Each of Australia’s major football codes has a sore point which fans and officials of rival games like to press for a free kick. Soccer’s simulation problems have always kept it a few rungs down on the macho-factor ladder. Australian rules is often ridiculed for having to invent a hybrid game in order to play “internationals”. Rugby union ... there it is, standing over there, hobnobbing with the corporates. Rugby league gets mauled for its empty seats. Not that we’re talking crowd crisis or anything here, but 150 less people attended each National Rugby League regular season game in 2014 than in 2013. The aggregate for ’13 was slightly down on 2012’s average, too. Television broadcast figures are a different kettle, with NRL pay televison and free-to-air ratings holding firm, and every possible form of life in the known universe tuning in to the epic three-game State of Origin series each year.

Nevertheless, those crowd figures ain’t going up, and the NRL has had enough of it. So over the off-season the staffers at Rugby League Central set about designing a draw which will give working fans and their families every possible opportunity to attend matches.

The result? The NRL will own public holidays going forward. For instance, there are THREE matches scheduled for Easter Monday alone, as well as five on ANZAC Day (which unfortunately falls on a Saturday anyway this year).

Perhaps the best news coming out of NRL headquarters over the off-season was the appointment of administrative mastermind Shane Richardson as the head of game strategy and development. Wherever he goes, Richo leaves things in a far better state than he finds them. He was CEO at Penrith for its last title in ’03, while he left his former employer Souths with a premiership and a fat set of ledgers following outstanding revenue and merchandise sales results. That NRL crowd problem? Richo will fix it. There’s also talk of the return of a draft sometime in the near future, conducted properly for rookies this time. A possible three-week standalone Origin period and a bulked-up international scene are apparently other bones for Mr Richardson to chew going forward.

Look out for games conducted by the Eastern Seaboard Rugby League in Perth, Darwin and Bathurst again throughout 2015 (how’s that for putting dots on the map?), with two return visits to the Canterbury Bulldogs’ beloved Belmore kennel no doubt tugging at the heartstrings of the sport's traditionalists. In 2015, rugby league will also return to the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the first time since the split Super League-AFL season of 1997, in the form of Origin.

And this year, fans will see the game through another prism they’re not used to – live on Channel Nine on Sunday afternoons. No more one-hour delay; fancy being able to watch the game as it’s happening ...

Here’s how they'll finish in 2015.

1 - PENRITH PANTHERS

The National Rugby League’s sleeping giant is awake.When the club with arguably the biggest junior nursery in the world knocked off the minor premiership-winning Sydney Roosters on their home ground in the play-offs last year, it was at-last confirmation of their status as a genuine title contender. Remarkably, it took the Panthers all season to convince their critics they weren’t fluking their way to the top, all the while battling claims the NRL was piggy-backing the former Chocolate Soldiers with an “easy” draw. They welcomed two of the game’s most outstanding young talents – forward Elijah Taylor and utility Tyrone Peachey – to the fold last off-season. Needless to say that club spirits were crushed when the duo, along with young tyro backrower Bryce Cartwright (nephew of), suffered mid-season-ending injuries. Then Penrith lost its halfback and returning local junior Peter Wallace. A heartbreaking “if only” campaign appeared to be taking shape. But the young Panthers just kept on winning, eventual Dally M Coach of the Year Ivan Cleary accepting no excuses. With the onus well and truly on Dragons discard Jamie Soward to lead like never before in his career, the Panthers dug in with a self-belief not seen out Penrith way since John Lang was making Craig Gower do things no one thought possible. The Panthers’ purr will be louder for their determined campaign last year, which broke out a number of the game’s superstars-in-the-making. Fullback and goalkicker Matt Moylan, dynamic hooker James Segeyaro, master finisher Josh Mansour and the enigmatic Jamal Idris are all back to complete what went unfinished in 2014 (thanks to a ton of nerves against the Bulldogs in that preliminary final). Discipline and defence must be a focus for Penrith this season. They won’t be able to get away with the 843 missed tackles they racked up last year (fourth most), or the 184 penalties (fourth worst) they gave away. Firebrands Lewis Brown and Adam Docker are bloody tough – and good – if very excitable at crucial stages of games. Former club player and coach, now master of football, Phil Gould, initiated a five-year plan for success upon his arrival; it’s year five in 2015.

