NRL Round 5 featured stirring breakthrough wins for previously winless Manly and North Queensland, renewing hopes of a finals push after most fans and critics had drawn a line through their names for 2021.
In the third edition ofย Zero Tackleโs Top 8, This Warriors Life's Will Evans counts down the best revivals horror starts during the NRL era.
Check out This Warriors Lifeโsย websiteย andย podcast, and follow them onย Facebookย andย Twitter.
CHECK OUT WILL's OTHER TOP 8s: The best rugby league wing giants, Miraculous comebacks of the NRL era
5.
Cronulla Sharks (2015)
Cronulla landed the 2014 wooden spoon in a season marred by Shane Flanagan being suspended by the NRL over the ASADA scandal and Todd Carneyโs infamous โbubblerโ episode. The Sharksโ fortunes failed to improve early in 2015 after Flanaganโs reinstatement as coach, losing their first four games, but the gritty outfit dug in to record 14 wins and finish sixth. Their season ended via a week two finals loss to the Cowboys.
Parramatta 2009 doesn’t even get a mention?!?!
5 wins from 18 rounds and go on to make a GF… that’ll do me!
I take your point – but this list was based purely on teams that lost a bunch of games at the start, going 0-3, 0-4, 0-5 etc.
The ’09 Eels won two of their first three so I didn’t consider them for this. Absolutely the greatest late-season charge since Souths’ Miracle of ’55 – in fact I put them at No.2 in the ‘Late-season Rallies’ top 10 in my book ‘The NRL Book of Lists’.