NRL 2024 Grand Final – Betting Tips, Odds & Predictions

It’s Grand Final week, and who would have guessed, the Storm and the Panthers are playing! It’s looked like the most likely Grand Final matchup all year – granted the Roosters put themselves in the mix throughout the course of the regular season, but they were the third member of the trio in the eyes of most and that became evident when the Panthers pumped them in the first week of the finals. The Storm did the same last week to earn their spot in the big dance, while the Panthers went ahead with their own demolition of the side the Storm so convincingly beat in their own Qualifying Final in the Sharks. Neither of them has had so much as a scare in the finals, confirming what most already thought – that they are far and away the best two teams in the NRL. That fact has made for a relatively lopsided finals series, but it also means that we should be in for a memorable Grand Final. Take a look at our bumper preview below.

It’s long looked like the matchup we would get on Grand Final Day, and after a number of one-sided finals so far this September – most of them caused by these two teams – this looks like the Grand Final that we all deserve. It’s incredibly hard to separate these sides; they each had brilliant regular seasons, the Storm in particular, and in the finals series they have both gone to a different level entirely. They’ve both only played the Roosters and the Sharks this postseason – the two sides who joined them in the top four – and for the most part, things have been pretty straightforward. The Storm, overall, are 85-28 in their two finals, while the Panthers have an equally dominant 56-16 aggregate. Granted a couple of those games were a little closer than they might have looked, the Storm running away in the second half of both their games and the Panthers doing the same in the Preliminary Final against the Sharks, but however they did it, neither side looked like losing either of their games.

For the Storm, a Grand Final has been the bare minimum for much of the season. They grabbed top spot off the Sharks ten weeks into the season and never relinquished it, opening up a gap in the top two which meant they were always going to enjoy a home Qualifying Final. A win there, of course, would mean a home Preliminary Final, and given how rarely they have lost at AAMI Park all season, that top two finished always pointed towards a Grand Final appearance. Not that they needed the home ground advantage. The Storm have been the most consistently successful team in the league and probably in Australian sports for nearly two decades, and while the era which saw the likes of Cameron Smith and Billy Slater run riot for so long is gone, they have been replaced by a team every bit as good. With names like Ryan Papenhuyzen, Cameron Munster and Jahrome Hughes running around – the three of whom scored seven combined tries in their Preliminary Final – as well as Xavier Coates, Harry Grant and co, there is talent everywhere you look in this team, and that has come to the fore over the past few weeks.

The Panthers, of course, are really the only side in the league that can go close to matching it. The Storm might hold the title of the most successful team of the past two decades, but the last few years have belong to the Panthers. The last time these two sides met in a Grand Final was just four years ago, and on that occasion the Storm got the chocolate, but that kickstarted a run of five consecutive Grand Finals for the Panthers, and that was the only one they’ve lost to date. Three Premierships in a row is rare enough as it is – that hadn’t happened since the Eels did it in the early ‘80s – but if they can make it four, they will be the first team to do so since the Dragons won eleven in a row in the ‘50s and ‘60s in what was clearly a very different league. The Panthers might be missing a few names from their Premierships of years past, but they still have more than enough talent at their disposal – the likes of Brian To’o, Jarome Luai, Isaah Yeo, Dylan Edwards, and of course the ineffable Nathan Cleary running around is enough to give any opposition the heebie jeebies.
 
So it’s safe to say that they are both pretty damn good – but how do they match up? They have played two times this year and the Storm have won both of them, but they hardly did it easy. The first came way back in Round 1, the Storm winning that game 8-0, while they also met just a few weeks ago and played out a thriller, the Storm again coming out on top 24-22. A Grand Final, of course, is a different beast entirely, and having played in four of them in a row prior to this year the Panthers obviously have the edge in experience on the biggest stage – their team has a total of 39 Grand Finals to their name, while the Storm’s collective has 12. The battle of the halves will be compelling viewing, Nathan Cleary and Jarome Luai playing their final game alongside one another and taking on Jahrome Hughes and Cameron Munster, while the fullback battle between Papenhuyzen and Edwards will also have a major impact on the game’s outcome.

The Storm come into the Grand Final in some blistering offensive form, having put up an absurd 213 points in their past five games, and that coming against some very good teams. But the Panthers, of course, have made a name as the most dominant defensive team of the last few years, and incredibly have conceded an average of just 9.6 points across their last 11 finals.
 
This is a mouth-watering matchup in every sense of the word, and after a number of one-sided finals, this is one in which it is extremely hard to pick a winner. It could certainly be argued that the Panthers have the man with the most potential to win the game off his own boot in Nathan Cleary given what he did in last year’s Grand Final, but the Storm have no shortage of players capable of doing that themselves. It is really, really hard to see this game not going down to the wire, and ultimately it might just come down to which teams, and which players, can make the most of their moments late in the game. This will be a bruising encounter and one in which scoring might prove tricky, but the Storm have been the best team all year – even if that’s a marginal call – and can put a stop to the Panthers’ run of Premierships by doing what they did four years ago, and beating them in a thriller.

Bookmaker	James’ Tip	Odds
	Storm to win	$1.83
	Storm 1-12	$3.10
	Under 40.5 total match points	$1.90

Predicted Squads

Melbourne Storm: 1. Ryan Papenhuyzen 2. Will Warbrick 3. Jack Howarth 4. Nick Meaney 5. Xavier Coates 6. Cameron Munster 7. Jahrome Hughes 8. Nelson Asofa-Solomona 9. Harry Grant 10. Josh King 11. Shawn Blore 12. Eli Katoa 13. Trent Loiero 14. Tyran Wishart 15. Christian Welch 16. Tui Kamikamica 17. Alec MacDonald

Penrith Panthers: 1. Dylan Edwards 2. Sunia Turuva 3. Izack Tago 4. Paul Alamoti 5. Brian To'o 6. Jarome Luai 7. Nathan Cleary 8. Moses Leota 9. Mitch Kenny 10. James Fisher-Harris 11. Luke Garner 12. Liam Martin 13. Isaah Yeo 14. Brad Schneider 15. Lindsay Smith 16. Liam Henry 17. Matt Eisenhuth

• The Storm have been the best team all year and have crept over the line in both games against the Panthers this year.
• The Panthers’ last three games have seen 40 points or less scored.
• Cameron Munster has been in blistering form these finals series, scoring three tries, registering three line breaks in the Roosters’ prelim alone, and picking up his most running metres a game all season in the Qualifying Final – only to better that in the prelim.

Multi of the Week

Hopefully you got something out of the above tips, and if you did then good news – we put out tips just like that each and every week of the NRL season, as well as with plenty of other sports too. If you’re from south of the border on the east coast, or anywhere else in the country, then maybe Aussie Rules is more your thing – and we offer a similar predictions piece for every round of both the AFL and the AFLW seasons. And once they wrap up, it’s American sports time, and as the collective eye of the Australian sporting public moves to the Northern Hemisphere, so too does ours at BettingTop10 as we churn out three NBA preview pieces a week as well as a bunch of season-long pieces looking at a few futures bets.
 
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