NRL season 2023 preview: Penrith Panthers coming back to pack

Let's certainly hope so. Another season of the arrogant Panthers losing less than a handful of games would make for tough watching.

But the departures of several key players - Viliame Kikau and Apisai Koroisau - in the off-season, on the back of losing Matt Burton last year, could see them drop back to a chasing pack.

All of last year's top-eight sides will expect to return to finals action in 2023, while there's a large group from the bottom eight anticipating a return to the play-offs.

Much has been made of the Canterbury Bulldogs' and Wests Tigers' recruiting.

The Bulldogs have landed Kikau, Parramatta hooker Reed Mahoney and Raiders prop Ryan Sutton - not to mention the highly-regarded Cameron Ciraldo taking over as coach.

Koroisau, Isaiah Papali'i, David Klemmer and former Canberra Raider John Bateman have joined the Tim Sheens-led Tigers.

The Brisbane Broncos were on the verge of finals last year before a disastrous run home saw them lose five of their last six games to gift their spot to the Canberra Raiders.

They'll be hoping the "Kevolution" continues under coach Kevin Walters and they sneak back into the eight.

It could all make for one of the tightest NRL seasons in recent history. Either that or Nathan Cleary will continue to bore us into submission with his metronomic Panthers, while annoying us with their easy-to-like personalities.

The Tigers will be hoping "better late than never" when it comes to the arrival of Bateman - just days before the start of the NRL season.

After a brief, but always exciting, stint in Canberra, Bateman is back in the NRL for the second time.

Although he only arrived at Wests late last week after the perennial battlers struggled to organise a visa for the England international.

It's hardly an ideal preparation for one of your star recruits and it will be interesting to see how long it takes for him to settle in at last year's wooden-spooners.

Bateman hit the ground running at the Raiders, where he was an instant success in the first of his two seasons in lime green.

His ultra-competitive, unorthodox style played a big role in the Green Machine charging all the way to the 2019 grand final.

His 2020 campaign was less of a success, with the now 29-year-old struggling with a shoulder injury - not to mention the drama caused by his manager Isaac Moses's constant contract agitations.

As a result, Raiders fans will have one eye up the Hume all season - perhaps hoping his second NRL stint is not as good as his first.

No, this isn't about Nathan Cleary getting up to his old social media tricks. This is the age-old countdown to the first coach sacked for the season.

He's still days away from coaching his first Manly game, but there's already plenty of pressure on Anthony Seibold to get results - just because of how everything ended at the Broncos.

A slow start and questions will be asked about why he was given the job in the first place.

After that it's a coinflip between Newcastle's Adam O'Brien, Gold Coast's Justin Holbrook and St George Illawarra's Anthony Griffin as to who is under the most pressure.

O'Brien went to the Knights with plenty of fanfare - having worked under both Craig Bellamy and Trent Robinson.

The way the Broncos finished last season has surrounded Kevin Walters with plenty of question marks as well.

Brisbane, and by extension Walters, are constantly in the spotlight in "BrisVegas" - where they're still yet to taste finals football in Kevvie's reign.

On the flipside, former Panthers assistant Ciraldo has already being hailed as a supercoach-in-waiting in the build-up to his first season in charge of the Bulldogs.

No one will want to be the first team to lose to the Redcliffe Dolphins. Or the "The" Dolphins, we should say.

They have the Sydney Roosters and the Raiders first up, before they first travel interstate to take on Newcastle.

While supercoach Wayne Bennett has assembled a handy forward pack - the Bromwich brothers and Felise Kaufusi - he hasn't landed a marquee player around which he can build his team.

Not for 2023, anyway, after some impressive additions in Broncos Herbie Farnworth and Thomas Flegler were this week added to the 2024 roster.

It could end up being a long year for the Dolphins fans.

NSW lost the supposedly unloseable State of Origin series last year - yet again.

And a large reason they did was because they opted against picking Raiders star Jack Wighton for the game-three decider, instead opting for Stephen Crichton and Matt Burton in the centres.

That was despite Wighton being their best player in the series opener before missing Origin II with COVID-19.

And the Blues clearly missed Wighton's physicality on the edges.

If Fittler wants to turn things around against Queensland this year, picking Wighton would be a good start.

Last, but not least. We finally get to the big question of 2023 - will there be another grand final Mac attack?

Former Raiders halfback Mark McLinden ran onto the field during last year's grand final and tried to chain himself to the goalposts - only to be undone because his chain wasn't long enough to get around the padding.

McLinden was calling for action on climate change, his T-shirt bearing the message "end coal, gas and oil - for our kids".

The former Raider of the early 2000s has had an interesting life since hanging up the boots - with his professional career including stints in both rugby league and union.

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He's set a chicken bus world record while backpacking through Guatemala, recorded rap songs and become an environmental activist.

Talking to ACM, publisher of this newspaper, McLinden vowed it wouldn't be his "last attempt" - and by the time the 2023 decider rolls around he'll potentially have had time to find a longer chain.

He was undone by his desire to have a combination lock - so he could set it using a climate change fact the security guards could look up on their phones - limiting the length of his chain. Maybe a year's a long time in chains.

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