6 weeks into 2019 pending the Easter Monday game.
Who's hot and who's not? No changes in the top 4 but the middle is chaos. Big movers.
1 Trent Robinson - Still delivering. Has improved the premiers, playing better footy than last year. Maybe Cronk's making him look good but in the end results are what matter.
2 Craig Bellamy - Down to 1 of the big 4 and Storm still haven't skipped a beat. Look like a class above, along with Easts. Young players in key positions are firing. We're going for round 2 in Robinson + Cronk vs Bellamy + Smith. Robbo won the battle but who will win the war...
3 Wayne Bennett - The other big coaching stoush of the year Wayne v Seibold. Souths have improved under Wayne and will continue to do so as the year progresses.
4 Micheal Maguire - Has brought his textbook tough as nails attitude to Wests. Not quite clicking in attack yet but seems to have put some serious guts into the perpetually problematic Tigers defence.
5 Ricky Stuart - Everyone mocked the Stick but his Pommy shopping spree is paying off! Could Raiders go one better than even their 2016 run?
6 Des Hasler - Des another one on the comeback trail. Getting better results out of his squad than many would have expected.
7 Paul Green - Meanwhile Green getting bugger all out of a quality Cowboys side. A good win in Auckland but too early to say whether it will be a turning point. So far, the worst performing of the coaches with a premiership to their name.
8 Ivan Cleary - Penrith look worse under Cleary. Tigers look better without him. Not a great sign. Too early to completely write off with a new club but value is dropping. Some strange tactical decisions so far resulting in ugly football.
9 Anthony Seibold - Broncos are performing worse under Seibold. Maybe there's an adjustment period to his technique and the payoff will come in the back half of the season, but right now the heights of 2018 look like a long time ago.
10 Paul McGregor - Some early wins on the board and a contract extension. Feels like deja vu with Mary. We've been here too many times before, the real test comes post-Origin. Potential to move up the board but holding for now. Flanno won a comp after a long slow-burn period of improvement, could Mary?
11 Brad Arthur - Was 2018 a fluke disaster or was 2017 a fluke success? Who knows. But BA is currently not the worst coach in the comp. Eels are playing above their level, for now.
12 John Morris - His inherited side is still performing Ok despite a horror offseason and early injury run. Hard to place J-Mo, too inexperienced to move up and too many inept coaches below. So he falls in at an indifferent 12.
13 Garth Brennan - Titans improving week on week but a long way to claw back.
14 Dean Pay - Dogs looking gutsy at times and awful at others. Needed to make more squad improvements over the offseason.
15 Stephen Kearney - Some coaches have a shit roster and can't do anything about it without a good 2 offseasons to repair it. But some, like Kearney, have quality at their fingertips and actively ruin it. The decision to push Shaun Johnson out is, to no ones surprise, a complete bust. There are periods of decent footy but ultimately the Warriors look worse and it's hard to see them making the 8.
16 Nathan Brown - Full support of the board followed by a flogging at the hands of a far inferior team on paper in the Titans. Nathan Brown is the worst coach in the NRL currently, and could be a dead man walking.
Brown has had 3 years to build his squad and the excuses have run out. Being a decent recruiter isn't enough to cut it at NRL level. Senior players are in appalling form, new signings aren't seeing the ball, positional switches failed then were backflipped for even worse results.
