Six players have landed a perfect 20 votes in Round 17, with the full round between Origin 2 and 3 allowing for plenty of changes to the overall leaderboard in Zero Tackle’s NRL MVP race.
Haumole Olakau’atu is the most notable of the players at the top scoring 20, moving into second place and regaining his Origin spot on the back of a barnstorming performance against the Melbourne Storm.
Herbie Farnworth and Naufahy Whyte are also into the top ten with scores of 20, with this being the first time Whyte has cracked the top ten all year.
Simi Sasagi, Jason Taumalolo and Stephen Crichton were also unanimously voted as man of the match by our panel, while the other two games saw Tallis Duncan, Cameron Murray, Greg Marzhew, Dominic Young and Dane Gagai named as the best by at least one judge.
Dylan Edwards, playing in Penrith’s loss to the Cowboys, did enough to hang onto a slender lead at the top of the overall leaderboard ahead of Olakau’atu, while Scott Drinkwater’s 13 votes moves him back aheadof Nathan Cleary, with James Tedesco rounding out the top five.
As a reminder of how this works, our panel, comprising Zero Tackle founder Matt Clements, journalist Leo Twemlow, and writer Dan Nichols, alongside myself as editor, will cast votes on a 5-4-3-2-1 basis from each game of the premiership season.
Here are all the Round 17 votes.
Top ten