Battered, broken, bagelled and beaten.
Brisbane – 26 (Staggs 8', Walsh 51', Riki 54', Cobbo 74' tries; Reynolds 5/5 goals)
Melbourne – 0
Melbourne Storm and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
Narrative
Rugby league is a game built on narrative. The ebb and flow of possession and field position naturally lends itself to attaching more than just a statistical analysis of the events of a match. How things happen is inextricably linked to why things happened the way they did.
When referee Grant Atkins failed to assert any control over the game and penalise the home team on just the third tackle of the match after a melee with Melbourne in possession, you knew as a Storm fan that this was going to be a long night.
Of course the referee followed his own script in this one.1 Atkins failed to blow any set restarts against Brisbane for the entire 80 minutes. It’s inconceivable that a team would only be caught offside just once, and not concede any infringements in the entire second half.2
But the narrative coming out of this match isn’t ref chat, it’s Adam Reynolds. Whoever it was at South Sydney that made the decision to only offer him a reduced one-year contract for 2022, needs to own the fact that Reynolds is the only person right now that is capable of stopping Penrith from winning three premierships in a row.3 His transfer to Brisbane is the reason why they’re a chance this year. It’s definitely not coaching (or Reece Walsh), this Broncos team only works when Reynolds fires, and he put on a masterclass against Melbourne.
Reynolds seemingly had the ball on a string, with his only blemish not finding the line for a junk time try after taking an intercept. Melbourne had no answer to his kicking or passing game. He forced an error from Nick Meaney in the first test of the fullback, with Melbourne only escaping when Will Warbrick was tackled in the air fielding a deft kick from the Broncos halfback.
When it rains it pours
Melbourne’s ball control was woeful in the Brisbane rain. Eliesa Katoa couldn’t handle a Harry Grant pass4 and Brisbane capitalised on the field position when Kotoni Staggs stepped past a pair of flimsy tackles from Young Tonumaipea and Cameron Munster. Melbourne should have been well prepared to try and stop the Brisbane right edge attack, but the multitude of missed tackles (57 in total for the match) has been a trend when Bad Storm show up. Bad Storm has turned up far too often in 2023.
Melbourne had chances and missed calls go against them that could have changed the narrative of this match,5 Reynolds stamping his authority with his perfect drop-out summing up his first half. But it would be the no try decision against Xavier Coates that would cost Melbourne any chance of getting into the match in the first half. Coates should have scored with Melbourne able to finally get something of a roll-on in the tackles before.
For the remainder of the first half, Melbourne to their credit did restrict the Broncos to just a Reynolds penalty goal converted in the shadows of half time. It did feel like Melbourne were just hanging on though, and that the energy expended in defence would come due in the second half.
Battered
Melbourne’s first injury of the night happened with just over 15 minutes to go to half time. Tonumaipea getting a whack in the face from an accidental kick from Walsh saw Ryan Papenhuyzen replace the Victorian. Papenhuyzen would go to fullback for the rest of the first half. Tonumaipea would return just before half time, just after Tom Eisenhuth would leave the field for a HIA check of his own. Surprisingly Craig Bellamy opted to take Papenhuyzen off at half time to allow Tom Eisenhuth to return for the second half.
Blitzed
In the space of five minutes not long into the second half, Brisbane blitzed Melbourne scoring two tries in quick succession. Firstly Walsh beat Tonumaipea, Munster and Grant to score in the right channel; with that try quickly followed by Jordan Riki exploiting the same edge in a nice movement. That field position though was handed to Brisbane by Atkins falling for a nice dive from Walsh.
Broken
At 20–0 down with 25 minutes to go, Melbourne were beaten, but they were about to be thoroughly battered and completely broken. After Reynolds himself took a dive to con Atkins for an obstruction penalty, Coates went down with an ankle injury. That happened right in front of me and he was in a lot of pain.6
On the next set down the other end of the field, a head clash in a tackle saw Marion Seve (immediately) and Trent Loiero (eventually) leave the field for HIA check ups, but the worst was yet to come.
As soon as Paps went down the stadium fell silent. It was immediately clear that his leg was broken and in the words of Cameron Smith during the Nine commercial break:
Fuck me.
Thankfully it seems like the news has been as good as it can be in the circumstances and hopefully Paps might be able to get some kind of preseason together before the 2024 season.
