And then there were four teams left. With the Panthers roaring and the Sharks circling, week 2 of the NRL finals has been run and done. Penrith the four-time defending champions were ruthless in destroying the Bulldogs, while the Sharks were equally impressive against the Raiders.
We take a look at what we learned from the two games.
Canterbury's war cry turns to a whimper
What a bizarre season it ended up being for the Bulldogs. One that started with so much promise, but ends with them still searching for their first finals win since 2015.
It's very easy to point the finger at the mid-year transfer of Lachlan Galvin as the reason everything came undone. After that season-ending loss on Sunday, they've now lost more games than they've won since the 20-year-old joined in June.
If you asked someone to watch Canterbury's games without a pre-built narrative about why things were going poorly and why they lost any particular game, you wouldn't immediately point the finger at Galvin. There's plenty of other reasons at play, but you have to wonder why, with everything going so well, Cameron Ciraldo tinkered with so much of what was working.
It wasn't just Galvin. The Bailey Hayward versus Reed Mahoney hooking situation dragged on for weeks and weeks. Matt Burton, who proved plenty of the 'he's not a five-eighth' crowd wrong this year, was shunted back to the centres for the team's biggest game.
You have to ask why. But the silver lining for Canterbury is that with Mahoney and Toby Sexton both leaving, a lot of those tinkering decisions will be unavailable to Ciraldo in 2026. But the other side of that is, of course, that this team is finally settled in the way that they envisioned it at the beginning of the decade.
There isn't another class of Panthers alumni coming. Leo Thompson will give their forward pack a bit of a boost but for better or worse, this is it. This group of players is what the rebuild led to. And so far, it doesn't look like a team that's got enough about them to reach the ultimate goal - but cohesion breeds success, and at the very least, they should have a clear plan on how they want to set the team up next year.
But the makeup of the squad aside, this is the second straight season that has fizzled down the stretch. Is a team that prides themselves on their effort and intensity and was outworking everyone they played in the first half of the year, simply running out of steam? That's another possibility.
But if there's a team that's shown us that you can push yourself up to that red line and stay there, it's the one who beat the Bulldogs. A Penrith team that was anchored to the foot of the ladder earlier in the year are now back in a very familiar spot - one game away from a grand final.
There'll be plenty more to say about the Panthers next week and beyond, but what was so impressive in this win was the fluidity of their attack. This wasn't a typical grind that we're used to seeing from them, and what we should have expected between theses two after that 8-6 slugfest earlier in the year. Instead, we saw some free-flowing and expansive football that was a joy to witness in person, even if the second half was a bit laissez-faire given everyone at the stadium already knew the result after the first 40 minutes.
Despite all the hiccups that the Panthers had to begin the year, here they are again, fully fit and firing when it counts.
Sharks shake off 'Pretender's tag in emphatic fashion
Do it in September. It means nothing to just beat up on the bottom half of the league. Win when it matters. Frauds.
In any article or piece of media about the Cronulla Sharks in the past few seasons, comments like this would be written underneath like night follows day. What was refreshing about the Sharks players was that where other squads would trot out the typical lines of 'shutting out the noise' and 'not paying attention to the media', they were all-too-aware.
They all heard the cries of 'soft draw.'. The 'regular season warriors' tag dogging them since the Craig Fitzgibbon era began, and now finally shaken.
You could tell from the reactions of not just Cronulla players, but fans as well, how much this win meant to them.
And just on Fitzgibbon - some wins and losses define seasons. This one has solidified his entire coaching tenure. Ring culture, and the idea that any season that doesn't end with a premiership is a failure, has rotted our brains. But in the case of the Sharks this was now their fourth year of being a legitimate contender in the NRL and until the past fortnight, they only had a solitary finals win to hang their hat on.
So in this case, it was fair to demand more. And what did they give us last night to follow up a fantastic win over the Roosters? A comprehensive victory in a hostile environment, won in a way we simply haven't seen the Sharks win games in the past few years.
They were physical, confident, and direct. Everything you'd want to see in September. Siosifa Talakai and Briton Nikora in particular gave them a massive boost after a first 25 minutes that were absolutely dominated by the Raiders. From there though, it was one-way traffic.
There wasn't any great injustice or a few either/or moments within the 80 minutes that Canberra fans could cling to to try and justify how the game may have gone another way. Cronulla made more errors and conceded more penalties - they lost their best bench forward after just his second hit up. The Raiders were simply outplayed in a way they hadn't yet been in 2025.
The Sharks may well head down to Melbourne next week and lose. But they'll be keeping pretty much the entire squad together next year and finally, after Saturday, know they can match it with the best when it matters. Wins like this stick with fanbases for years, and this was their finest moment since 2016.
Canberra, for their part, will have to pick up the pieces after a superb regular season ends in the first straight sets exit for a minor premier since 2009. Last night was a disaster, but let's not forget they were without Ethan Strange and a week earlier were a play away (on several occasions) from a home prelim and a great chance to advance to the grand final. Nevertheless, defeats like that can compound and spiral and spill over into future years. They'll need to be mentally strong enough to go again in March.