It’s tough enough to have one winning season in the NRL let alone doing it year after year in the world’s best rugby league competition.
Every year, on average, three clubs drop out of the top eight which means that finals feature three teams who watched from home 12 months earlier.
There are only a handful of NRL clubs this century who have managed to play finals consistently.
Craig Bellamy’s Storm, Trent Robinson’s Roosters and Wayne Bennett’s Broncos are the only sides to have played finals in seven straight seasons in the past 25 years.
Technically the Sea Eagles have also done it but their 12 wins in 2010 was only good enough for eighth because the Storm (14 wins) were barred from playing for premiership points.
Every other club has ebbed and flowed with varying degrees of success.
Here foxsports.com.au looks at the teams who are most likely to move in and out of the top eight in 2024.
PRIMED TO BREAK INTO THE TOP EIGHT
Manly Sea Eagles
The Sea Eagles finally have all the pieces to the puzzle after moving Josh Schuster into the forwards and signing former Dally M Halfback of the year Luke Brooks.
Tom Trbojevic has returned from injury and the superstar fullback was in great touch against the Rabbitohs in a historic season-opening win in Las Vegas on Sunday.
Manly’s whole spine was on fire in Sin City with Brooks, Trbojevic, Daly Cherry-Evans and Lachlan Croker all in the thick of the action.
It’s promising signs early for Anthony Seibold’s men but it’s worth remembering they won the $100,000 Pre-season Challenge last year before finishing a disappointing 12th.
But if the Sea Eagles can stay healthy this year, there’s a top eight spot ripe for the picking and potentially even a top four berth.
It was a busy off-season for Sebiold, with Brooks joining the club alongside fellow recruits Tommy Talau (Tigers), Jaxson Paulo (Roosters), Corey Waddell (Bulldogs) and Aitasi James (Tigers).
Parramatta Eels
The Eels have played finals in six of the past eight seasons, including a trip to the grand final where they ran into the 2022 Panthers who were one of the greatest teams of the modern era.
Brad Arthur boasts one of the best halves combinations in the NRL with representative stars Mitchell Moses and Dylan Brown pulling the strings.
Parramatta endured plenty of bad luck and distractions last year, with everything from injuries to prolonged contract negotiations to suspensions for incidents both on and off the field.
It started with the Ryan Matterson suspension fiasco before gun backrower Shaun Lane copped a series of injuries that restricted him to just a handful of games.
Dylan Brown earning himself a five-match ban for a drunken incident certainly didn’t help the cause and several more of the Eels’ best players were unavailable through the Origin period.
But despite all that they still finished just one win outside the top eight and are primed for a return to finals football in 2024 if they can keep their best players on the park.
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