If a team is conceding more than 16 to 18 points in a game at this time of year, they are not going to win the premiership.

I've always believed that if a team can score 18 points in a big game, they should win. The plan is to apply as much sustained pressure as possible on the opposition and force them to crack.

You attack their weaknesses in the hope of producing a couple of tries. You count on scoring a third try from kick pressure or forcing a mistake. You get to your 18 points, and then you defend them to the hilt.

If you only come up with 12 points, well, you just have to defend harder to win. That's big-match football.

Brisbane coach Wayne Bennett made a similar point after his team's 24-20 loss to the Dragons at Suncorp Stadium on Friday night. In effect, he said if a team is leading a game 12-0 at this time of year, they must win that game to be serious about making an impact in the finals.

The time of year he was referring to was the month of August - four weeks out from the finals. It's only now that things start to tighten up. Attention to detail becomes more important. Referees start to back away from blowing too many penalties. The opposition becomes harder to beat and each successive match increases in importance.

It's a time when the genuine contenders start their finals charge, and the pretenders fall by the wayside. And we are starting to see a bit of this already.

The long-serving Broncos mentor has seen a lot of August football in his days. He knows full well what it takes to win a title and can obviously sense if his own troops are marching to the right beat.

Bennett had just watched his team squander a 12-point lead with a pretty tame second-half performance. The Broncos totally dominated the first half but only had a six-point advantage to show for it - that was no indication of their superiority.

The second half, however, belonged to the Dragons, leaving Bennett no choice but to deliver this very honest message about their performance: "We're not ruthless enough … At this time of the year, at 12-0, where we're trying to get to, what we want to achieve later on in the season … it just can't happen."

Never a truer word was spoken.

But let me say I don't swallow the whole "Broncos are gone" story. Bennett knows he still has Justin Hodges, Karmichael Hunt and Tonie Carroll to come back into the side, and they will make a massive difference. This little jab by Bennett is more a case of him getting his men ready, rather than admitting that the inadequacy of Friday night's performance is anything permanent.

He may fool some people into a false sense of security, but not the other coaches.

The Broncos need to improve a heap to match it with the top two sides - but they have the potential to do so. There was great energy in their first-half performance against the Dragons and if they can extend this kind of effort to 80 minutes, Bennett knows better than anyone they have a real chance of causing the big upset on the right day - especially with three of his best soldiers ready to return to action.

If you want to work out who are the real title contenders, then here's an example. Look at the Melbourne Storm's defensive efforts over the past five weeks. Once they brushed off the effects of the gruelling State of Origin campaign, the defending premiers raised the stakes in how they defend their try line.

In the last five matches they have conceded a total of 28 points: Dragons (0), Warriors (8), Titans (4), Sea Eagles (10) and Roosters (6).

Now, tell me again who are the premiership favourites? When you are defending like that, you put very little pressure on your batting order to come up with the winning runs. Melbourne are the team to beat.

Look at Manly's last five defensive efforts before playing the Rabbitohs this afternoon: Storm (16, in a cracker of a game), Panthers (10), Roosters (34, this was a wake-up call), Eels (10) and Sharks (6).

Again, this is a team steeling itself for finals football. They are doing so with a commitment to denying their opposition points.

Many people are writing off the Sharks' premiership chances because they struggle to score points. Don't. All season, Cronulla have pretty much followed the big-match philosophy I referred to earlier.

Most weeks, the Sharks manage to squeak out somewhere between 10 and 16 points and they fight hard in defence to turn this into a winning total. Most of their games go right down to the wire. They lost 75 per cent of the close ones in 2007, but have won more than 80 per cent of nail-biters this season. Hence their lofty position on the ladder.

When you think about it, they've been practising finals football all season. Now they have qualified for the eight, their apparent attacking deficiencies won't be the huge factor most people suspect.

Defence wins finals and the Sharks are strong in this area.

The other team in the top four at the moment is the Roosters. Judging by their recent form, however, this could be on sufferance.

In their last six matches they've conceded 156 points: Storm (30), Eels (28), Cowboys (20), Manly (12), Raiders (34) and Titans (32). Granted, they've been missing a few key players recently and they will obviously be a better team next season. However, they had worked themselves into a good position this year and now seem to be wasting a great opportunity for some of their youngsters to gain valuable experience in finals football.

These figures do not indicate that the Roosters are about to make a major tilt at the title come September.

This defensive record is nowhere near good enough and coach Brad Fittler knows he must instil a heap more resolve in his troops if they want to avoid a meek end to a season that showed so much promise.

At the moment, the Storm and Sea Eagles are making the running. The Sharks have the defensive resolve to compete. The Roosters are halfway down the slippery dip with no breaks.

And the Broncos? Well, I don't think Mr Bennett has given up just yet. Don't write them off.