Game 727 – S28E16 Review

South Sydney Rabbitohs 24–25 Melbourne Storm

Jun 22, 2025

Messy Melbourne escape The Bad Place with the two competition points in a golden point match best forgotten.

South Sydney – 24 (Johnston 27', 44', 47', 54', Munro 77' tries; Mitchell 2/5 goals)

Melbourne – 25 (Grant 4', Hughes 6', Anderson 52', Wishart 69' tries; Papenhuyzen 4/4 goals; Papenhuyzen 84' field goal)

Sorry to say that the commentators for this one were Dan Ginnane and Kevin Walters. Maybe watch the highlights on mute.

Storm surge

When Melbourne play well, Melbourne play really well. The issue for the Storm of 2025 is that they are doing it in short spurts before reverting to a very mediocre representation of a rugby league team.

The Storm came out, completed their sets, forced errors and scored two great tries in the first seven minutes. Harry Grant backed up his Origin efforts, bamboozling the defensive line to stroll over and score from dummy half, catching out Siliva Havili to score his third try of the season. Off to the perfect start, Melbourne scored on the fourth tackle from the restart, attacking down the left wing from inside their own half after Josh King extended the play with an offload. The attacking form of that edge even without Xavier Coates looks fantastic. Grant Anderson’s speed to burn past Tyrone Munro was matched by his skill to checkside kick infield for Jahrome Hughes to score under the posts. The one-hand carry from Ando was footy porn.

Inviting disaster

Ahead of the clock, one could have hoped that Melbourne might make it an enjoyable night at Homebush, continuing to run rings around the opposition and score a bunch of tries to start building confidence in their attack and defence. Instead Melbourne decided that ball control was completely foreign to them and completing sets too difficult.

After completing 100% of their first six sets with the ball, Melbourne went to half time with a 68% completion rate. From the 13th minute the Storm completed a woeful nine of 15 sets, with two of those sets earning a set restart or penalty very early in the tackle count. Four errors from the backs were especially egregious with Ryan Papenhuyzen, Grant Anderson, Nick Meaney and Jack Howarth all having moments with the ball they would want back, even if some of them might be a little unlucky to be highlighted.

The compounding effect of the errors invited Souths back into the match. That it took them until the 27th minute for Alex Johnston to score his first try was the only surprise. Melbourne’s defence was worked over after one of those errors in their own half, the home team putting the ball through the hands from right to left to put Johnston over untouched outside Sua Fa’alogo.

Surprisingly that was the end of the scoring in the first half, even though Melbourne were guilty of more errors (and squandering a couple of chances to score), the defence able to hold Souths out to head to the sheds up 12–4.

Disjointed

At times Melbourne looked like a team that hadn’t trained together for two weeks, which is kinda accurate in a way. Errors and not doing the little things right leading to tries is a continuing problem. The right edge were tormented by Latrell Mitchell and Alex Johnston on the left edge of the Bunnies. Fa’alogo was too far infield to stop Johnston for his second try, and he completed his hat-trick minutes later to take the lead for Souths.

With 30 minutes remaining Melbourne had successfully thrown away their early advantage and were looking down the barrel of a nasty loss. Thankfully Grant, Munster and Papenhuyzen linked up to put Anderson over the line in the corner. It was nice work from the three spine players to give the Souths right edge a taste of what the Bunnies were doing at the other end. Credit too for Paps nailing the sideline conversion.

That moment of synergy didn’t last longer than a minute though when Hughes threw an intercept for Johnston to score his fourth try. Melbourne were behind again and needed another circuit-breaker.

It took over ten minutes of disjointed football for that spark to emerge.1 How Bellyache didn’t require medical assistance during those ten minutes is a miracle in itself.

The spark — Sua Fa’alogo. The moment: catching a towering kick from Mitchell that seemed to hang in the air forever, coming down for Fa’alogo to take it just before the Souths players arrived, then stepping and beating four flailing defenders to put Tyran Wishart over to score. His speed left Havili running on the spot, he timed his pass perfectly (almost inviting Mitchell to shoulder-charge him for the second time this year) and just like that Melbourne were back in front by four points.

Was that lead tenuous? Of course it was. Souths had almost ran down the Bulldogs last week, it was on the cards for them to do it again (but better) this week. Melbourne’s defence held firm against a couple of Souths opportunities, but cracked with four minutes to go. Again it was Mitchell, but this time he kicked ahead on the right edge early in the tackle count catching the Storm out. Mitchell missed the sideline conversion though to keep the scores level at 24–all. He would also miss a long-range field goal attempt in the final minute, while Paps tried to fashion Melbourne an extra chance in the final seconds only for time to expire.

