Game 707 – S27E23 Review

South Sydney Rabbitohs 16–28 Melbourne Storm

jonnyforeigner

Aug 09, 2024

“A win is a win”

South Sydney – 16 (Myers 19', 55', Murray 70' tries; Myers 2/3 goals)

Melbourne – 28 (Warbrick 7', 30', Asofa-Solomona 24', Papenhuyzen 35', Anderson 42' tries; Meaney 4/6 goals)

“When you’re out of sorts, you’re out of sorts.”1

As we experienced last week, Melbourne can’t keep getting away with poor performances. It’s fortunate that Souths are missing most of their roster at the moment, because looking over the entire 80 minutes, this wasn’t great from Melbourne.

From kickoff this had all the hallmarks of one of those games. Damien Cook weaseled a penalty out of Todd Smith to put Melbourne immediately on the back foot. Able to regroup, the Storm were able to repel the initial Souths attack, but it would take until the sixth minute for Melbourne to see the opposition’s half of the field with the ball. On that first attacking field position, Jahrome Hughes went to work immediately in the right channel to send Nick Meaney through the line, the centre passing out to Will Warbrick to score.2

Hughes had bamboozled the defence with a slight feint and the imposing presence of Nelson Asofa-Solomona on that edge, combined with Ryan Papenhuyzen out the back put the fear into the Rabbitohs defenders. Meaney converting the try for a 6–0 lead.

Out of sync

It would be over ten minutes before Melbourne were in a position to score again, but this time it was the home team taking an intercept off pass from Paps, Fletcher Myers running 85m to score and put the Bunnies on the board. The pass from Paps was very telegraphed and probably didn’t need to be thrown, but he had grubbered the ball dead the set before so I can understand him not making that play again.

Melbourne looked out of sync and unable to get much going with the ball. The scramble defence was working fine albeit with some disciplinary issues, it was just the little attacking formations that aren’t coming together at the moment, especially if they’re not involving Hughes.

Melbourne weren’t the only people having issues with synchronicity. I can almost excuse Todd Smith for sending this up as no try given his positioning, except he ought to have given the benefit of the doubt interpretation, but the touch judge surely can see the ball (and Anderson’s arm) coming up with white paint on them after hitting the tryline. Ashley Klein as always can fuck right off.3

Thankfully that decision didn’t cost Melbourne too much, the Storm earning a repeat set that had Nelson Asofa-Solomona unstoppable on a crash play in the right channel. Off the nudie, NAS spiking the ball was great to see.

Ten minutes of good footy

The try to NAS sparked ten minutes of Storm dominance. It was the right edge and middle where Melbourne were able to get over the top of and through the Bunnies. Hughes again setting up the better plays for Melbourne, his flubbed kick bounced awkwardly in the in-goal for an unmarked Warbrick to score his second try in the 30th minute.

The third try in the sequence was scored up the middle after Tyran Wishart burst through with his second touch of the Steeden to put Paps over beneath the posts.4 Melbourne had broken the game open to lead 22–4.

Wishart had come on for Josh King to have a roaming role in the middle of the field and without the pressures of having to play in the left channel, he is free to use his running and dummy skills to their full potential. In the post match Bellyache was asked if there’s room for Wishart and Sua Fa’alogo on the bench and he did answer that with an honest no. Hard to argue with that assessment either given the form Wishy has shown in 2024. He has nine tries and four try assists this season, and his ability to break tackles has seen a number of attacking opportunities created.

It just feels like 40 minutes of the Storm warming up, they haven’t hit their straps yet, but that’s an ominous scoreline for the half time break.

Something nice…

How good is a kick return ~~touchdown~~ try.

Souths first set of the second half saw them kick deep from midfield for Anderson to catch on the full on Melbourne’s 20m line. His pass to Paps was perfectly timed for the fullback to loop around and get outside the Souths right edge defence, Paps drawing the last defender to send Ando in after he backed up with a perfect diagonal run. If you were to draw up an 80m kick return play that would beat most teams, this would be the one in the textbook. It was brilliant. Anderson’s improvement this season has been off the charts. He should be a lock for the club’s Most Improved award at the Cameron Smith Medal awards later this year.

Meaney’s missed conversion left the scoreboard at 26–4 and Melbourne should have been looking at 40+ points with 35 minutes on the clock.

…but that was all

How to describe the final 30 minutes of this match without using the terms clunky, messy, poor or disappointing.5 Challenge impossible.

For a very short period after the Anderson try, Melbourne looked like they would grind this game out and either rack up a score or at least keep the Bunnies from scoring. It was simple enough footy, just completing sets and doing the little things. If only it lasted.

Souths cut the lead in the 55th minute, Myers scoring his second try of the night on the end of a nice passing move that started with Cody Walker. The only good thing about that try from Melbourne perspective was that NAS was trying hard to cover the winger after sprinting from the middle of the field. But that shouldn’t be his job, with the big man looking a little gassed. It was probably the opportune time to bring on Chris Lewis, but that didn’t happen for another 14 or so minutes.

Following the Myers try, Melbourne’s error count increased and it looked feasible that Souths could chase down the lead. A better team would have. A better team probably wouldn’t pick Taane Milne either, whose trip on Paps in the 65th minute has seen him cop another fine for stupidity. If only tripping was treated as seriously as it should be and the spate of ugly incidents in 2024 would have abated.

