NRL Grand Final Day.
Image: James Smith

When do you, as a fan, press the panic button on behalf of your favourite footy team? Is it when your mob loses mathematical touch of the leaders? Is it when it’s put to the sword, like the Demons’ 148-point loss to the Bombers, or the Eels’ recent 50-0 capitulation to the Roosters?

Perhaps you’re more a vibe-type fan? You’ve watched your blokes that many times, you know they aren’t putting in, so you sound the alarm and begin your personal campaign for new players and a new coach.

Or are you a ladder-position doomsayer? It’s seven rounds in, your team’s nearly last – show’s already over. Bring out your dead. The good news for this last group is that if your favourite team plays in the NRL, and it’s stone-motherless or thereabouts, your show ain’t over by a long shot, despite the fact we’re approaching the roughly-half-way State Of Origin period.

Former CEO David Gallop’s legacy of making each fan feel their team has a chance of winning each week – and reaching the finals each year – lives on in NRL version 2013. Take round seven’s Monday Night Football combatants for example, Penrith and Parramatta. Now, by most pundits’ observations, these two teams may as well already start planning their end-of-season trip to Bali. The 15th-placed Panthers have just one win to their names, the Eels (12th) just two. Thanks to operators like Gallop, though, this scenario isn’t anywhere near as dire as it looks.

Lots and lots and lots of matches, in a comp where half of the teams qualify for the finals, means there’s enough time for a couple more form slumps before these two Westies can call it a day, or a night, or a Super Saturday afternoon. The reality is, despite the digs in the media about what Ivan Cleary and Ricky Stuart have “got themselves into” with their newly adopted squads, the bunny these two greyhounds are chasing, the teams in equal-eighth spot (Cowboys, Raiders and Dragons), are only a win ahead of Parramatta and two ahead of Penrith. These two clubs still have 18 matches to play, and are one or two wins outside the qualifying teams.

That panic button? Put the glass-breaking emergency hammer away and keep enjoying the footy, and be thankful that, if their year does go pear-shaped, your blokes will be back again bigger and stronger next year. Count your blessings that you don’t support QPR or Reading, who have just knocked each other out of English soccer’s top-flight for next year …