Game 716 – S28E03 Review

Melbourne Storm 30–24 Penrith Panthers

Mar 22, 2025

Melbourne started strongly, but grew sloppy and complacent against the premiers to eke out the win.

Melbourne – 30 (Anderson 7', Katoa 11', Coates 48', Wishart 59', Papenhuyzen 73' tries; Meaney 3/3, Papenhuyzen 2/3 goals)

Penrith – 24 (Alamoti 27', 33', To’o 70', 76', McLean 45' tries; Alamoti 2/5 goals)

Some good highlights, especially Cameron Munster’s try assists for Melbourne.

Playing angry

There comes a point in a sporting rivalry that the personality and the emotion of the teams evolves. Melbourne’s rivalry with Manly consistently simmers at the anger phase. There can be respect, but mostly its just enmity. The rivalry between Melbourne and Penrith has devolved from respect to enmity. That hatred comes from a number of places, and one spark is the way the Panthers are officiated. Go back to the opening set Melbourne had with the ball. On tackle three Shawn Blore is fouled by Izack Tago in a tackle that should have attracted an obvious penalty. At the play the ball Blore is pushed as he gets his boot to the ball obstructing Harry Grant from a clean pick up. Penrith’s defenders are all in front of the referee. A tone is set. When you play Penrith, teams have to come up against their ingrained system, but also the officials, especially this referee.

To beat Penrith at the moment a team needs to be consistent in their play. They have to take advantage of any morsels handed to them. A fourth minute offence that couldn’t be ignored gave the Storm field position. The subsequent set gave Melbourne a sniff and despite further infringements, the Storm playmakers went to work. Cameron Munster and Blore initially tried the left channel, but it would be Jahrome Hughes and Eli Katoa that punched a hole in the Panthers line. Katoa was stopped, but Hughes saw the numbers on the last tackle to take the short side on the right edge for Ryan Papenhuyzen to place Grant Anderson in just enough space to step to the line. It was the read by Hughes to see the numbers, demand the ball and set the players on that edge in motion that caught the Panthers out.

For the opening minutes when the showers were holding off, Melbourne looked slick, especially moving the ball to the right channel. But then, well something inexplicable happened on the back of a bouncing kick from Papenhuyzen.

Why is everyone so perplexed about this? It wasn’t intentional, it wasn’t malicious. He [Cleary] runs in to grab the ball, sees Cole has it and tries to jump out of the way.

a man with a beard is smiling while talking to another man . — Did he though?

Feels like “jumps out of the way” is doing a lot of work when Nathan Cleary launches himself without the ball into the path of a defender. Either it’s a penalty for interfering with the defence, or it’s serious foul play for recklessly hitting an opponent. Cleary was lucky that his elbow didn’t make contact with Hughes’ head — if that had happened a grade 3 charge1 surely would have been the result.2

In any event, Cleary gave himself a concussion and sat out the rest of this match and next week, while he inflicted enough damage that Hughes will be out for a fortnight at least with a broken hand.

What It's Like to Be the Face of Disappointment

Curiously the NRL.com breakdown noted the penalty was against Hughes, but we’ll be generous to them and suggest that the penalty awarded was instead against Harry Grant for his late tackle made as the referee was simultaneously calling held.

Without Cleary, Penrith would need to rely on their unmatched system, while Melbourne had to refocus and concentrate on playing what was in front of them.3 Another obvious penalty against the Panthers couldn’t be ignored in the 10th minute to again set up the Storm inside the opposition half. Watching the way the Munster floated across the park in this set shows his genius. He bobbed up on the right edge, then floated across the middle of the park to put a pinpoint kick for Katoa to ghost through to score back in the right channel. Munster spotted the gap and chose the right weight on his kick.

Melbourne level with the clock at 12–0 up and on SEN Storm Radio there was a passing remark that the Storm could put on a score against the champions.

But Melbourne got sloppy and complacent.

It started slowly. Passes weren’t quite sticking, kicks weren’t landing in the best spot. Small lapses in discipline gave the officials cause to award penalties. There was a sense of frustration. Then there was the full defensive breakdown that led to the Panthers first try through Paul Alamoti. Jack Howarth was out of position on his edge, but it was a full lapse from Melbourne that gave the visitors space to attack on their right side.

From the resulting kick off Penrith went straight back to that edge on the first tackle, Howarth missing Liam Martin, with the young centre fortunately bailed out by a cover tackle from Munster that the referee put on report because [redacted].4

That penalty set up a spell of Penrith possession on the Melbourne line, with a miscued short drop-out, and set restarts leading to another easy try to the Panthers left winger Alamoti. This time it was a defensive error from Munster that gave the visitors space to get the ball around the defence. Penrith were playing wet weather football, Melbourne forgot how to do likewise.

