NRL Roundup: Panthers skip away as an interesting logjam forms

Aaron Murphy

Sydney's Mark Nawaqanitawase celebrates a try scored during their win over Canberra.MARK NOLAN / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP

The Knights, Cowboys, Bunnies and Tigers all had losses at the weekend to leave the door ajar for Melbourne and Canterbury to convert their improved form into finals contention.

The numbers that matter

The big winners of Round 14

The Dolphins have arguably been the most entertaining team of the competition since the start of last year, but defensive frailties held back their progress as a unit, particularly when they were blown away in a late-season spell that saw them score 70 points across three games only to concede 160 in return and miss the finals by one win.

Back to a full strength side full of Origin stars, they put it all together against a fellow top-eight side - North Queensland Cowboys, who had made an occasion out of the match by celebrating Coen Hess’ 200th appearance - and it was the second half defending in particular that pleased head coach Kristian Woolf.

Woolf was a little let down by the Dolphins’ fifth tackle plays after half-time, but certainly can't be picky with a 40-point performance that helped set a club record fifth consecutive victory.

They've beaten the Cowboys, the Rabbitohs (another team not far behind) and the high-profile Bulldogs and Storm, both of whom were amongst the pre-season favourites. That's all whilst suffering some of the most disruptive team changes of any club during the Origin period, which has been a specialty of Premiership-winning clubs in recent seasons.

The big losers of Round 14

Speaking of five-game streaks, the Brisbane Broncos continue to sink to new lows in terms of their results.

In what has been a horror season so far for three of last year's four preliminary finalists, the Broncos couldn't bounce back from last week's embarrassing loss to last-placed St George Illawarra despite coming out of the sheds with plenty of vigour and determination in the first half.

The Broncos came agonisingly close to opening the scoring in the third and seventh minutes, busted down the door in the 19th, but some very sloppy defending meant an early 12-0 lead became an 18-12 deficit within the space of a 25-minute period either side of half-time.

Head coach Michael Maguire couldn't fault the effort of his players, telling reporters they "had a red-hot crack" on both the training track and the Suncorp Stadium pitch this week, but he also struggled to hide his concern about their inability to get the better of lowly clubs such as the Dragons and Titans.

Reece Walsh also struggled to justify his call-up to the Queensland squad with a lacklustre performance that had journalists questioning Maguire about whether he was playing injured. He ran only 144 metres for five tackle busts in a game that was a barometer of the team as a whole in the mid-season period.

Who scored braces this week?

Mark Nawaqanitawase moved into the top-ten of the leaderboard with his hat-trick in the 26-0 win over Canberra, with nine of his ten tries for 2026 coming in the last six matches alone.

Penrith trio Freddy Lussick, Thomas Jenkins and Brian To'o scored two each in the rout of Wests, which extended Jenkins' lead at the top of the table.

There were also two tries each for Ronaldo Mulitalo (Cronulla), Jason Saab (Manly), Tom Chester (NQ Cowboys), Jamayne Isaako (Dolphins) and Jayden Campbell (Gold Coast).