Forget the Finals, Canberra are already the Real NRL Champions

When you think about it, the NRL finals are weird.

Teams play 24 matches across the regular season, and although there are flaws in this - not playing everyone twice, teams weakened by State of Origin, and so on - this method does provide a fairly good sense of who the best team for that year is.

That team is awarded the minor premiership...

...which is then completely dismissed as meaningless because of a four-week tournament known as "the NRL finals", where the minor premiers and 4th place have the same starting point even when they were five wins apart in the regular season.

And the winner of the last match in this one-month tournament is forever remembered as the champions, while the winner of the six-month tournament proceeding is largely forgotten.

There has to be a better way.

And there is... the Rugby League Championship Belt.

What if I told you somebody had created a rugby league championship belt?

And that the lineage of this prestigious title was traced from 1908, being exchanged amongst teams using a "double win" system - that's one win to earn the right to challenge, and the second win to earn the title?

And each year the true end-of-season champion was crowned - not some team that ran hot just for September, but a side that consistently fought against the odds like Rocky to earn the crown?

And for 2019 the champ is here - the Real NRL Champions are the Canberra Raiders!

The Green Machine. The Faders. The Pine Lime Splices. The Viking Clappers. The Milk. The Champions!

Let's give the Raiders a round of applause...

The season started with the New Zealand Warriors as holders of the championship, before Melbourne Storm took the title. The Storm have only had three losses since capturing the belt, but the second was in Round 22 to the Raiders, setting up the final last weekend as a title match. Which the Raiders won, after Vunivalu caught the ball but was clearly so far over the sideline he may as well have been sitting in the first row in the grandstand.

So we have new champions.

And it's not possible for Raiders to play the same team twice for the rest season, so they will head into 2020 holding this guy:

And I guess they'd also like to win the NRL Premiership too, but you'd have to ask Ricky to know for sure...