The 2018 NRL season was the 111th season of professional
rugby league
Rugby league football, commonly known as rugby league in English-speaking countries and rugby 13/XIII in non-Anglophone Europe, is a contact sport, full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular Rugby league playin ...
in Australia and the 21st season run by the
National Rugby League
The National Rugby League (also known as the NRL Telstra Premiership for sponsorship reasons) is a professional rugby league competition in Oceania which contains clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria (state), Victoria, the Austral ...
. The main competition, known as the 2018 Telstra Premiership due to sponsorship from Telstra, featured 16 teams playing 25 weekly rounds of matches from March until September, resulting in the top eight teams playing a series of finals matches to determine which two teams reached the
2018 NRL Grand Final.
Teams
The lineup of teams remained unchanged for the 12th consecutive year.
Pre-season
The 2018 pre-season featured the
2018 World Club Challenge match with the
NRL premiers Melbourne Storm
The Melbourne Storm is a rugby league football club based in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia that participates in the National Rugby League (NRL). The club plays its home games at AAMI Park, and wears a purple and navy blu ...
defeating the
Super League champions Leeds Rhinos
The Leeds Rhinos are a professional rugby league club in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. The club play their home games at Headingley Rugby Stadium, AMT Headingley Rugby Stadium and compete in the Super League, the top tier of British rugby lea ...
.
Regular season
With the
City vs. Country representative game having been scrapped, the NRL scheduled 6 games to take place in regional areas of New South Wales and Queensland as a replacement:
Tamworth,
Bathurst &
Mudgee
Mudgee () is a town in the Central West (New South Wales), Central West of New South Wales, Australia. It is in the broad fertile Cudgegong River valley north-west of Sydney and is the largest town in the Mid-Western Regional Council Local gov ...
, and
Toowoomba
Toowoomba ( ), nicknamed 'The Garden City' and 'T-Bar', is a city on the border of South East Queensland and Darling Downs regions of Queensland, Australia. It is located west of Queensland's capital, Brisbane. The urban population of Toowoom ...
,
Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone ( ; 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British politican, starting as Conservative MP for Newark and later becoming the leader of the Liberal Party (UK), Liberal Party.
In a career lasting over 60 years, he ...
&
Cairns
Cairns (; ) is a city in the Cairns Region, Queensland, Australia, on the tropical north east coast of Far North Queensland. In the , Cairns had a population of 153,181 people.
The city was founded in 1876 and named after William Cairns, Sir W ...
.
The overall structure of the season's draw was also revised. The second game of the
2018 State of Origin series was played as a stand-alone fixture on a Sunday to avoid conflict with the regular season. Due to this the competition was shortened to 25 rounds and each team got 1 bye as opposed to 2 in previous years.
Bold – Opposition's Home game
X – Bye
* – Golden point game
Opponent for round listed above margin
Ladder
Ladder progression
*Numbers highlighted in green indicate that the team finished the round inside the top 8.
*Numbers highlighted in blue indicates the team finished first on the ladder in that round.
*Numbers highlighted in red indicates the team finished last place on the ladder in that round.
*Underlined numbers indicate that the team had a bye during that round.
Finals series
† Match decided in extra time.
Chart
Grand final
Player statistics and records
*
Jamayne Isaako broke the record for the most points scored in a rookie season with 239, which was set by
Mick Cronin in 1977 who scored 225 points.
*
Gavin Cooper became the first forward in the 111 year history of the NRL to score a try in nine consecutive games, beating the previous record of eight set by
Frank Burge in 1918.
*
Cameron Smith became the first hooker in NRL history to score 200 points in a season.
The following statistics are as of the conclusion of Round 25.
Top 5 point scorers
Top 5 try scorers
Top 5 goal scorers
Top 5 tacklers
2018 Transfers
Players
Source:
Coaches
References
{{National Rugby League seasons