Fri, 11 Sept, 7:50 pm, Final score, Rabbitohs 10, Knights 20
Sat, 12 Sept, 4:05 pm, Final score, Warriors 16, Dolphins 26
Sat, 12 Sept, 7:50 pm, Final score, Sharks 26, Cowboys 16
Sun, 13 Sept, 4:05 pm, Final score, Panthers 19, Roosters 12
Sat, 19 Sept, 7:50 pm, Final score, Roosters 46, Sharks 10
Sun, 20 Sept, 4:05 pm, Final score, Warriors 10, Knights 12
Fri, 25 Sept, 7:50 pm, Final score, Dolphins 20, Roosters 36
Sun, 27 Sept, 4:00 pm, Final score, Panthers 14, Knights 22
Sun, 4 Oct, 7:30 pm, Final score, Roosters 19, Knights 18
Kalyn Ponga and Reece Walsh are the two dominant players heading into the World Cup final. ( Getty Images: Cameron Spencer and Mark Metcalfe )
The Golden Boot hasn't gone to the best player in the world for many years now but if it did you can still make the case it should have ended up in Reece Walsh's hands.
The Australian fullback is not always the best, but when he is at his best there's nobody better and his performances for the Kangaroos has been a scorching reminder that nobody in rugby league is as made for the fast lane.
These days the Golden Boot goes to the best player in Test matches for the year and by giving it to Kalyn Ponga after just 150 minutes in international football, the credibility of the award is on the line in Sunday's World Cup final.
If New Zealand wins and Ponga plays well, two things that feel inextricably linked, it retroactively becomes a better decision. The outcome will be correct even if the process was flawed.
If Australia wins and Walsh plays well, it highlights the farce of giving out an accolade for international player of the year before the biggest international game of the year.
In a perfect world, or even an imperfect one given it just makes sense, the Golden Boot wouldn't be awarded until after full-time on Sunday, by which time Ponga could be a worthy winner, but as it stands Walsh should have won the trophy.
He has as many man-of-the-match awards in this tournament than Ponga has completed games and after a premiership hangover with Brisbane that could have killed a brown dog, the Australian jersey has banished the demons and brought Walsh roaring back to life.
Reece Walsh has been in brilliant form through the World Cup. ( Getty Images: Cameron Spencer )
Sometimes he spins out of control, such as when he lost sight of a Samoa bomb in the semifinal, leading to a Stephen Crichton try, but when he stays on the road it's an exhilarating sight.
From his length-of-the-field try in the tournament opener against New Zealand to his five try assists against Cook Islands and a hat-trick against Samoa, Walsh's football over the past month has been reminiscent of the form he showed in leading Brisbane to the 2025 premiership .
It has served as a reminder of his game-bending abilities for anyone who needed it after a title defence to forget, and it's all the more impressive given his initial selection in this squad was far from guaranteed.
The loyalty of coach Kevin Walters played a major part and if James Tedesco had not played in the grand final, there's every chance he would have started against New Zealand in the tournament opener.
But right from the beginning, where Walsh won a brilliant duel with Ponga, he has made the spot his own and shaped Australia's fortunes along the way.
Ponga's win on awards night is just the prelude, with both men shaping as their country's best and most important players in Sunday's World Cup final.
It caps a year that has pulled back and forth between two of the biggest names and best players in the sport, and this last battle will determine who wins the war.
Ponga got the early running when he beat Walsh to the Queensland fullback job only for Walsh to strike back in their showdown three weeks ago that left both of them with stuffed highlight reels and Ponga with a broken arm.
The return from that injury has no doubt played a part in Ponga winning the award and while it's too early to be handing out Golden Boots there is no denying that his 150 minutes on the field for New Zealand has been exemplary.
Ponga linking up with the Kiwis wasn't possible until the Test eligibility laws were changed earlier this year, and what he's done since fits in with the wider journey he's been on this season.
It mirrors his run to the grand final with Newcastle, where he changed from being someone who could play great into a great player and it was a transformation based on emotion more-so than any technical improvement.
That evolution has continued through the World Cup, where he has proven the black and white jersey calls to him in a way the green and gold never did or could.
When the chance to represent Australia came up in the past he opted to stay home and prepare for the next NRL season .
When finally offered a shot for New Zealand not only did he accept, he rushed back from a serious injury and threw himself in front of Tongan freight trains without fear.
That feeling has unlocked something inside Ponga, which comes out as the most whole-hearted and inspiring play of his career.
He becomes what he was always said to be when he fully committed to a cause greater than himself.
That was not always possible in Newcastle, where Ponga's star power once overpowered the entire club, but it was this year and the same has been true for New Zealand throughout this tournament even as the new guy doubles as the most famous face on the team.
Where once he was cool and impenetrable to the point of being unknowable, now Ponga is throwing himself into contests heart first which is what makes his contrast with Walsh so compelling.
The Queensland teammates will fight it out for the right to be world champion. ( Getty Images: Quinn Rooney )
The Bronco is all bleeding edges, all the time. What Ponga has learned to do is something Walsh does by compulsion. He could not hide his emotions if he tried and he never tries.
They come bursting out of him, as chest-beating when he rounded Ponga over the sideline against New Zealand or as acrobatics when he scored against Samoa.
He is desperate to excel, to strike fast and hard and deadly and most of all to win and sometimes Walsh wants it too much and chases it too hard, but it's one of those things you'd rather have too much of than not enough.
There will be a galaxy of stars fighting it out for the World Cup in Brisbane on Sunday, where the end of so many stories will be told.
Casey McLean, another Golden Boot nominee, is off to the fastest start for world domination since Alexander the Great and Jamayne Isaako is kicking goals from the middle of hurricanes .
Half of Isaah Yeo's chest is ripped apart and he's made 109 tackles while only missing two all tournament and he'll have to pull off a similar job if Australia is to slow New Zealand's astonishing forward pack.
Jahrome Hughes and Cameron Munster, whose playmaking genius is so often paired together with Melbourne, will fix both of their minds on the destruction of the other.
But nobody will have a greater impact on the winning and losing of it than Ponga and Walsh, two players who are so different yet have arrived in the same place as they both burn white hot.
If their meeting in Sydney was high noon, the sequel at Lang Park may as well be a one-horse town that ain't big enough for the both of them.
After they meet with guns drawn and the dust finally settles it'll prove a Golden Boot is one thing but being able to call yourself a world champion is quite another.
