NRL 2018 predictions: Fox Sports experts give their tips for the season

[Mark from Brisbane]

Ironically nrl.com have us finishing 7th.I’ll take that.

Their junior writer must be an Eagles fan!!

 

[SeaEagleRock8]

Or...NRL.com knows something that hasn't been publicly announced yet?

 

[davohan123]

The thing everyone is questioning is have we improved on last year...? Which teams have?

Roosters have.
Storm remain the benchmark.
Cowboys have.
Broncos unknown... A few changes.
Eels unknown... Few changes.
Sharks have.
Panthers have.
Dragons have.
Raiders the same....
Dogs have.

Have we? And by how much? Yes, we got Thommo. But we've lost Green. Unknown....
We only scraped into the 8. If there is slight improvement by panthers/dragons/Raiders/dogs etc... Then we need to be better just to hold that pace.

I have my concerns. Especially now that Baz has put so much emphasis on this trial essentially saying it's really important and will tell us where we are at. Sounds good if we win, but if the boys have worked an entire preseason and have been told this games result is important, what happens to team morale if they touch us up?...

I can totally understand why "experts" are writing us off. It's not like we took the league by storm last year...we had a solid patch before just scraping into the 8. Because the year exceeded all expectation and because of the couple of lean years prior, I think it felt like more of a success than it probably was.

Losing Green is a worry and I think our overall squad is short on quality compared to a number of other clubs. However, I think Barrett is shaping up to be the biggest make or break factor this coming year. If he is a "super coach" in the making like Gus thinks, he should be able to extract every last bit of talent out of our roster and push us ahead of the middle of the pack...

If he is just another good honest first grade coach, we will miss the finals because we just don't have the talent to compete.

Agree to disagree I guess.

I think the 5/8 and prop situation is going to really hinder us this year. I think our front row was a big reason we couldn't go to another level last year. If Taupau didn't have a big game, we had very little punch up the middle. We stayed in so many tight games last year because of Blake Green's kicking game (particularly short kicking) and his composure under pressure. We won't have that this year and it'll be the difference between winning and losing 2-3 games. That's all it takes to miss the 8 these days.

I personally think we will struggle (due to our 3,4 and 6) but the difference between the 5th or 6th team and the 10th -12th teams are usually injury, luck and being on the end of bad ref decisions.

Our forwards look like a good pack and that could just make us a real dark horse.

So fingers crossed.

Well it looks like most of you are right

 

[davohan123]

Vossy's always been a hater, best ignored.

Well he was right with his prediction sadly