It is the biggest Friday night of the season.
The four title favourites lock horns, with the Raiders looking to take one step closer to an unlikely minor premiership but standing in their way is the defending champions Penrith.
After that, the Bulldogs will be desperate to silence their critics and prove their title credentials in the ultimate litmus test on the road in Melbourne against the Storm.
FOX LEAGUE, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every game of every round in the 2025 NRL Telstra Premiership, LIVE with no ad-breaks during play. New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.
And the best part is that you can watch both games back-to-back, with the Panthers vs Raiders blockbuster exclusively live on Fox League and Kayo at 6pm, before the Storm host the Bulldogs right after fulltime in Mudgee.
Ahead of a blockbuster night of rugby league, foxsports.com.au previews the two big games by looking at some key storylines to follow for each team.
WILL RICKY’S RAIDERS PROVE THE DOUBTERS WRONG AGAIN?
There has been a common theme to emerge from the Raiders’ post-match press conferences this season.
After at least half of Canberra’s league-leading 17 wins, Raiders coach Ricky Stuart has had a dig in one way or another at all those experts and journalists who doubted his young side before a ball was kicked.
There were a few. The Raiders were tipped to win the wooden spoon as much as any other team and bookies listened, with Canberra at one stage in the off-season, favourites to collect the wooden spoon.
Even this week when one journalist asked at a pre-game press conference if this Panthers match-up is a chance to “lay down a marker” to the rest of the competition, Stuart responded just as you would expect.
“We don’t need to lay down a marker mate,” he said.
“We’re leading the comp.”
Stuart means no disrespect when he calls out those who didn’t believe. He is just a very proud coach who is extremely protective of his players.
It’s why his players love him.
“I see them more than my kids. I’m with them every day,” Stuart said on the Off The Record podcast when explaining his tight bond with his burgeoning team.
Journalist Phil Rothfield then asked Stuart if he uses the unflattering pre-season predictions as bulletin board material at Raiders HQ.
“Do you think they (experts and journalists) all know the game?” Stuart shot back.
“All those people who said we were going to run last, well that’s a joke to me.
“At the start of the year, yes we had a look at it. Not one of them came down and had a look at us training, not one of them came down and looked at what we had.
“I don’t see it as disrespect or I don’t see it as us against the journalists or experts who said but at the end of the day, how much research goes into it?”
Ricky backs Strange for Roos & Blues | 07:36
The Raiders’ impressive ascent to the top of the table the year after missing the top eight wasn’t picked by anyone. Not even the most green-eyed Canberra fan.
What about their coach though? No one on this planet bleeds as much green.
“I don’t think in his wildest dreams Ricky would believe they’d be leading the comp at this stage of the season,” Fox League’s Paul Crawley opined.
“However, he also is a winner and he knows how to get a team up and knows how to keep them on track.
“He loves this club more than anyone.”
Stuart would never admit out loud he didn’t think his team would be at the top of the table with three rounds to play, but reading between the lines, it’s clear that this 2025 season has exceeded his expectations.
“One of our goals was to finish in the top four. Was that going to be hard? Well I would have loved to make the top eight but we challenged ourselves,” Stuart said.
Canberra now have their toughest test of the year in front of them on Friday night. A date with the four-peat Panthers in Mudgee of all places.
Once again, the Raiders are the underdogs. While they’re in this game up to their eyeballs, the consensus are with Penrith.
It’s just how Ricky likes it, as Fox League’s Dan Ginnane noted.
“This is all playing beautifully for Ricky. I think we’re going to get siege mentality Ricky this week,” Ginnane said.
“They’re outsiders, he’s going to be into his team, ‘no one respects us, they’ve stuck us out in Mudgee in the Friday 6pm slot because no one thought we’d be going this well’
“He’s going to pull out all the ploys.
“They’ve been pumping this game up for two weeks… He knows how to rev up the engines.”
“Very DCE, polite but guarded” | 01:33
‘NEVER SEEN THAT’: WHY ‘ANGRY’ CLEARYS SHOULD HAVE RAIDERS ON HIGH ALERT
At first, Ivan Cleary was diplomatic as he hinted that Harry Grant was “too smart at both ends” before he turned to Nathan, telling him to “tell the truth” when journalists asked his son about the call.