Junk time
Brisbane scored again when play resumed, Reynolds doinked his conversion through off the post to make it 26–0 and the remaining minutes were just junk time.7 Melbourne couldn’t score, Brisbane almost did again and that was that.
In the end, Melbourne were held scoreless for the third time in a final, and for just the seventh time in club history.
The voodoo hoodoo was done, Melbourne had played poorly because the narrative had them in that role, while Brisbane finally got what they wanted and deserved.
Post match quotes
Munster post match was an interesting study:
I think we just tried too hard. Individually we probably just tried our own things when we should have just stuck to the systems. Myself, Harry and Hughesy as well, we need to be accountable for what we did tonight. It’s not good enough.
Bellyache was noticeably shattered about Paps and disappointed in the team:
Our first half was really poor, but we done really well just to be 8–0 down — it could have been 20–0 at half time. I’m not really sure why or how we could come into this game and play like that.
I can't remember the last time we attacked as poorly as we did tonight. We looked like we had 17 players who had been thrown together on the night and 'good luck'. Our attack had been okay the last few weeks, but tonight it looked like we had only just met each other in the dressing rooms before the game.
They (the halves) are the first guys of our attack. They were out of sync. They didn’t have any connection tonight at all — that was the disappointing thing.
Was it worth it?
Suncorp Stadium was loud and boisterous for this one. There was a palpable sense of catharsis that the home team had finally done something against Melbourne.
Sitting in the rain watching a team that didn’t really fire a shot with the ball and looked fragile in defence wasn’t exactly a fun Friday night.
For travelling Storm fans8 this image sums it up. An inconsistent season 26 may well come to an end next week, and that just how it’s going to be.
0/10
Storm Machine Player of the Year
Really tough to award any player points for this one. That a winger who failed to score and had to be assisted from the field was Melbourne’s best, probably sums things up well. Sims and Asofa-Solomona were okay off the bench, but there wasn’t much to say about the individual performances of far too many Storm players. I almost considered giving Paps a point just for his work in the scrum win against the feed in the 63th minute.
Qualifying Final points:
1 – Xavier Coates
1 – Josh King
Leaderboard
29 – Harry Grant
23 – Jahrome Hughes
20 – Cameron Munster
14 – Nick Meaney
10 – Christian Welch, Trent Loiero
9 – Will Warbrick, Eliesa Katoa, Xavier Coates
7 – Nelson Asofa-Solomona, Josh King
5 – Tui Kamikamica
3 – Tepai Moeroa
2 – Alec MacDonald, Jonah Pezet, Marion Seve, Young Tonumaipea, Sualauvi Fa’alogo, Jayden Nikorima
1 – Reimis Smith, Justin Olam, Tom Eisenhuth, Grant Anderson
Next up
Semi final vs Sydney Roosters – Friday 15 September, 7:50pm @ AAMI Park
With injuries again mounting, a sudden death semi final looms large, and even if victory is secured, it’s hard to see that the final curtain for the season will be on Grand Final day.
Pity the NRL backed themselves into a corner with the scheduling of the finals (Penrith vs Warriors should have been Friday night, Broncos vs Storm Saturday night and both elimination finals the afternoon fixtures) as this match will be on Friday again and there will be far too many people at the MCG, leaving AAMI Park overshadowed yet again.
It does feel like one of the Storm or Warriors will be #TeamStraightSets🎾 – preview post later in the week.9
Atkins fell into the “front-runner” narrative far too early in this match.
I’ve seen some talk that Melbourne were dwelling in tackles in defence, but not more than the apparently perfect Broncos. There were multiple opportunities for Atkins to use his whistle to stop the Broncos in their tracks, but that was seemingly beyond him.
That Reynolds almost stopped that from happening in 2021 is a great rugby league “what if”.
Although there was slight interference in the ruck that would otherwise normally be called.
The missed knock-on from two Broncos players failing to gather a Hughes kick was especially egregious.
It’s been diagnosed as a minor syndesmosis injury.
Featuring a Tyson Smoothy 40/20 kick for fucks sake.
Those that were able to get there at least.
…and hopefully my Tuesday afternoon isn’t ruined when Ashley Klein and Adam Gee aren’t dropped for not sending off Jack Wighton for biting Tyson Gamble in the Knights win over the Raiders.