Turbo at the top, Ponga, star halves surge: Zero Tackle’s NRL MVP, Round 5
In what was a surprise performance from Manly, our panel handed Trbojevic 16 votes, while Daly Cherry-Evans was the unanimous best on ground, scoring a perfect 20.
Cherry-Evans was joined by Kalyn Ponga, Jahrome Hughes, Matt Burton and Matthew Timoko as the other players to score a perfect 20 in Round 5.
In the other games, Shaun Johnson, Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad, Isaiya Katoa, Jeremya Marshall-King, Scott Drinkwater and Valentine Holmes were all voted as best on ground by at least one judge.
Trbojevic’s 16 votes means he takes the lead of the MVP ahead of James Tedesco, who failed to register a vote in the Sydney Roosters’ loss to the Canterbury Bulldogs.
Tedesco drops to fourth, now nine votes off the pace, and he could fall further behind while recovering from concussion. Ponga and Drinkwater move into equal second spot, while it’s another fullback in Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow who sits in fifth spot.
To remind you how this works, each week, our panel – made up of Matt Clements (Zero Tackle founder), Dan Nichols and Ethan Lee Chalk (Zero Tackle writers) and myself as editor will cast votes on each game in a 5-4-3-2-1 scoring system.
The best player on-field receives five votes, the next four, and so on. That means a player could realistically gain 20 votes in a single game, although no one was on that level in the first half of Round 1.
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