With 2025 done and dusted, the 2026 season looms as a potential pivot point for several clubs.
Some have the pieces - depth, returning players, momentum - to vault up the ladder. Others, even if still competitive, could slip simply because of attrition, draw difficulty or squad wear-and-tear.
Below are three clubs who look primed for a jump - and three who may find next year a tougher ask than many expect.
Slider: Manly Sea Eagles
If there is a genuine collapse candidate in 2026, it is Manly. Not because they lack talent, but because they have reached the point where structural certainty, leadership stability and injury reliability are all sitting on the wrong side of probability.
The post-Daly Cherry-Evans identity vacuum is real. For more than a decade, DCE didn't just organise sets - he defined how Manly played, how they closed halves, how they handled scoreboard pressure and how they reacted to momentum swings.
Jamal Fogarty is a competent organiser and a steady voice, but competence isn't command. Fogarty can run shape; he cannot replace the 12-season psychological imprint of a halfback who could change tempo, field position and mentality with a single decision. Manly go from a side with a general to a side with a caretaker, and in tight games that distinction becomes fatal.
The forward losses - Aloiai, Sipley, Lodge, Tevaga - look tidy on a list but chaotic on the field. Manly didn't just lose depth; they lost collision variety. Suddenly, there is no middle enforcer capable of resetting a defensive set after five straight tackle-wins by the opposition.
Suddenly, the bench isn't a momentum threat but a survival unit. Across a 24-round season, that becomes death by drag. Second halves get longer. Line speed fades earlier. Penalty counts creep. Yardage becomes labour, not leverage.
And then there is Tom Trbojevic, the eternal hinge point. Every season begins with the same sentence: if Turbo stays fit. But the harsh 2026 framing must acknowledge the other half - when Turbo doesn't.
Even if he avoids catastrophe, the pattern has been set: 2–4 week absences at multiple points, each one resetting combinations and destroying continuity. When he plays, Manly look like a finals chaser. When he doesn't, they look like a yardage-by-committee unit hoping field position protects them.
Layer over the psychological bleed of Ruben Garrick's confirmed 2027 departure. Like DCE's exit before it, it is not the kind of change that detonates a squad, but it unsettles its emotional spine.
Players don't collapse - they drift. The future becomes next year, not this one. The roster plays in planning mode, not urgency mode.
Leadership becomes distributed rather than definitive. Trbojevic is too important physically to also carry full cultural load.
Fogarty is too new to carry expectation. No pack forward steps into the role vacated by Aloiai and Lodge. It becomes a quiet team - not broken, just mute in critical phases.
In 2026, Manly don't unravel. They erode. A club once defined by sharp edges and execution becomes one of soft margins and near-miss footy. They hang in contests but don't seize them. They have moments, not matches.
And across an eight-month campaign, that is enough to drag them from 10th to the bottom four.
Projected Swing: 10th → 15th–17th
Wow, I really thought that Bulldogs could be on here, but thankfully they aren’t.
I think all of them are right except Raiders and Storm, they both are still very good team even without those players.
That’s a well-written and challenging piece, Matt.
I follow the arguments and the rationale for all of the clubs.
The only one with which I have a real problem is your assessment of Newcastle.
I read the words, and the sentences make sense, but I am unconvinced by the argument. The expected spine looks a lot more expensive than all the combinations tried in 2025, but I’m not convinced that they will be much more effective.
I can see the club rising, in the sense that from the bottom of the table the only way is up. However, I can’t see Newcastle rising by anywhere near as much as you envisage.
“Not because they lack talent, but because they have reached the point where structural certainty, leadership stability and injury reliability are all sitting on the wrong side of probability.”
That style reminds me of Clive James in his literary criticism days.
And that is a compliment.