2 - SOUTH SYDNEY RABBITOHS

The appointment of Greg Inglis as captain of the Pride Of The League tells us far more about South Sydney coach Michael Maguire than it does the troops involved in the rank-rearrangement at Redfern. In John Sutton, “Madge” had that perfect lead-by-example warrior, who bled red and green for the cause, which has never been anything but trying to win Souths its first title in 43 years. Nor would there have ever been a critical moment when Maguire suddenly thought Inglis would make a better leader than Sutton. Fact is, the Souths squad is Maguire's Frankenstein’s Monster. He built it, knows what it thinks, knows how it feels. For years it has dreamt of experiencing what happened last year, virtually lived off the hope of it ... so now what? This is where the Inglis captaincy appointment is a masterstroke. It puts the lads back at zero. Any thoughts they might have gathered of having been there, done that immediately evaporated on day one of GI’s time in charge. This is Maguire's way of giving Souths something new to chase despite the fact they’ve already caught the biggest carrot out there. Something else they won’t be used to is being hunted themselves as premiers. Back-to-back has proven too tough for the last 22 champions, and none of them ever lost a giant the calibre of Sam Burgess.

3 - SYDNEY ROOSTERS

Club status: it’s complicated. At the end of last season they watched as their stalwart Anthony Minichiello, ball-playing forward Sonny Bill Williams and wrecking-ball Frank-Paul Nu’uausala retired, returned to rugby and departed to the Canberra Raiders respectively. The trio took with them more than 570 games’ NRL experience, surely leaving gaping wounds across a normally star-studded run-on squad. But here’s the thing – with amateur boxer and reformed party boy Blake Ferguson returning to the arena for the first time since being deregistered while playing for the Canberra Raiders, there still mightn’t be enough room for the Roosters’ plethora of stars to all take the field at the same time. The most intriguing question will be: who will fill the fullback role vacated by The Count? On his way out, Mini himself gave a wave of confidence to the man the Roosters have farmed as their back-up, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck. But geez, if Fergo still has the skillset which saw him picked for Origin back in 2013, look out RTS (think Greg Inglis but in red, white and blue). There’s very little room to move in a backline featuring the likes of Michael Jennings, Daniel Tupou, Shaun-Kenny Dowall, Mitchell Pearce and Jimmy Maloney. Good luck with that, coach Trent Robinson. It’s the best possible problem to have though ...

4 - CANTERBURY-BANKSTOWN BULLDOGS

Boiled down, 2014 was just another typical year in the rugged, never-say-die history of the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs. They finished seventh at the end of 26 rounds, were written off as contenders ... and then reached the grand final. Nothing unusual there. Their lethal, clinical form in the play-offs was reminiscent of their style on show when they took the Storm to the line back in 2012. This time around, though, it was thanks mainly to the renovated halves pairing of Josh Reynolds and Trent Hodkinson. That this pair managed to steal the NSW six and seven from the Roosters’ stars who won an NRL premiership just the season prior speaks of the next few years ahead for the Dogs. This side was building a Manly-like knack of holding its squad together despite ever-present cap pressures, with enforcers like James Graham clocking up the years, until Mick Ennis chose the beach over Belmore. A positive in the gains and losses column though is the arrival of Josh’s brother, Brett, from the Dragons. That will only mean double trouble in the Dogs’ corridors of power. These are special days for the club, which will celebrate its 80th birthday with two NRL games at its spiritual home, Belmore Sports Ground, the first top-grade matches held there since 1998.

