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.
2. South Sydney Rabbitohs: No "next man up"
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.
