I don't think we'll ever be consistently the best club in the NRL. That's the Storm. The Roosters are next and Souths aren't far behind. I expect the Broncos to get up there too - their current slump is a massive outlier for them.
But we don't need to be the strongest club to win a premiership. Over the past decade a few clubs have won comps who we can match for 'winnability' (for want of a better term).
Think of it like this. In a given year a number of clubs are a chance of winning the comp (look at pre-season odds for evidence of this). Now, none of us could quantify that chance for sure, but there are no foregone conclusions, so we must accept that a number of clubs are a chance of firstly making the finals and then winning enough consecutive finals matches to take out the premiership. The chances for each club must add up to 100%
As a thought experiment let's say the chances for 2021 look like this:
20% Panthers
20% Rabbitohs
20% Storm
10% Eels
10% Raiders
10% Roosters
5% Titans
3% Warriors
1% Knights
1% Sharks
If we're a 10% chance of winning the comp it means we're a 90% chance of not winning the comp. Therefore it's highly likely we won't win the comp this year (assuming the 10% is true, and whether we win the comp or not, we'll never know in hindsight what our chances were).
But suppose we were a 10% chance of winning the comp every year for ten years? We'd be decent odds of winning one in that time frame. How about over 20 years? It would be almost inevitable that we'd jag one.
Now how about the Storm? Over the past 20 years they've won five grand finals (including the two stripped). You could reasonable say they are 25% chance of winning the grand final in any given year. Now, that chance might fluctuate above/below 25% from year to year (e.g. this year they are quite weak compared to their baseline, but still might be a 20% chance of winning the comp) but over the long run, assuming the club itself doesn't get any weaker/stronger compared to its rivals, they will average a grand final win every four years.
These are all numbers I've plucked to illustrate a point (though Melbourne Storm being 25% chance of winning in a given year is drawn from their history over the preceding two decades), and obviously the Eels haven't been a 10% chance of winning the comp over the past 20 years. But I genuinely think we are about a 10% chance of winning this year. If we can stay this strong we will eventually win another one. We might have a year where the stars align and our chance of winning that year get up well above 10%. But the point I want to make is that we are a better chance of winning the comp this year than we have been, probably for a long time. Are we just having an uncharacteristically strong year that will disappear next year or the year after when we revert to our mean chance of winning? (For argument's sake let's say we are a long term 1%-chance-of-winning-in-a-given-year club.) I don't think so. I think the stability of coaching staff, and the consistent finals appearances and the stable/professional electoral cycle we now have mean that 10%-chance-per-year is our new normal. Premierships are no longer a once a century event for us. They might be once a decade now. But we can possibly get even stronger than that. Maybe we will become an every-five-years premiership winning club, like the Roosters have been since 2002. But to get there we first had to get to where we are, and consolidate that. Personally I still think a few things would need to change to match the Roosters over the long term, but we sure as shit will be able to outperform them (or the Storm) in a single season now. That year could be 2021. It could be next year. We don't know, but I do think a premiership is inevitable now. I just hope it doesn't take another 20 years.
Part 1
Or we can cheat the cap again and this time get really lucky and get 4 or 5 once in a generation players including a GOAT and a GOAT coach, before we get caught, so we only need to release just one of them and then continue on business as usual.
Once Bellamy is gone, Melbourne's standards will also start to change and I don't think for the better. Their roster is really solid now without being unbeatable, but will kick up a notch once Harry is back in no doubt. However their previous success rate is so impressive due to the long term stability that the GOAT, Bellamy and all the other wonder kids that that roster afforded them.
That isn't the case now, I expect the Storms dominance over the past 15 odd years is about to get back to normal like other well run clubs, but not insanely successful like this previous stellar period. Also I don't think Harry will be as stable an influence as Smith was only due to injury and longevity
I believe that they will be a level down from the Roosters at best, but probably not even that, because if they can't pick the eyes out of QLD the way they were able to under Bellamy, then they will be like the rest of us, hit and miss. Remember, they just won the lottery with Papenhuyzen, since they were shopping him around only 2 years ago and no other club wanted him. Talk about LUCK. Even Bellamy didn't think he was up to it.
But more to the point the second Bris team is going to be a big and detrimental game changer for the Storm. They will have a real fight on their hands recruitment wise once they come in. So it will leave them with maybe NZ, but everyone is scouting there too so, who knows? At the end of the day, they will be less likely to be picking up unspotted champions the way they have in the past. Kids will rather stay in their backyard then move to another State, if they don't have to.
So in about 2-3 years you will start to see a different Storm from the one under the Bellamy/Smith era. Still decent, but hardly world beating as they were. Kind of like Parra after our golden era, but less like falling off a cliff, due to not having an idiot running their club or useless and disrupting factions holding them to ransom, but still lesser then they were under the handful of genius players that they had.
The only real long term super clubs the way I see it, are Parra, Roosters(until Politis drops of his perch) and the Broncos if they can rediscover their mojo(coach) who can set them up long term. Otherwise it is really just us the Rooster and the Panthers(who I will get to a little later) for now. All other clubs will swing up and down like they always have on the backs of once in a generation type of players that they have been luckily enough to procure. We on the other hand are like a Broncos of yesteryear. We have it all. We just need stability and we will rise above all the rest.
Manly will be sh*t now for a very long time that that crop of great players of the early 2000's came through and a Des at the peak of his powers. The Dogs are making noises again, but it will be a few years yet before we know how they will fare but I doubt that they will recapture the Dogs of war type of long term success of before. Souths will do OK, because of Rusty, but again, unless they find a great coach that can give them the gravitas that attracts great players, and with the loss of Reynolds, then who will pick up the slack?
The Tiger's? Don't make me laugh, unless they can resurrect Benji and Farah then, they will linger for many years to come. The Dragon's, again unless they can unearth a champion or two playmakers that set the NRL world alight then they are also rans too. Sharks ditto. that leaves New Castle and the Panthers.
The Knights are building steadily and could eventually become a real power in the next 2-3 years that is sustainable for a decade or more and lets not forget that they have a very strong and rich leagues club now to back them. So yeah they should become a power club, IF they can somehow find a top quality half to lead them after Pearce is done.
That leave the Panthers who are now the Powerhouse club of the NRL. They have so much young talent that they will be up for at least the next 10 years and the talent doesn't look like stopping either. Gould has really worked his magic out there. I believe we will be gaging our success against theirs and the Roosters over the next decade.
Continued...
