GRAND FINAL - Melbourne Storm VS Canterbury Bulldogs

Loved Smiths reaction after he missed that last penalty goal attempt he had.

 

I know it's customary to blame the halves when a side loses a big game but dude. How can you watch a side play with 30% of the ball, virtually all of it in their own half, for the first 40, and say the halves are responsible for the loss? I don't doubt that Keating and Reynolds should've been throwing more cut-outs, or dabbing grubbers in behind Nielsen and Waqa in the second half but that wasn't where Canterbury lost the match. They lost the middle third. Why were Cameron Smith and Todd Lowrie allowed to make 200m between them? Why was James Graham the only Dogs forward able to break 100m? Melbourne completed at 91% efficiency with 56% of the ball. Andrew Johns isn't beating those numbers when his forwards are getting rolled.

If you're going to blame Keating and Reynolds for not being able to recoup the lead, then perhaps you should spend a bit of time also criticising those who allowed the lead in the first place. Barba and Kasiano for example, turning over the ball on 3rd tackle in their own half after a mountain of defence, 3 minutes before HT, which lead to O'Neill's try. That's as bad as anything Reynolds and Keating did.

 

If there was one major criticism, among several, I would make of the Dogs' attack it would be that they didn't go to Morris enough. Chambers was all over the shop in defence. Both Morris and Barba carved him up but it just didn't happen enough.

And I can see why some people would've found it a boring game. I think that's mainly borne of feelings of indifference or mild dislike of both teams. At least with Manly last year there was a clear distinction based on hatred. I certainly felt a strange ambivalence about the two sides today that I can't recall having in a big game for quite a while. On the game itself though I enjoyed it. Melbourne were sublime. Completing 32 of 35 sets is just jizzworthy, champagne RL. It's almost impossible to beat a side that completes that well. They produced their best on the big stage and I am in awe of the resilience of their leadership to come back from the heart-break of 07/09. Players like Smith, Cronk and Slater do not deserve to finish their careers without a premiership and I'm glad to see they will not.

 

None of my comment about it being boring was necessarily directed at Melbourne, they were great defensively, put on some decent shots. I just found the Bulldogs attack to be the bit I was frustrated with watching, Dogs had a few opportunities and kept going the other way, I thought at one point Melbourne on the left were still retreating but the Bulldogs still went to their right. The Dogs attack to me was frustrating to watch as a neutral fan. That was what I found boring, it looked like they had no back up plan as someone put it earlier when their pet plays were not threatening the Storm. I enjoyed the game a bit more towards the final 20 when they started to threaten them with several linebreaks.

 

Fair enough. Sounded to me you were laying the failure of the gameplan at the feet of the halves. I apologise for misinterpreting.

Oh I don't doubt a Thurston or Cronk would've taken charge and redirected them better. I think they would've been better off abandoning the lateral play and just going forward but I've thought that for ages and I don't believe it has all that much to do with Keating anywhere but in the opposition red zone.

 

EWS jumped off that wagon. It's not that I believed in the halves. Keating is crap. I just don't think it was the real hindrance to them not winning, and certainly not a justification to say Cronulla were stronger contenders than the Dogs.

 

Be very interesting to see what Graham cops if found guilty.