The Dolphins Didn’t Exist Four Years Ago. On Friday They’re 80 Minutes From a Grand Final
There are people in Brisbane who still have the receipt for their first Dolphins membership. The club played its first NRL game in 2023. That is not a long time. Junior players who signed up in the club’s first season haven’t finished school yet.
On Friday night, that club hosts a preliminary final at Suncorp Stadium, with a grand final on the other side of it.
Everything about this is a first
2026 is the Dolphins’ first finals series in club history. They didn’t sneak in either — they finished third, 17 wins and 7 losses, which is a better regular season than most established clubs managed. Then they went to Auckland and beat the Warriors 26-16 in the qualifying final. First finals campaign, first finals win, and a home preliminary final as the reward.
Kristian Woolf’s side doesn’t even run a conventional captaincy — Tom Gilbert, Isaiya Katoa, Felise Kaufusi and Kodi Nikorima have rotated the armband through the season. It shouldn’t work. It has.
And in Jamayne Isaako they have the competition’s leading point-scorer with 288 points, a man who reached 1,000 club points in 93 games — the fewest anyone has needed to get there, breaking a record that had stood since 1981.
The Roosters have unfinished business from the last meeting
These two last met in round 26, on 29 August. The Dolphins won that one 26-12. It cost the Roosters more than two competition points: halfback Sam Walker did the syndesmosis in his ankle that night and hasn’t played since.
As of Monday he was back doing everything at training, and coach Trent Robinson sounded genuinely optimistic about him passing his fitness tests in time. He has since been named in the side. If Walker plays, the Roosters get their first-choice halfback back for the biggest game of their season, on the same ankle, against the same team that broke it.
Whatever happens there, the Roosters arrive in form. They took Cronulla apart 46-10 in Saturday’s semi-final, a second half so one-sided the contest effectively ended at the hour mark. They’ve also taken the hard road all September, having lost their qualifying final to Penrith.
What’s actually on the line
Dolphins v Sydney Roosters — preliminary final, Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane, Friday 25 September. The winner meets whoever comes through Penrith and Newcastle on Sunday in the grand final on 4 October.
For the Roosters, a grand final would be another entry in a long ledger. For a club in its fourth season, playing in front of its own crowd, 80 minutes from a decider it has no historical right to be near — it would be something else entirely.
