{"id":411115,"date":"2026-05-04T10:16:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T10:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/411115\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T10:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T10:16:11","slug":"nrl-2926-fans-left-furious-after-nathan-cleary-overtakes-robbed-warriors-star-in-dally-m-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/411115\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL 2926: Fans left furious after Nathan Cleary overtakes ‘robbed’ Warriors star in Dally M race"},"content":{"rendered":"

NRL<\/a> fans are once again questioning the credibility of the Dally M voting system<\/a> after Warriors prop Jackson Ford didn’t receive a single vote on Saturday night. Ford has made a barnstorming start to the 2026 season and looks a certainty to play State of Origin for NSW<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Heading into Round 9 he was leading the Dally M count with 31 votes, narrowly ahead of Panthers star Nathan Cleary<\/a> on 28. But Cleary has now surged into the lead on 33 points after collecting five against Manly.<\/p>\n

\"Nathan<\/p>\n

Nathan Cleary (L) has surged past Jackson Ford (R) to take the lead in the Dally M race. Image: Getty<\/p>\n

Perplexingly, Ford didn’t poll a single vote despite another huge performance in the Warriors’ 36-14 win over Parramatta. Ford played 71 minutes in the front row, making 50 tackles with only one miss. He also scored a try, ran for 177 metres and had two offloads and two tackle-breaks.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to draw any love from either of the two judges. Erin Clark, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck and Tanah Boyd each scored three votes, after Clark had a try assist, three tackle breaks, one offload and 27 tackles. Tuivasa-Sheck scored a try and ran for 199 metres with five tackle-breaks and two line-breaks, while Boyd had a try assist and two line-break assists while kicking four goals from six attempts.<\/p>\n

\"Jackson<\/p>\n

Jackson Ford had another huge game, but didn’t receive a single vote.<\/p>\n

(Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Eels five-eighth Ronald Volkman (2) and Warriors winger Dallin Watene-Zelezniak (1) scored the other votes. Volkman scored a double on the losing team, while Watene-Zelezniak had a try and 177 running metres.<\/p>\n

As for Cleary, he scored five votes despite a rather quiet game by his standards. The Panthers halfback had a try-assist, four tackle-breaks and three offloads in Penrith’s 18-16 win over Manly. Dylan Edwards (3), Blaize Talagi (2) and Haumole Olakau’atu (2) scored the other votes.<\/p>\n

NRL fans blast Jackson Ford Dally M snub<\/p>\n

Cleary’s five votes saw him leap-frog Ford into outright top spot in the Dally M race, leaving NRL fans confused as to why Ford didn’t get a single vote. One person wrote on social media: “Absolute joke how Jackson Ford got 0! He was one of the best players out of every game!”<\/p>\n

Another wrote: “Ford robbed a point at the very least.” While a third commented: “Not saying he should’ve got 6, but I don’t see how Ford comes away with ZERO points from that game.”<\/p>\n

It’s the latest instance of Dally M votes raising eyebrows around the NRL world. Last month veteran commentator Andrew Voss called<\/a> for the system to be “blown up”, saying on SEN: “The system is broken. The system does not work. The system cannot stand up today with any form of integrity.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NRL fans are once again questioning the credibility of the Dally M voting system after Warriors prop Jackson…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49255,211496,34181,111,139,577,69,213,3006],"class_list":["post-411115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-dally-m","tag-jackson-ford","tag-nathan-cleary","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nrl","tag-nz","tag-sports","tag-warriors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}