record is Mick Cronin at 9.13 per game, which still stands 40 years after he retired.

The winless and embattled St George-Illawarra Dragons, who are in the gunsights of the Daily Telegraph as they suggested they remove the St George-Illawarra part and just become the soulless Dragons, play Manly at WIN Stadium as Flanno faces down the greatest coach in NRL history, and it’s worth noting WIN Stadium is a house of horrors for the Sea Eagles… they have 1 win there in 22 years.

Another old-fashioned North Queensland Derby as the Brisbane Broncos host North Queensland at Suncorp, then we get the Perth Doubleheader on Saturday afternoon, starting with the Rabbitohs hosting the embattled Raiders, and a fun note is that Souths have lost their 5 games in Perth (0-3 at Optus Stadium and last win at Perth Oval was 2015), then the Sharks host the Roosters as Cronulla Beach and Bondi Beach meet Cottesloe Beach as Daly Cherry-Evans requires 1 try to bring up a century of tries..

Another fun note – The Raiders have won all 5 games they’ve ever played in Perth (Which were all the WACA), but haven’t played in Perth since they played the Western Reds in the Super League year of 1997… the original 2020 fixture had them playing the Roosters in Perth (Which would’ve been a Grand Final rematch), but history had other ideas.

And we get a very rare case of a highly promising game involving the Wests Tigers and the Newcastle Knights as 2nd plays 3rd in Campbelltown, and this might actually favour the Knights because their recent record against Wests is quite good (Even as Wests finally broke the drought last year), and Wests’ record in Campbelltown is horrific – They have just 2 wins from 17 games there since the start of 2021.

And now, the Round 6 Tips:

Turns out that the PR Exercise of Foran coaching Manly cost me a perfect round last week.

Round 5 Score = 7/8

Round 5 Progress Score = 26/40 (65%)

And now, a preview of tonight’s game….

60% of the time, it works every time.