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:
3. Isaiya Katoa
If not for an ever-so-slight fade out at the back end of 2025, Katoa could very well have topped this list.
24 games this year saw him assist 23 tries, lay on 21 line-break assists, cross for two tries, force nine dropouts, kick for over 435 metres per game and run for 108 metres per game. All while tackling at almost 88%.
Katoa has future rep player written all over him if 2025 is anything to go off.
He deserved to lead his side to their first Finals apperaance but seemed to run out of legs late on. I expect he'll go to that next level in 2026.
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.)