5 - NORTH QUEENSLAND COWBOYS

We know Paul Green’s men from Townville are going to be there when the whips are cracking (boom-tish) ... what we don’t yet know is how they’ll be ripped off in the semi-final that ends their season. In recent campaigns they’ve been eliminated by a Kieran Foran bat-forward which led to a fatal Sea Eagles try, had a four-pointer scored against them by the Sharks on a seventh tackle in 2013, before last year’s spilt pass which led to Johnathan Thurston’s winning “try” in the dying second against the Roosters (ultimately disallowed). Looking past the heartbreak, that’s three-straight years the Cowboys have been within serious striking distance of the premiership, which from a half-full perspective is outrageously positive. Three-time Dally M Player of the Year Thurston is in the form of his life, and if he just keeps at it, doing what he does to steer a lightning-fast backline in the right direction, and keeps the most damaging forwards in the game like Matt Scott and James Tamou going forward, he will get his hands on that NRL trophy ... the only thing left for him to achieve in a glittering career.

6 - NEW ZEALAND WARRIORS

The Warriors’ 20th anniversary in the NRL could very well turn out to be their best campaign since they went down to the Brad Fittler-led Roosters in the 2001 grand final. From Greg Alexander and Andy Platt to Steve Price, the Warriors have had no issues attracting elite talent to the club from Britain and Australia over the years, but the talent on show in 2015 is something else. Having settled well after coach Matthew Elliott was sacked just a few weeks into the 2014 season, Andrew McFadden’s Warriors still missed the play-offs, finishing ninth on for and against behind the Broncos. Really, this isn’t good enough for a team with its own Billy Slater (dynamo British superstar Sam Tomkins), its own Benji Marshall (though Shaun Johnson is arguably more skilled than Marshall and its own Ryan Hoffman (Simon Mannering). Actually, they have two of those now, with the real thing joining them from the Storm. It is time for the Warriors to tap in to some of the Kiwis’ Four Nations momentum and take that NRL trophy back across the ditch.

7 - MANLY-WARRINGAH SEA EAGLES

Ditto Manly. It’s hardly a coincidence that at the same time as Melbourne is showing signs of fatigue, its old foes, the Sea Eagles of Manly, are suffering the same effects. Brett Stewart is about to turn the big 3-0 (can you believe that?), with a few of their other stalwarts no doubt beginning to look beyond the football field for their next career move. In fairness, Manly does carry a slightly fresher look than last year following the departures of veterans Anthony Watmough and Richie Fa’aso to the Eels, Brett’s brother Glenn to Souths and Jason King to retirement, but coach Geoff Toovey obviously values experience, having brought in journeyman Willie Mason to compensate. Mason is still young at heart, at least, and will relish being driven around by two of the game’s top guns in Kieran Foran and Daly Cherry-Evans. Toovey values toughness, too, scoring Luke Burgess from Souths in an attempt to cover some of that lost Choc and Gift muscle.

8 - MELBOURNE STORM

Last year the first signs that Cameron Smith, Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk are just like us humans began to show, with each displaying the slightest signs of slowing down in their “old age”. It might’ve had something to do with the fact that for the first time in eight years, the stress of the Origin onslaught didn’t have a happy ending for the Maroons stalwarts. It might also have something to do with the wear and tear of their long – albeit stellar – careers finally starting to catch up with them. Wouldn’t you find it hard to get out of bed if you were Smith – he of the 283 games for the Storm, 33 for Queensland and 42 for the Kangaroos? The Accountant’s two esteemed team-mates are the exact same age as him, 32 this year (matter of fact, Slater was born the exact same day all the way back in 1983). We know it’s dangerous to write this mob off, but fact is the Storm hasn’t won a finals match since 2012, and finished last year after a 28-4 shut-out thanks to the Dogs. They've played their hearts out for years for coach Craig Bellamy before and they'll do it again, but this super trio can’t go on like this forever, which makes the engine room rolls of once-no-names but now well-known and established stars like Jesse Bromwich, Kevin Proctor and Ryan Hinchcliffe all the more vital in 2015.