We don’t have to go any further into what the Panthers halfback said or whether Grant’s actions were in the spirit of the game, but the fact Nathan was so open with his frustration after the 22-18 loss to Melbourne spoke volumes to former NRL playmaker turned Fox League broadcaster Braith Anasta.
To him, it showed “how much Penrith wanted to win that game”.
“It felt like this hit harder than ever before because nine wins in a row, on a run, they thought they had the game won and it really hurt them,” Anasta said on NRL 360.
The Panthers should have won the game. They completed a perfect 19 of 19 sets in the first half, had 56 per cent of the ball, two linebreaks to Melbourne’s 0 and 866 run metres to 533 from the Storm.
Momentum turned later in the second half, but even still it was uncharacteristic errors from Dylan Edwards and a wayward tip-on pass from Blaize Talagi that proved Penrith’s undoing.
The defending premiers didn’t make many mistakes, but the ones they did make were costly and gifted the Storm cheap points that ended up proving the difference.
After all, as strong as Edwards was with his trademark carries out of his own end, it was a second unforced error from the Panthers fullback that set Grant up to score the winning try in the first place.
And it was an unnecessary step towards Grant from Moses Leota, again regardless of where you sit in the whole diving debate, which saw Cleary’s likely game-sealing field goal wiped off the board.
“Win from anywhere” – Shock top 4 call | 04:01
Wherever Penrith’s frustrations may lie, be it with Grant, its own self-inflicted wounds or a combination of both, the real loser out of this all could be the Raiders.
At least, that is the opinion of veteran rugby league reporter Andrew Webster, who predicted the Panthers will enter Friday’s game “fired up after what happened last week”.
“I’ve never seen Penrith really complain as much as they did last week,” he said on NRL 360.
“They don’t usually play with a chip on their shoulder, Penrith, because they’ve been the four-time defending premiers but after that loss it was very unlike Nathan and Ivan to talk like that, and it’s no disrespect to them, you could see how much it hurt them.
“That’s as angry as the Clearys get.”
It is not as if the Panthers needed any more motivation either, having fallen outside of the top four with last week’s loss and at risk of losing touch with the Warriors entirely if they lose again.
But the way they fell short against the Storm, in what has become one of the rugby league’s best modern rivalries, means Penrith will be even more locked in and desperate to move past the heartbreak.
Do Penrith have a chip on their shoulder | 02:17
WHY GALVIN IS ‘JUST A PIECE OF THE PUZZLE’ FOR INCONSISTENT DOGS
Since Lachlan Galvin was injected into the Bulldogs’ starting line-up ahead of Toby Sexton, every loss along the way has been magnified.
It is the gamble coach Cameron Ciraldo would have known he was making when he made the decision to promote the mid-season recruit, also with the knowledge that after a swift elimination in last year’s finals series the Bulldogs may have needed an extra dimension in attack to go deeper this time around.
Galvin was meant to provide that and still could, but with every loss on the board — the latest coming at the hands of the Roosters — pressure continues to build.
However, for all the talk about Galvin, it is worth asking whether the Bulldogs would have been winning some of these games they have been dropping as of late even with Sexton in the line-up instead.
Take last week’s 32-12 defeat to the Roosters, who monstered the Bulldogs up front.
Naufahu Whyte and Angus Crichton led the way against a Canterbury-Bankstown team that struggled to generate enough momentum to allow Galvin to have much of an impact in the game.
The errors, penalties, missed tackles and all-round ill-discipline didn’t help either.
It was a similar story in the wet against the Wests Tigers, where the Bulldogs were too set on trying to go around their opposition regardless of the conditions and failed to lay the kind of platform for a developing playmaker like Galvin to find his rhythm.
Has Galvin been over-hyped? | 04:00
Of course, if the Bulldogs don’t clean any of this up before the finals maybe Sexton was the answer as the more experienced of the two especially when you consider he had been doing really well playing nice and direct before he was hooked for Galvin.