It was some reasonable defensive efforts that kept Souths out of the in-goal until the 71st minute, when Cameron Murray beat a pretty flimsy tackle from Harry Grant to score. Leading by 10 with eight minutes to go, was I worried? Yes. Yes I was.

Fortunately for Melbourne, this Souths team isn’t good. An error gave Grant a chance to swoop and run away to the line, only an ankle tap brought him down. The field position did not bring points for Melbourne, the Storm’s red zone offence lacking structure and finesse.

There was at least one fun thing that I enjoyed in the final five minutes — Will Warbrick picking out Todd Smith on a kick return and targeting him with his run. The referee was most assuredly the weak spot in the defensive line and it would have been most amusing if he had been laid out by Warbrick and/or the Souths defenders. Kleined tried to put the incident on report, but not even General Bias could find a charge to pin on either the Souths players or Warbrick. Instead the Olympian was placed on report for reasons a minute or so later, which also was dismissed for a lack of logic.

A penalty goal in the final seconds was the final act of a second half that won’t be worth watching again, although hopefully the players during their review can see how straying from doing the little things well will come back to bite them in the bigger tests ahead.

Post match quotes

Bellamy was flying solo at the press conference and wasn’t particularly happy:

I thought we built our game really well in the first half and we got an opportunity to finish it off, but I don’t think we did. We stalled a bit just after half time.
We just are lacking some consistency at the moment and that continued again tonight. It wasn’t great practice for what we’ll need next week.
There were some good patches, but it wasn’t enough. When we got to that lead, we just needed to put the foot down and stick to what works for us. But we didn’t. We started looking for short cuts and easy ways to do things. That doesn’t usually work and didn’t tonight.
We’ll do our review and then see what we take out of that and move on to next week.

Stat offloads

The announced attendance of 8,973 is the third sub 10,000 crowd for a Souths home match at Accor Stadium since the start of the 2022 season. Melbourne’s last sub 10,000 crowd at AAMI Park was a Monday Night Football match against Newcastle in 2015.
Nelson Asofa-Solomona played a season high 68 minutes as an edge forward, bettering the minutes he played just last week.
Trent Loiero was credit with 141 run metres from 18 runs, his second most for the season.6

Was it worth it?

Thursday night games are never worth it. But the Storm digital team knew how to make everyone’s Friday better with this content:

Quality work. Thank you.

5/10

Storm Machine Player of the Year

Not sure anyone deserved more than a single point this week. Jahrome was great in the first half, but wasn’t able to get much going in the second half. Trent Loiero across his two spells was the hardest working forward, with Nelson Asofa-Solomona menacing out on the edge. Tyran Wishart’s injection in the first half was part of Melbourne’s best spell, so he deserves credit for his work.

Honourable mentions to the two wingers, who are just doing their jobs at the moment, which is all you can ask sometimes.

Round 23 points:

1 – Jahrome Hughes
1 – Trent Loiero
1 – Tyran Wishart
1 – Nelson Asofa-Solomona

Leaderboard:

25 – Jahrome Hughes
12 – Eliesa Katoa
11 – Harry Grant
8 – Xavier Coates, Ryan Papenhuyzen
7 – Tyran Wishart
6 – Grant Anderson, Josh King
5 – Cameron Munster
4 – Christian Welch, Shawn Blore, Trent Loeiro, Nelson Asofa-Solomona
3 – Tui Kamikamica, Cameron Munster, Grant Anderson, Nick Meaney, Sualauvi Fa’alogo, Jack Howarth
2 – Joe Chan, Will Warbrick
1 – Jonah Pezet, Alec MacDonald, Reimis Smith, Bronson Garlick

Around the grounds

Jersey Flegg Cup — Melbourne Storm 16–54 Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks

The Storm hit the lead early against the Sharks at Seabrook Reserve on Saturday, but couldn’t maintain that intensity, falling behind by half time before being blown away in the second half.

Queensland Cup — Northern Pride 38–18 Sunshine Coast Falcons

The Pride confirmed they would be the minor premiers and the team to beat in 2024 in Queensland, overcoming a 12–4 halftime deficit to beat the Falcons in Cairns. Flynn Camillieri scored a first half double, but six second half tries for the home team sums up a dominant performance.

Queensland Cup — Western Clydesdales 10–26 Brisbane Tigers

The Tigers slim finals hopes are alive for one more week, getting the job done against the bottom of the ladder Clydesdales. Keagan Russell-Smith and Marion Seve both scored tries for the Tigers, with Kane Bradley and Tristan Powell also in action.

NSW Cup — North Sydney Bears 8–18 Newtown Jets

Another defeat for the Bears despite the presence of Storm players Sua Fa’alogo, Dean Ieremia, Tepai Moeroa and Ativalu Lisati. Allan Fitzgerald’s try in the 67th minute game the home team a sniff, but it was the Jets taking the Frank Hyde Cup. North Sydney’s lead atop the NSW Cup ladder is down to one point.

Next up

Round 24 vs Penrith Panthers – Thursday 15 August, 7:50pm @ Bluebet Stadium

First versus Second. Melbourne will go into this match as despised outsiders, especially after Penrith’s comeback win against the useless Eels. A loss will hand Penrith the J.J. Giltinan Shield and plot a difficult path through the finals for the Storm. An upset win though… that would be quite the confidence boost.

Preview post coming Thursday morning.