9 - WESTS TIGERS

The best news to come out of Balmain/Concord/Ashfield/Leichhardt/Campbelltown since the Wests Tigers won the comp in 2005 was the installation of three independent directors onto the club’s board by the NRL. One of those is a chairperson, which should put an end to the seemingly endless wasted opportunities of success in Tigerland, caused mainly by Magpies and Balmain board members conflicting merely in the best interests of their respective black and gold corners. Last year was painful to watch even from the outside. The non-renewal of coach Mick Potter’s two-year contract ultimately led to the installation of Jason Taylor as mentor, which represents a new start on the field and at board level. This is not just a talented young team, this is a genuine, high-quality outfit. They may have lost more than 750 games of NRL experience with the departure of Braith Anasta, Cory Paterson, Liam Fulton and Adam Blair, but they still have inspirational NSW hooker Robbie Farah in charge, as well as the most exciting young halves pairing in the NRL in Luke Brooks and Mitchell Moses. No excuses for not improving on their ten wins in 2014.

10 - GOLD COAST TITANS

If you can’t recall the Gold Coast Titans leading the competition for most of the opening two months of last season, it’s because you are perfectly sane and your brain doesn’t recognise any reason to be remembering something so straightforward as a quality team sitting at the top of the table. So what the hell happened to the rest of the season? Injuries, mainly (their halves played just eight games together). But foundation coach John Cartwright accepted full responsibility and fell on his sword mid-term, with Neil Henry inheriting a full-on strike force of attacking weapons and hard-arse forwards that can beat anyone on its day. Case in point: round 26 last year when they knocked over eventual grand-finalists Canterbury. Josh Hoffman has moved down the highway from Brisbane, while they’ve lost Maurice Blair (Hull KR), retirees Luke Bailey and Ashley Harrison, and Mark Minichiello (Hull FC). However, they still have State Of Origin and international-level stars like Nate Myles and Greg Bird and reliable players like William Zillman, Aidan Sezer and Origin-rebounder Dave Taylor. No sir, they’re better than their 14th finish last year, and they’ll prove it.

11 - BRISBANE BRONCOS

We’re not about to predict that Wayne Bennett’s employers will tap the 39-season coaching master on the shoulder if his Broncos don’t show immediate signs of winning the club its first title for nine years, but plenty of his critics are starting to question his ability to coach non-elite sides to glory. It’s a pretty tough analysis. Who among us threw their house on a Dragons title when Bennett arrived at Kogarah/Wollongong? Didn't think so. His Dragons were promising but there was no Langer, Walters, Hancock, Lockyer, Tallis, Sailor in his ranks that year, so how did he do it? How did he take the battling, injury-depleted Newcastle Knights to within one game of the 2013 GF? Rugby league’s father figure is back at Red Hill, and has brought his ground-up nurturing ways with him. Unfortunately, his minor wins with the on-and-off-field personal development of his youngsters will be ignored by his critics, as they are, of course, unrecordable on a scoreboard.

12 - CRONULLA-SUTHERLAND SHARKS

There’s a scene in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay where the heroine Katniss Everdeen is taken back to District 12 to check out the damage the Capitol has caused to her homeland. The joint is complete rubble, too soul-destroying for even a determined figure like Jennifer Lawrence to fix. This was likely the outlook of disgraced Cronulla coach Shane Flanagan when he stepped back into his digs at Shark Park for the first time since having his ban lifted by the NRL. Penalised over governance issues related to the Sharks' supplement program of 2011, Flanagan was the tragic public face of the Cronulla crisis, even outshining outspoken captain Paul Gallen. The skipper initially rallied his troops behind the besieged coach, until he and several team-mates accepted doping bans themselves, which have since evaporated. With everyone back on deck, how long it will take Flanagan to get the club back to normal will be the most watched drama of 2015. At least he has Ben Barba in his squad this year ... maybe he can play Katniss?

