Outside noise, media and haters: Why it’s what’s inside that counts in NRL finals

For an event held outside, there was an awful lot of talk about what happens between four walls.

The location was Barangaroo and the time was very early for a Monday morning. But as the sun glinted off the water and the captains of each of the NRL’s top eight gathered under the warm embrace of the Crown Towers skyscraper, the setting was ripe for some lessons about what each team knew that the public did not.

“I think we have the confidence in our four walls to really go deep into the final series,” said Cronulla’s Blayke Brailey.

Considering Brailey did not know at the time that Nicho Hynes would escape any real penalty for a hip-drop tackle and be free to play in Saturday’s sudden-death clash with the Roosters, that’s a lot of confidence.

It is true that the Sharks have a 7-1 record since round 19, which is more wins than any rival during the past two months. But such a statistic is the sort of assumption only outsiders would make. The media, for instance, who were mustered to conduct interviews and clearly have a habit of asking questions about matters to which they are not privy.

Like Canterbury, whose convincing loss to those Sharks last weekend has left the impression that Cameron Ciraldo’s early season pacesetters are unconvincing in attack – and without Bronson Xerri – in a week when they go to Melbourne to face the Storm (similar injury and form issues notwithstanding).

“That’s the type of noise that we are hearing right now, we’re not good enough and things like that,” Bulldogs captain Stephen Crichton said. “But inside our four walls we know what we have works.”

So do those inside the Brisbane tent, according to Adam Reynolds, who said scrutiny was “noise on the outside for us”.

“It’s what’s on the inside that’s being said that really matters,” he continued. “We certainly get tested week in, week out with the media and whatnot. Madge has done a good thing in controlling the narrative around what we want to do and what we believe in.”

And, like Brailey and Crichton, Reynolds broke the fourth wall. As the trickle of commuters swelled, and the odd fan stopped to take in the formalities occurring on the other side of the Parthenon-esque columns of the Pier Pavilion, the players referenced “outside noise” and “media” and “haters” as if speaking directly to them.

Communicating with their audience just like actors in ancient Greek amphitheatres and the 17th-century Globe theatre in London. To say the content was akin to Shakespeare’s soliloquies would be to liken toilet humour to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Yet, that invisible wall separating the stage, with the Provan-Summons Trophy and eight kitted-up men posing around it, from those beyond it was smashed to bits the moment Reynolds said: “We’ll have hopefully a few more clean toilets and we might be right”.

He was, of course, referring to Reece Walsh, the drinker of clean toilet water who returned from injury and fired the Broncos from dire straits to fourth spot in 12 rounds. “He’s been terrific,” said Reynolds, who has watched Walsh be terrific in his own injury-enforced absence. “He’s been outstanding for us the last month of football, so we’re going to need him at his best to challenge Canberra.”

Canberra, to be honest, were just about the only side with no four-walls chat. And being minor premiers, Joseph Tapine didn’t need it. But it really is that kind of finals series. In which, as James Tedesco observed, “anyone can beat anyone”.

Just like the season in its entirety, there aren’t straightforward predictions. The Raiders should beat the Broncos at home, but Brisbane can’t be written off from a 20-point deficit. Penrith, of sneak-into-eight-from-last-place fame, are tipped to better the Warriors in Auckland just like that game on Saturday afternoon is tipped to get more viewers than the All Blacks v South Africa.

But never mind that stuff happening in the ACT or New Zealand or Brisbane, because this game is nothing if not Sydney-centric. Even if Shark Park is not really in Sydney at all, but between three walls of a totally different kind.

“They call it the Bermuda Triangle, so anything could happen there,” Brailey said. “It could be sunny one time and raining sideways the next 20 minutes.”

He went on to joke about the Sharknado game of 2015, when fans rocked up in wetsuits and snorkels in torrential rain – well before he was an in-form senior hooker on a fresh four-year contract extension.

Then Brailey turned nostalgic to share memories of enjoying his club’s 2016 premiership win as a fan in the stands with his family, and spoke to the rundown ground’s “hostile environment” that will have their backs. Then a horn from a nearby ferry blew so loudly Brailey was forced to stop talking. And then NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo did his own media interview about 20 metres away and hinted Shark Park as a finals venue may not be long for this world.

So many of these interviews were occurring at the same time, in such proximity, that the so-called fourth wall was constantly being flirted with. Each player was asked to comment on the others, and you half-expected a member of the public to point out the pantomime villain also commenting on them (“He’s behiiiind you!” ).

Tedesco, as it happens, is almost exactly one year on since he was “sick and tired” of being asked about the impact of the Roosters’ injuries of 2024 and the closing premiership window that was supposed to accompany the loss of roughly $6 million and almost 1200 games of star power and experience. “You guys aren’t in our four walls,” he had said. “It’s all you talk about. Every time I do media, you talk about it.”

As always, secret club business must have been afoot, because Tedesco is now arguably in career-best form and the NRL glamour club’s rookies in something of a purple patch (Mark Nawaqanitawase is in the “purplest of patches”, according to the launch’s host, which makes him practically purple).

What did he know back then that we didn’t?

“I knew we have a great team, so I knew how hard we work, and I just had confidence in what we could do,” he said. “I don’t know if many other people did, but we built that belief from the start of everyone around us in ourselves and in how we play. It took a bit of time to fully find that, but I feel like this time of year we’ve definitely found it.”

The same could be said for Penrith, who were dead last in round 12 and now looking more like the four-time premiers they recently were and joining the push for a first title from outside the top four since 1995.

“Obviously, it’s a lot different to what we’ve had to deal with in previous years,” said Nathan Cleary. “But there’s been a number of times where we’ve been written off in previous years as well.”

It is the type of allegorical journey to be expected from a halfback who has just finished reading Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Next on Cleary’s list is Greg McKeown’s Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.

Then Abdo, below the Crown Towers, declared the NRL “has been unpredictable, it’s been unscripted”, and Brailey took a photo of a photo displaying Cam McInnes’ apparent receding hairline.

“I just put in the group chat and was happy about that,” he said.

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