Ducking for cover like a Melbourne Storm Assistant Coach, in training for the next mascot race, rejecting any future playing contracts under $2M per season, and refusing to play most positions and play in reserve grade and at the Sydney Football Stadium, it’s time for some Rugby League tips and opinion from The Gurgler’s NRL Donkey. The NRL Donkey provides his NRL Donkey’s 2026 NRL Finals Series Week 2 Expert Tips as well as offers an alternative, slightly unhinged view full of sass of the world of rugby league and beyond for another week.
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NRL Finals Series Week 2 Rant
The second week of the finals are here, and excitement and anticipation are replaced with expectation and dread, as every game is sudden death. Well not for Wests Tigers fans, as every game feels like sudden death, or some kind of death.
Week one of the finals unsurprisingly got rid of the two most inconsistent finals contenders as they predictable and unpredictably exited the 2026 title race.
One coach exited by launching a hand grenade towards the NRL and its Bunker, which is kind of ironic and/or coincidental, not sure which. But Bennett does have a point about pissing the Bunker off and just leaving it to referees. What’s the point of spending money and wasting time on a decision device that is just as error prone as the human on field. Although, it’s at this point that some middle manager will raise the prospect of getting AI involved just to enhance the errors and increase the cost. The losing other coach just glared his way through the coaches box and I’m still not sure if his team won or lost. I presume lost as they weren’t announced in the games line up this weekend. It does beg the question if people living in the hotter parts of Australia still go to Bali for end of season trips or go somewhere colder. I’d ask their coach but presume I won’t get a very good answer. If one at all.
Which leaves this week’s games, which are kind of at different ends of the spectrum. And a welcome break from the tedious transfer news, trade whispers, and Braith Anasta.
One is an all-Sydney clash with few narrative except for if fans will turn up or protest, and that doesn’t interest many other than the fans of those clubs, and the other has narratives a-plenty, had to be moved to a bigger stadium and still sold out in 20 minutes, and is a feelgood story either way. And we don’t need a fox nose worth of pep powder to get excited about. Maybe for the Roosters-Sharks game.
I do wonder if the Sharks will turn up this week to the same stadium that some refused to go to last weekend. They do have a point of being grump at losing the home game of the first week of the finals, teams should be able to play their home final wherever they like in the first week of the finals, but the NRL seem particularly grumpy about Shark Park or whatever it’s called these days. Maybe the NRL can’t keep up with the names. Or maybe Sharks spend too much money on needing to change their ground name signage every two years they can’t afford to properly do it up. Or maybe they can build more apartments and instead of selling grandstand tickets they could rent out apartments and give the NRL a cut. Feathers likes money.
But it was pretty petty of the Sharks fans to protest not going to the finals, maybe they’re complacent because they make the finals all the time, and maybe they’ve seen the Cowboys play recently and knew they’d win. But according to Google Maps it would take Cronulla fans 5 hours and 46 minutes to walk from Cronulla to the Sydney Football Stadium, whereas for Dolphins fans from Redcliffe, and there are plenty, it would take them 7 hours and 37 minutes to walk from Redcliffe to Suncorp Stadium, adding 20 minutes of course to admire the Bee Gees statues. And the Phins fans have to do that ten times a year. Of course some of those are away games, and the two games at Redcliffe this season saw them lose by a combined 100 points, so the journey would be worth it.
Redcliffe fans could get the train in I suppose, but it does go through Kallangur which is usually best avoided. Kallangur peaked when it had a Space themed Shopping Centre in the 1970’s and 1980’s, which suburb wouldn’t. And if think that “Spaced-themed Shopping Centre” is a double meaning for drugs then no, it actually existed. Here’s the link to Space City work. And for the record, drugs did come, after the Shopping Centre closed and it became a giant yellow-ing dome of misery. Unlike the proud domes of joy they previously were.
Continuing on space, the hype over in New Zealand is out of this world. And rightly so, so good for rugby league. Unlike the drink So Good, which is a contradiction of terms.
But so many good narratives in the game in Auckland, a sell out being one. And you can bet these people will travel further than Dolphins and Sharks fans combined.
And so they should. Because this is a game where the winner will have a good news story. One will light up an entire country and get rugby league to almost PNG levels of national pride. The other will see a team go from last to final four teams without the help of anything off the books, and with a rock solid coach who was obviously better than his most recent club.
Of course the neutrals would lean towards the Wahs, and why not. It’s good for rugby league and a positive rugby league story. Unlike the majority of my article. And “expert” tips below.
SATURDAY 7:50PM – ROOSTERS v CRONULLA @ Allianz Stadium
The Channel Nein game of choice, and I am wondering how this one didn’t end up as the standard Sunday 4pm special. Maybe the NRL put on their big boy pants for a change. It’s a tough game for the neutrals, this game missing all the feelgood stories of the game on the other side of the trench. Roosters and Sharks fans aside, I’m pretty sure neutrals don’t want either of these teams to win. The Roosters have won a title recently so neutrals probably don’t want to see them win another for a while, and although hiring Daly Cherry-Evans might get you closer to another it moves neutrals further away from supporting. Talking of supporting, I wonder if Sharks fans will turn up this week to the same ground they protested against last week. The Sharks aren’t as unlikeable as the Roosters, but they are reasonably meh, despite the very likeable Nicho Hynes. Whoever wins will fancy their chances against the waiting Dolphins, with the Roosters having a better recent record at Suncorp Stadium than the Broncos, although that’s not hard, and Cronulla beat the Dolphins 66-0 last time they came to Queensland. At one stage not long ago the Roosters could take the Minor Premiership and Sharks were a top four certainty, so I guess both would be kind of disappointed they’ve got to this stage. The neutrals won’t mind though.
Roosters by 20
SUNDAY 4:05PM – WARRIORS v NEWCASTLE @ Eden Park
The game of choice for the weekend, and not just because it is in New Zealand. As this column has said regularly this season, anyone who doesn’t want to see the Wahs do well hates rugby league. To a lesser degree Newcastle isn’t a bad story either, going from wooden spoon to dark horse contender. It proves a few things, that the salary cap works, that the previous coach was a fraud, and it’s a them problem not coach problem at the Gold Coast. The surprise I guess is not moving the game to Eden Park which is around triple the size of Mt Smart and sold out in 20 minutes in a very Mt Smart decision, because they could host this game in a open field and construct grandstands that could 500,00 and they’d probably still fill it. The surprise is that this game gets the Sunday timeslot over an all-Sydney game, I guess Channel Nein commentators will need a thorough pre-match guide to learn the names of the Warriors players. I just get a gut feeling that the way both games ended last week that the Knights are ready to upset an entire nation this weekend, and I do hope they have their post-match travel plans rock-solid.
Newcastle by 6
READ MORE: THE GURGLER’S FULL NRL 2026 GEAR
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2026 NRL DRAW ANALYSIS – TEAM BY TEAM
THE A TO Z OF THE 2025 NRL SEASON
