NRL

Yes, yes, there were reasons.

But a curse is a curse nonetheless, and the Sydney Roosters have finally banished it.

Read more New York Knicks

Season after season after season, a mythical stats line had emerged in the NRL, and NSWRL before it, condemning sides that conceded 50 points or more during the home and away season to certain premiership doom.

If the floodgates open, at any stage leading up to the grand final, you couldn’t win the competition. Not so much science as historical fact, plain and simple.

MORE: Rugby League World Cup squads: Every team list for the 2026 tournament

For more than a century this twisted scoreboard logic had held up, until last Sunday night when everything changed.

You see on September 4, exactly one month before becoming NRL premiers, the Chooks rested more than half their first-grade squad back in Round 27 and were humbled 50-20 by the Rabbitohs at Allianz. They’d almost had 50 put on them earlier too, when they were pumped 48-10 by the rampant Dolphins at Suncorp in Round 15.

The Rabbitohs loss meant the weight of history was heavy, but then came the 2026 NRL Grand Final.

Trailing 12-0 in the first half the curse was pressing the Tricolours just hard as the Knights, but Trent Robinson’s men would ultimately prevail as a Daly Cherry-Evans field goal in the 70th minute saw them edge Newcastle 19-18 for their first premiership since 2019. 

Read more NFL

Rooster captain James Tedesco took the Clive Churchill Medal along the way, but far more importantly for superstitious fans and players alike, the course of rugby league history had been forever altered.

The curse had flirted with extinction before, mind you. 

The 2001 Knights let in 49 point against the Sharks that year and still won the title, but nobody had ever crossed the 50-point line.

South Sydney were belted 50-0 by Melbourne and 56-12 by Penrith in 2021, then fought all the way to the grand final only to lose 14-12 to the Panthers.

This year’s Dolphins carried the same baggage. Beaten 52-18 by Manly and 66-0 by Cronulla, they still finished third and reached the preliminary final, where they were bundled out by the Roosters, of all teams.

Now, the hoodoo has been broken, a side has won a premiership after having a half-century put on them and the 50-point curse is banished to the realm of urban myth. 

Perhaps in today’s era of set restarts, high score lines and lightning fast play, a 60-point curse is more appropriate, anyway?

Read more NagaCorp GGR Falls 21.5% to US$417.9M in the First 9 Months