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:
5. Nicho Hynes
An absolute lightning rod for criticism, Hynes falls victim to an online community dedicated to highlighting his errors and ignoring his good games.
Luckily for Sharks fans in 2025, there were way more good games than bad. Not to say he's perfect. He'd be number one if he was.
27 games for the Sharks saw him score eight tries, lay on 21 try assists, 31 line-break assists, five line-breaks, 90 run metres per game and tackled at over 91%.
Hynes and Trindall really found their groove early as Hynes relinquished kicking duties and focused more elsewhere. That is the key moving forward in the Shire.
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.)