Oh Nelson

Being a big bloke can be tough in rugby league. Big NAS entered the field in the 31st minute. Penrith scored in the 34th minute, then NAS:

Went for a big tackle on Liam Henry, but only succeeded in hitting Nick Meaney in a head clash. Meaney was forced from the field for a HIA, but passed that only to find his jaw was broken;
Dropped the ball trying to speed up the ruck; and
Successfully stripped the ball in a tackle only for the ball to be recovered by the visitors.

In between all that Alec MacDonald was penalised for the exact thing that the Panthers did in the opening set that was ignored by the referee. Melbourne escaped without conceding another try before the break, with Howarth having a couple of good moments under the high ball and managing to grab a slightly awry pass.

Melbourne’s sloppiness carried over after half time. Dropped balls and fumbles, then a full blown misread allowed the Panthers the easiest try from a scrum ever seen at AAMI Park. The crazy thing watching on replay was that they tried that exact play just a few minutes before. This time Casey McLean just flew past Hughes and the defenders in the scrum were too slow to react. Penrith were in front and Melbourne were in trouble.

Attitude and effort

To their credit, thankfully the Storm didn’t revert to panic football. A couple of typical Melbourne plays put the ball in a spot where Munster had options galore with the kick to Xavier Coates landing in the right spot for the winger to score yet again at AAMI Park.

Instead Melbourne started to match the grind of the visitors. There were annoying calls made by the referee, but Melbourne’s effort made up for that. It lead to points through Tyran Wishart on the right edge, the Storm’s Mr Fix-it getting on the end of great running in the middle from Tui Kamikamica and MacDonald, with Hughes finding the right pass out wide.

Back out to an eight point lead, both teams huffed and puffed a little. Penrith had the better field position and eventually spread the ball to their left for Brian To’o to score against Melbourne’s makeshift defensive edge.

The final ten minutes were high stakes football. Melbourne struck straight back capitalising on an error from the Panthers to attack their line. It was Munster again with the perfect kick for the try, setting up Papenhuyzen with a deft grubber behind the line.

Penrith weren’t done yet though, To’o crossed for his second try after a sweeping movement off the back of a dodgy play the ball. Despite the best efforts of Adam Gee in awarding the visitors a penalty when Liam Martin knocked on,5 Melbourne steadied in defence, but apparently it was all for nothing:

Thankfully rugby league is still played with an accurate scoreboard, not the feelings of that bozo.

Stat offloads

Melbourne won a round 3 match for the first time since 2019.
The last time Melbourne won a match against Penrith when Adam Gee was the referee was 2014 (round 2).
Ryan Papenhuyzen kicked his first conversion goals for the Storm since the 2023 season, finally moving beyond 100 career goals.
Brian To’o has scored 11 tries in 12 matches against Melbourne.
Jahrome Hughes is the 19th Storm player to play 150 matches for the club.
Grant Anderson left the field with a knee injury in the 54th minute, returning in 77th minute.

Was it worth it?

I did say bring a jacket.

Heavy rain all afternoon and a packed event schedule around the precinct saw 17,586 come through the gates, which is pretty standard for a #SackThursdayNightFootball match.6

Whilst it was moist, it wasn’t cold. What we got on the field was seemingly the standard fare for matches between these teams now — stressful and anger-inducing.

I do admit to enjoying the fans of other clubs getting big mad at Storm fans for booing and making noise against the opposition, at least they’re not having a few drinks and eating prawn sandwiches.7

Finally, I’m going to make this point again — that referee shirt should never be worn in Melbourne. I’m disappointed Nine didn’t show a replay of him hitting the deck either in the second half.

5/10

Storm Machine Player of the Year

Tough one to judge this week. With the ball Cameron Munster set up three tries and popped up with a number of runs, but he would be disappointed with a couple of defensive reads. Eliesa Katoa lead from the front for the forwards and I thought the efforts of Stefano Utoikamanu and Josh King deserve credit. The standards in defence were higher when the two starting props were in the middle of the field.

Round 3 points:

2 – Cameron Munster
1 – Eliesa Katoa
1 – Stefano Utoikamanu
1 – Josh King

Leaderboard

5 – Cameron Munster
3 – Ryan Papenhuyzen
2 – Eliesa Katoa
2 – Jack Howarth
1 – Nick Meaney
1 – Stefano Utoikamanu
1 – Josh King

Next up

Round 4 vs St George Illawarra – Saturday 29 March 2025, 3:00pm @ Netstrata Jubilee Oval

Melbourne’s off to The Bad Place on Saturday afternoon for the club’s first visit to Kogarah since 2020. Missing Hughes is going to be a bummer, so it will be interesting to see which way the coaches go with selection.

Your correspondent will be heading north for this one, with a preview to come later in the week.