13 - ST GEORGE-ILLAWARRA DRAGONS

Once upon a time the only footy to watch on Anzac Day was the annual City-Country match, which these days is proving about as popular with the game’s officials as a streaker at the critical moment of an Origin series. Then the Anzac Day period got owned by Test footy, which merely gave us Aussies an excuse to bash up on our Kiwi neighbours on what was supposed to be a unifying time of year. In 2015, the special day is the centrepiece of a revamped NRL schedule designed around giving people who work, and who have families, the chance to take their kids to the footy on public holidays. There’ll be five NRL games on ANZAC Day (a Saturday) this year, including of course the “traditional” Dragons-Roosters clash. Just think about that for a second. The 100th anniversary of Australia's most important character-building event, and we're flooding it with footy. It could have been worse. Organisers (read the NRL and the government) could have taken the Saints and Roosters to Anzac Cove in Turkey and played a commemorative match in front of thousands of Dawn Service early risers ...

14 - NEWCASTLE KNIGHTS

Those Burgess boys aren’t the only brothers creating havoc on the NRL’s big stage. Towards the end of last season, a three-pronged Samoan Mata’utia attack materialised in the form of brothers Peter, who's at the Dragons, Newcastle's Chanel (yes, he’s been known to wear the No.5 jersey, so your joke works) and youngest sibling Sione. There have been massive raps on all three as they’ve progressed through the grades, especially on the 188cm-tall Sione, who shot to stardom with first an appearance for the PM’s XIII in PNG, then for Australia during last year’s Four Nations tournament. He’s a veteran of just seven NRL games (for the Knights), with each and every one so far proving a huge outing, including a hat-trick of tries against the Warriors. He’s a nightmare to tackle, boasting tremendous momentum in his running for someone who isn’t a “giant”, and already has an outstanding grasp on life on the outskirts of the rugby league backline. Here's hoping the rampaging young centre recovers from the ankle injury he suffered in the Auckland Nines and provides a sparkling show later in the year.

15 - PARRAMATTA EELS

Such has been the steady on-field progress of the Sydney-based A-League sides that there are those in fan land who now claim that the Parramatta Eels and Sydney Roosters are merely leasing their home stadiums through the winter until the real tenants return for the round-ball game during the summer months. The main drivers of this theory point to Sydney FC’s massive sky-blue-scarf-waving mob called The Cove, which floods Allianz Stadium on game day. Then there's the Wanderers’ distinctive “RBB” army of supporters, which flocks to Pirtek Stadium out west. The pressure is on the Eels to come up with new-found funky supporter movements like this. This kinda stuff gives off that tribal air and makes the kids want to become involved ... no matter how the team is performing on the field. On that score, if Parra starts winning again, Eels fans will come out of nowhere in their thousands.

16 - CANBERRA RAIDERS

There are other players to have come out of Goulburn besides Todd Carney, you know. One of them is the Raiders’ young captain Jarrod Croker. Yet another is 22-year-old new dad Mitch Cornish, a halfback you’ll hear plenty more about in 2015. Mitch’s team-mates have certainly heard plenty from him in the past, with coach Ricky Stuart often running training sessions in which Cornish is the only player allowed to speak ... or yell, really – it’s a confidence-building thing. Cornish was eased into first grade last year by Stuart, who knows all too well the dangers of thrusting young halves into the furnace before their time. Cornish ended up collecting eight run-on starts for the Raiders, even steering the Green Machine around the park in their last two games for two wins. The former Junior Kangaroos rep and 2012 Under-20s Halfback of the Year will likely partner former Wests Tigers playmaker Blake Austin in the halves, as the 15th-placed Raiders do the right thing and commence their rebuild from the very ground up.