Is Winning The NRL Minor Premiership A Curse?

Did the Melbourne Storm shoot themselves in the foot by beating the Sharks to claim the NRL’s Minor Premiership on Saturday? History shows… maybe. Jamie Wall explains how the Minor Premiership is no guarantee of Grand Final success.

In a triumph of prescient scheduling, the last weekend of the 2016 NRL regular season saw the Minor Premiership decided between the two top clubs. In brutal, methodical fashion, the Melbourne Storm crushed the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks 26-6 to claim the title.

The Minor Premiership is just reward for coming top of the table in what is an incredibly long and arduous season. After 26 rounds of rugby league you could argue every team deserves some sort of trophy (even one of the wooden kind for the Knights).

But does hoisting the very large and fragile-looking framed Minor Premiership shield mean Grand Final success is mere weeks away? History says… not quite.

Out of 18 Minor Premierships won from the formation of the NRL in 1998 to last year, only six went on to win the big one. The second placed team at the end of the regular season has gone on to win the Grand Final on four occasions, the third placed team five (take heart, Sharks fans) and the fourth placed side has gone on to Premiership glory on three occasions. No team has ever won the NRL Premiership from outside the top 4.

So the Minor Premiership has proven the consolation prize for over two-thirds of its winners, and there’s some real heartbreakers in there:

1999: Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks

The Sharkies came top of a 17-team competition, leading fans to believe they were on their way to maiden glory in their history. They even smashed the reigning champion Broncos in the first round of the playoffs, but got knocked out by the Anthony Mundine show in the preliminary final.

2001: Parramatta Eels

They’re still in disbelief about this one out in Western Sydney. The Eels scored a record 943 points in the regular season, with a for and against total almost 200 points higher than their nearest rival. It didn’t help them in the final though, when they were gutted by the Newcastle Knights.

2002: New Zealand Warriors

An asterisk deserves to go next to this one because the Bulldogs would’ve comfortably won the MP had they not been stripped of all their points. However, the Warriors long-suffering fan base was rewarded with the Minor Premiership, only to see it rendered meaningless when they were thumped in the final by the Roosters.

2011: Melbourne Storm

The Storm’s first legitimate Minor Premiership saw them face a Warriors side that had been torched in the first round of the playoffs by the Broncos and then scrape past the Tigers the next weekend. Despite being heavy favourites the Storm got out-Stormed by a relentlessly disciplined Warriors on their own home ground.

2014: Sydney Roosters

It must pretty galling to go into the playoffs on top and then not even make the Grand Final. It must be even worse to lose the Preliminary Final to your oldest rival. It must be the absolute worst to see said rival win the premiership a week later in a very one-sided final.

Time will tell if the MP ends up being a false dawn for the Storm, although giving the next best team in the comp a hiding will certainly raise their spirits. One thing is for sure though – they’ll definitely take an MP over a Mad Monday right now.