September hate watch: The NRL finals crisis no one saw coming

September 4, 2026 — 3:30pm

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

Which top-eight club do you hate the most? This is the annual conundrum for the rugby league world as the weather warms up and the semi-finals start.

For the majority of fans, watching the NRL in September is no longer about your team, who are now behind the wire in some secure tropical holiday resort, their mobile phones in lockboxes.

When your team is off on Mad Monday, your focus turns to who you most want to lose the premiership.

“Hate watch 2025” was a vintage edition, delivering a Broncos-Storm grand final. Could it be arranged that both clubs lose? The narrative was somewhat spoilt when the decider turned into one of the greatest matches and Reece Walsh’s magnetism became irresistible.

League lovers needed a whole summer to get over their shock at having become Broncos fans for a night.

This year, the hatred is roaming restlessly for a target. No Brisbane, no Melbourne, no traditionally hated Sydney teams like Manly or Canterbury. Parramatta and the Dragons, hated with great vigour in their day, are objects of pity.

As for the Tigers, they are hated by their own fans. True rugby league hatred is earned through success; and, as success has funnelled itself into a select cartel recently, the jealous rage of the starving has fewer places to go.

Having hoarded plenty of that success, Penrith and the Roosters will be the neutral fans’ first choices to lose.

Penrith have had too much. Never mind that they have earned their four titles in a row with a style of play that is both mechanically relentless and easy on the eye. Never mind that they’ve done so while losing star after star to salary cap pressure. Never mind that Nathan Cleary and Isaah Yeo and Brian To’o and Dylan Edwards are pretty likeable given how much they’ve won … Umm, why do we hate Penrith again?

The Roosters are, of course, the modern-day Manly, the rich club that buys premierships. Only, they haven’t recently.

While it’s true that the Roosters boast a roster filled with representative players, most of them have been nurtured within.

Naufahu Whyte, Robert Toia, Victor Radley, Lindsay Collins, Daniel Tupou and Sam Walker are one-club players, and Mark Nawaqanitawase wasn’t this good when he came across from union.

True, the Roosters have imported Daly Cherry-Evans and Reece Robson. They’re still the Roosters. But they’re kind of less-Roosterish than past iterations. Hating the Roosters will be a reflex response if they make it deep into the play-offs, but, as with the Panthers, their team is disappointingly un-unlikeable.

When hatred is hard to locate, there’s always indifference.

In a lifetime of following rugby league, I’ve never met anyone who feels vehemently negative about Cronulla. Not many vehemently positive either. Cronulla’s fate is to be the “meh” team of the NRL. Do you want the Sharks to win or lose? Meh.

The Cowboys are another “meh” team. Having achieved so little on their way to the finals, North Queensland are such a dark horse that you can barely see them, and soon you won’t have to try. They deserve to sink as they have risen: without trace.

What about something positive? Can you adopt a team for a month?

South Sydney’s support for Jai Arrow has galvanised the best sentiments of rugby league, and the genuine community-wide solidarity with the man has spread to an affection for the Rabbitohs. They are an outside chance for the grand final, but if they should make it, they will be riding a powerful wave. Except Roosters fans, who would rather be rolled in chicken salt and rotisseried over an open flame than support Souths, many in the league world will want to see the Bunnies achieve something miraculous.

Newcastle were able to cultivate the underdog spirit even when they had the Johns brothers, Danny Buderus and Ben Kennedy.

Their spoon-to-semis fairytale makes them a feel-good story. And how could you not love all those flying doormats? The Knights mullet, whether worn by Fletcher Sharpe or Fletcher Hunt, is as fashionable as Fletcher Jones. Who knows what the style ramifications will be if they win and the mullet catches on with the kids? Oh, it has already? Everyone has such a soft spot for Newcastle, they’ll overlook how much the referee helped them snatch their last-minute 1997 grand final.

Damn. The hate is running thin. This could be a September crisis for rugby league.

What if two neutrals’ favourites should make the big game? How can anyone manufacture a villain out of the Warriors and the Dolphins?

Having been pretty much the best team all year, the Warriors are due for their first title.

They have a physical game based on a rampant pack and, having lost so many spine players to injury, are reinventing perceptions of what makes a winning formula.

They earned the gratitude of the rugby league universe for their sacrifices in the COVID-hit 2020 season. The fever they are generating in New Zealand is tilting the mood away from rugby union, an unthinkable religious reformation that would know no limits if they win a grand final.

But maybe there’s a ray of hate: as union followers know, there is a particular humiliation in being laughed at and looked down on by New Zealanders. If that contagion breaks through the union-league barrier, it could be unsurvivable.

Which leaves the Phins. How could anyone not love that backline? Watching the scheming Isaiya Katoa and Kodi Nikorima peel open gaps for the blinding pace of Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow, the weaving brilliance of Herbie Farnworth and Jack Bostock, the professionalism of Jamayne Isaako and the mercurial, revived goofy magic of Selwyn Cobbo, in the Dolphins’ hands, the greatest game of all is even greater.

The Dolphins are also too new to hate, even if you could contrive a reason, which you can’t. The way they and the Warriors have lit up 2026 raises the prospect of the opposite to last year’s grand final: a match you want both teams to win.

So the situation is untenable. Only the Panthers and Roosters are remotely unlikeable enough to provide a traditional September Hatewatch.

They may deliver us a teeth-grinding climax, but they’re outnumbered by the good guys. Whoever thought rugby league would come to this?

But have faith. If history is any guide, stinks and grievances will arise, and the next month is eventually going to give you a team you want desperately, desperately, to lose.

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

License this article

Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.AdvertisementAdvertisement