Week 1 of the NRL finals have come and gone, and it means two more sides have joined the bottom nine who missed on knockout action altogether, now likely en route to Bali.
It might be easy, and obvious to focus on the sides remaining in the competition, but today we're looking to the nine forgotten sides who didn't feature in Week 1 of the finals.
More specifically what went wrong for each of the nine sides now out of contention.
Below is where each team wrong.
Canberra entered the final rounds of the year needing to beat Penrith and the Roosters and win a straight shootout against the Dragons.
The fact that they achieved both yet still missed Finals showed they left it too late.
The Raiders had byes in Rounds 14 and 19. Those byes bookended a string of four straight losses.
It's no shock that this run, as well as a round 22, 23 and 24 loss streak combined to ensure it was too little too late for the Green Machine.
Obviously it doesn't matter when the wins come, as long as they do, but Canberra committed the ultimate rugby league sin by leaving their destiny to other teams.
Newcastle's win on Sunday afternoon meant Canberra missed out.
We are two years in and I still don't know what to expect from the Dolphins. Half to half, let alone week to week.
The game against the Sharks is the perfect example.
They opened the game by scoring four straight tries. It looked like a 50 point win. They then conceded the next four and looked set to lose the game.
Only some brilliant from the Hammer put them back in front and proved the winner in the end.
In the final three weeks of the regular season the Dolphins lost 48-6, won 40-6 and lost 14-6.
The gap between the Dolphins best and their worst proved too large to bank enough wins. If they found one more win, they play Finals. They were close.
The Dragons spent almost the entire season sticking it to the doubters.
They set it up that a win, at home, against local rivals the Sharks would secure the most unlikely of Finals appearances.
They were smoked 38-10. Not to worry, a win over the lowly Eels would land them that spot ... They lost 44-40.
It seemed as though they were able to overcome when they were expected to lose. They wilted once the pressure of expectation finally hit them.
The Dragons had a chance to shake the infamous "choker" tag but instead they played right into it.
A horror late season fade out saw the Dragons miss the Finals cut off ... again!
The Broncos entered the season as genuine title heavies. They were most people's pick to go one further than they did in 2023.
Then injuries struck. Just like at every single club in every single season of professional football since the beginning of time.
The Broncos simply didn't have the options available to step up when called upon.
Names like Walsh, Reynolds and Haas are near impossible to replace, for anyone, but the Broncos couldn't even come close.
I'm not having a personal go at the back up options, but this is professional football and you have to be able to step up.
Look at Melbourne and Penrith. Both lost star halves for long periods and barely missed a beat. Without Reynolds, the Broncos looked like the Titans.
The Warriors were everyone's second favourite team in 2023. They rode a wave of momentum that saw them contest a Prelim.
Much was expected for the 'Wahs' in 2024. To say they did not deliver is an understatement.
Yes they suffered injuries, but no worse than teams that finished ahead of them.
They just couldn't rise to expectations set by a ridiculous 2023 season.
It's hard to pinpoint what went wrong but losing five games (as well as having a draw) at home certainly hurt. One of their 'home' wins came at Suncorp too as an aside.
Typically the trans Tasman trip is amongst the hardest in the NRL. Not this season.
It took the Titans until Round eight to record their first win of the season. A bye in Round two helped keep them off zero points, but we all knew.
A couple of wins here and then kept attention off them but it wasn't until a 66-6 win in Round 16 that the Titans season really started.
Five wins in six games had even the doubters slowly raising their eyebrows as this most unlikely of mid to late season runs.
Then they lost five games in a row.
Start terribly, finish terribly. Surely not the pre-season plan Des Hasler was working on.
Hasler needs to spend the off-season nailing down his preferred spine and ready them for a fast start. Playing catch up is a risky business.
The Eels started the season at 2-1. They beat the Dogs and Manly with their loss coming at the hands of Penrith.
They proved they had the talent to return to Finals.
Then they lost. Then they lost. Then they won. They then they lost ... and lost and lost and lost. You can see where I'm going with this.
The fact it took a huge effort on the final day of the season just to avoid finishing last says everything about the Eels 2024.
Brad Arthur was sacked, they lost their star youngster to the Panthers. Nothing went right in 2024.
I'm not saying it was all self inflicted but a lot of their issues certainly were.
South Sydney suffered one of the all time injury tolls in 2024.
Campbell Graham was ruled out, for what turned out to be the entire season, before the NRL season even started.
Latrell Mitchell was in and out far too often, while Alex Johnston, Jai Arrow, Jack Wighton, Cameron Murray etc etc all missed games.
Jye Gray is the outlier here as he was absolutely magnificent when called upon, but otherwise Souths just didn't have the cattle to step up.
It is easy to blame injuries, and this would present a fair case to be honest, but the true top sides overcome injury tolls.
2023 became about 2024 very quickly, which is never something you want to hear.
I wanted to put "everything" here as everything went wrong. The main culprit for yet another season finishing last though came about to due a lack of discipline.
16 Tigers were sent from the field in 2024. 16!
For a side that struggled to defend with 13 on 13, a man advantage was simply not something the Tigers could afford. Let alone 16 times.
Every time a Tiger was sat down, the floodgates opened.
No side in the competition can defend a man down, or even two men down at times, on such a consistent basis.
There are a plethora of factors at play here but the best chance a side has of winning a game is playing on a level field. The Tigers took that away from themselves far too often.