The 2018 NRL season was the 111th season of professional
rugby league
Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 11 ...
in Australia and the 21st season run by the
National Rugby League
The National Rugby League (NRL) is an Australasian rugby league club competition which contains clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand. The NRL formed in 1998 as a joint partnership ...
. 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
The 2018 NRL Grand Final was the conclusive and premiership-deciding game of the 2018 National Rugby League season and was played on Sunday September 30 at Sydney's ANZ Stadium. The match was contested between minor premiers the Sydney Rooste ...
.
Teams
The lineup of teams remained unchanged for the 12th consecutive year.
Pre-season
The 2018 pre-season featured the
2018 World Club Challenge
The 2018 World Club Challenge (also known as the 2018 Downer World Club Challenge was the 26th staging of the World Club Challenge. It took place on 16 February 2018, and featured Super League champions Leeds Rhinos, and NRL winners Melbourn ...
match with the
NRL premiers Melbourne Storm
The Melbourne Storm are a rugby league club based in Melbourne, Victoria in Australia that participates in the National Rugby League. The first fully professional rugby league team based in the state, the Storm entered the competition in 1998. ...
defeating the
Super League champions Leeds Rhinos
The Leeds Rhinos are a professional rugby league club in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. The club was formed in 1870 as Leeds St John's and play in the Super League, the top tier of English rugby league. They have played home matches at Headin ...
.
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 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 government area as well as being th ...
, and
Toowoomba
Toowoomba ( , nicknamed 'The Garden City' and 'T-Bar') is a city in the Toowoomba Region of the Darling Downs, Queensland, Australia. It is west of Queensland's capital city Brisbane by road. The urban population of Toowoomba as of the 2021 ...
,
Gladstone &
Cairns.
The overall structure of the season's draw was also revised. The second game of the
2018 State of Origin series
The 2018 State of Origin series was the 37th State of Origin series, annual best-of-three series between the Queensland rugby league team, Queensland and New South Wales rugby league team, New South Wales rugby league teams. Before this series, Q ...
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
Frank Burge (14 August 1894 – 5 July 1958) was one of the greatest Rugby league positions#Forwards, forwards in the history of rugby league in Australia. Later Burge became one of the game’s finest coaches. His club career was with Glebe (ru ...
in 1918.
*
Cameron Smith Cameron Smith may refer to:
* Cameron Smith (rugby league, born 1983), Australian rugby league footballer
* Cameron Smith (rugby league, born 1998), English rugby league footballer
* Cameron Smith (golfer) (born 1993), Australian golfer
* Cammy Smi ...
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