But the broader point is that as much as the young playmaker has dominated headlines ahead of Friday’s game against Melbourne, the Bulldogs need to be perfect across the board and have to challenge the Storm up front to stand any chance of an upset.
“Lachie is just a piece of the puzzle,” former Panthers premiership winner Greg Alexander told foxsports.com.au.
“The Dogs around Galvin have to play a lot better than what they did. The pack hasn’t been an issue all year but it certainly was last year at the back end of the season there was a lot of press around the Dogs’ pack not being big enough and getting sort of walked over in those end of season games. That’s when it was an issue.
“The way they’ve played this year, it hasn’t been a problem but it seemed to have raised its head last week against the Roosters, who did dominate. Now whether it was the size of the pack, whether it was the fact that they made a lot of errors and gave the Roosters possession which means you’re on the back foot, which means defensively it’s hard.
“It doesn’t matter who you play against, you put yourself under pressure when you don’t control the ball. I’m not willing to say that the Dogs pack can’t match the others because for the big part of the season they have been.”
Bulldogs looking for bounce back | 00:55
The Storm may be down a number of key players, headlined by Jahrome Hughes, but you only have to look at last week’s win over the Panthers to prove that even the best of teams struggle against Craig Bellamy-coached sides.
Sure, there was that one slip-up against Manly but outside of that Melbourne has been largely faultless for the past few months and last Thursday the Storm stuck with a perfect Panthers team until the defending premiers started to make a few errors.
That was all it took for Melbourne to pounce and while the Bulldogs have their strengths, be it Matt Burton’s long-range kicking game or the added wrinkle of using Stephen Crichton at fullback in attacking plays, at this point of his career Galvin is the kind of player who isn’t quite ready to consistently play off the back-foot.
That will come with time and while it may mean a premiership is beyond them this year, the Bulldogs were winning games earlier in the season even when the attack wasn’t flowing.
They built that success on their defence and high-percentage football, something which they will need to go back to against a Storm team that is as clinical as they come.
“It’s an extraordinary young player that can play well in those positions that touch the ball the most and still shine behind a side that’s either making a lot of errors or not having the ability to lay a platform,” Alexander said.
“So, I think all young players — especially young players as they come into the game — need a fair bit of assistance from those around them and if the side’s not playing well, if the side’s making errors and you’re defending a lot and then there’s not much energy left for the go-forward, it’s extremely difficult.
“Then you want to try and rely on your experienced players to dig you out of the hole.”
Storm see tough run as a positive | 01:20
THE ‘HUGE’ ADVANTAGE STORM CAN LOCK UP THIS WEEK WITH A WIN
There aren’t many questions hanging over the Storm at this time of the year, especially when you consider they were able to beat a Panthers team — albeit without Isaah Yeo — despite having their own growing casualty ward including Jahrome Hughes, Ryan Papenhuyzen and Jack Howarth.
If anything, this week’s game against the Bulldogs is a chance for Melbourne to take a giant step towards another grand final appearance.
Why? Well, quite simply, a win this week puts the Storm four points clear of the Bulldogs with a far superior for-and-against and all but locks up a top-two spot.
Sure, there is also still an outside chance of pushing for the minor premiership too depending how Canberra fares against Penrith.
But a top-two finish is particularly important because it means home finals in the big games for the Storm in September — and Melbourne’s record at AAMI Park this season is particularly daunting for opposition teams.
The Storm have won eight of nine games at the venue, with their only loss coming to the Sea Eagles (18-16), while in those nine games they have averaged 36 points scored and conceded just over 12.
Blowout wins against the Eels and Tigers certainly skewed that margin but you can’t ignore the way the Storm annihilated both of those teams given it was a reminder of just how dominant they can be at full-strength.
A guaranteed top-two finish would also give coach Craig Bellamy the luxury to consider resting players.
“That’s huge,” Fox League’s Dan Ginnane said on ‘NRL 360’.
“If they lock up second this week now they can start to plan. Do they stagger their rest? Do they do it all in one go?”
