Sport

NRL

The Fitz Files

Opinion

Peter FitzSimons Columnist and author October 11, 2025 — 5.30am

The most staggering thing about “rugba league” in the modern age is its capacity to generate tension, and often high drama, in the final throes of a match.

Time and again in recent seasons, and never more than in 2025 and in these very finals, as the clock ticks down to the final whistle, the whole match is up in the air.

More often than not, it sees a winger with ball in hand hurling his body at the hurtling defence swarming him. The mob leans forward, barely daring to breathe, as he attempts to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Can he, indeed, contort his whole body to become a cross between a circus acrobat and a human cannonball so that – despite his torso and legs being

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