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:
2. Jahrome Hughes
The 2024 Dally M medal winner backed up his efforts again in 2025. An unfortunate run of injuries probably robbed him of top spot here.
Across his 20 games, three of which were cut short due to injury, he scored eight times, put on 20 try assists, 13 line-break assists, force eight dropouts, 355 kick metres per game and 81 run metres per game.
His averages take big hits due to those three early exits, yet still shine.
Hughes would have been the first player picked for New Zealand until he removed himself to recover from a host of aforementioned injuries.
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.)