Today I have taken my made in made-in-China crystal ball out of storage, dusted and cleaned it a bit to see what the NRL 2050 season will be like.
The landscape has changed dramatically, with only a few teams barely recognisable from 2025, with several NSW teams forced to merge or relocate for financial reasons.
This has given us some interesting nicknames for the merged or relocated teams. We have the merger of the former Sydney Roosters and the South Sydney Rabbitohs, which some smart alec has affectionately named as the Sydney Were-Rabbits.
Then we have the merge between Penrith and Manly, affectionately known as the Sea Cats, we also have Newcastle and Wollongong joining forces to form the Dragon Knights.
After being forced to relocate to Western Australia, the Wests Tigers are now officially known as the Western Tigers (nothing much changed here), the Bulldogs were forced to relocate to Auckland and are now known as the Warrior-Bulldogs, the Gold Coast relocation to Christchurch gave us the Christchurch Titans.
But the biggest news in the year 2050 is the relocation and merger of Canberra who were forced to merge and relocate to PNG, they will be entering the competition in 2051 and will be known as the PNG Raiders, who just announced Ricky Stuart as the inaugural coach for the joint venture (this will be the fifth time Stuart has come and gone out of the Raiders organisation since 2026) for some reason someone at the Raiders still believes Stuart is the Messiah who will deliver the Raiders their first title since 1994.
At his first press conference he demanded that our Liberal Party Prime Minister, the honourable Pauline Hanson move the Australian capital to PNG (Yes, we elected Pauline Hanson over the only other candidate in the election, Peter Dutton who defected to the Labor Party in order to become prime minister, but his incessant obsession to turn Australia in to a mini USA with no public healthcare cost him dearly).
Hanson used just two words to deny Ricky’s demand FAT CHANCE!
In other news Craig Bellamy just announced that this may be his last season in charge of the Melbourne Storm with a decision announced before the end of the season, Bellamy is the only coach to have been in charge of three generations of players from the same family, having coached Cameron Smith, Billy Slater and Cameron Munster, their sons and, this season all three grandsons.
(Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)
Wayne Bennett, eat your heart out!
The game has gone global and is now more popular than soccer with the Rugby League World Cup the most watched sporting event on the planet and Gus Gould wants to take the credit for that.
All of Europe, South America and Asia have taken to the Greatest Game of All now and all the former soccer players are now found in theatres or circus.
What a difference 25 years can make, except for Gus Gould, Bellamy and Ricky Stuart!
