Who would want to be an NRL halfback?
Every loss suffered by your team is going to be lumped on you, regardless of how well you played.
Win a game? Yeah ok, that's your job. Lose a game? Hopeless.
We are in a golden age of elite halfbacks right now. You'll notice the teams who don't feature here, shockingly, also didn't have great seasons overall.
Pretty simply stuff: halfback good = team good!
Today we are going to try and rank the best halfbacks from the 2025 season. This always goes well.
As usual, this is ranked purely on 2025 performance and isn't necessarily just a best halfbacks in the game list.
If you're looking for Tom Dearden, we ran him in the five-eighths rankings a few days ago.
Below are the Top 10 halfbacks from the 2025 season:
7. Daly Cherry-Evans
The Manly captain and Premiership winner had a newsworthy season, on and off the park.
The season-long drama finally ended last Friday when DCE was announced as a Sydney Rooster for 2026. He was also dropped from the QLD Origin side to be replaced by Tom Dearden.
Despite these, he handled both situations better than 99% of players would have and continued to deliver on field for Manly.
His 21 try assists literally kept them in Finals conversation much longer than they had any right to claim. I cannot believe he won't be in Manly colours next season.
For me, Cleary was best o er the season, and Metcalf best for the games he played.
(Remember, halves always look good when their forwards are going forward, so I think Metcalf had to do more / play better, to be as good as he was.)