Golden Gallop

There’s nothing wrong with a draw.

Did Mitchell win the toss and choose to kickoff?

For a team that played like discombobulated strangers for much of the previous 80 minutes, Melbourne played an almost perfect four minutes of extra time. Ball control was back in fashion, discipline in defence was abundantly displayed. Paps had one chance to win the match denied by a charge down, but the ensuing set was almost too well played by Melbourne in the redzone. Josh King going prone to avoid giving away a penalty was funny, as Paps calmly slotted the winner. The two competition points denied against the Raiders last month retrieved in this match.

Post match quotes

Frustrated, philosophical Bellamy this week:

The start we got off to… we completed well and done what we planned to do, but then all of a sudden we lacked a bit of patience.
You've got to give Souths a lot of credit for coming back. It would have been easy to say, “this is going to be too hard tonight,” but they just kept hanging in there, [and with] 10 minutes to go it looked like they were going to win the game.
I think we were really fortunate to get out of it at the end. There’s some things we’ll need to do this week to be better next week.

Interested to hear him opine on byes and rest for Origin players too.

Stat offloads

Alex Johnston became the first player to score four tries in a match against the Melbourne Storm. He now has 17 tries in 15 appearances against Melbourne. It was his 16th career hat-trick.
Ryan Papenhuyzen scored his sixth NRL field goal (5× 1 point, 1× 2 point), with his decisive score in golden point extra time the second time he has landed a field goal to defeat Souths having previously scored the winning field goal in the S25E02 match at AAMI Park.
Melbourne have now won 11 golden point matches from 20 attempts, with eight of those wins coming via a field goal. Melbourne have beat Souths three times in golden point all via field goals.
This was the first time Melbourne had won a match 25–24, having previously lost by that score against the Roosters in Adelaide in 2017. There have been 22 matches during the NRL-era that have ended with that scoreline.

One more thing

Can we get some statistical certainty and clarification on the coaching stats of these two.

Bellamy has now coached 590 Storm NRL matches and two Broncos NRL matches. Of course I am of the view that three of those matches in 2008 possibly shouldn’t count for Bellyache while he was absent from the coaches’ box on Origin duty, but seemingly few agree with my view.

Bennett meanwhile has a bunch of anomalies in his statistical records around matches he’s missed through suspension, Origin and other things; plus his BRL first grade and Queensland State League matches are almost never recognised.

Was it worth it?

Moribund Sydney teams playing in front of just over 10,000 spectators and a bunch of tarps isn’t great. Having to put up with that commentary team on subscription television was also less than ideal. Watching Melbourne be that messy with the ball is enough to cause health issues. Maybe the white jerseys need to be modified to carry warnings.

At least Cameron Munster provided the comedic moment of the match coming out for the second half.

Big fan Munny.

4/10

Storm Machine Player of the Year

Paps gets the plaudits for his clutch field goal, but he didn’t have the best night in my view.

The cloning procedure seems to be working.

Was impressed by Harry Grant backing up from Origin, scoring a try and tackling himself to a standstill, but still getting there in attack. It was a bit of a rocks/diamonds match for a lot of the backline. Sua had his moment of magic with the ball, but his direct opponent scored four tries. Ando set up a try and scored one, but failed to score another. Instead I’m looking towards the hard workers in the middle this week. Trent Loiero didn’t concede a penalty and his only error was trying to collect a loose ball under pressure. Shawn Blore just does his role every week without fuss2 and Josh King continues to do the hard stuff that’s necessary.

Round 16 points:

2 – Harry Grant
1 – Ryan Papenhuyzen
1 – Josh King
1 – Trent Loiero
1 – Shawn Blore

Leaderboard

13 – Ryan Papenhuyzen
12 – Eliesa Katoa
10 – Cameron Munster
7 – Trent Loiero
6 – Jahrome Hughes, Harry Grant
5 – Xavier Coates, Shawn Blore
4 – Stefano Utoikamanu, Josh King
3 – Grant Anderson
2 – Jack Howarth, Sualauvi Fa’alogo, Nelson Asofa-Solomona
1 – Nick Meaney, Kane Bradley, Joe Chan, Alec MacDonald, Bronson Garlick, Tyran Wishart

Around the grounds

Jersey Flegg Cup — Melbourne Storm 42–18 Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks

Melbourne got back on the winner’s list to jump back into second place on the Jersey Flegg Cup ladder above their beaten opponents. Taking a 14–0 lead into the sheds at Broadmeadows, the visitors hit back scoring twice to cut the margin back to two points. But the Storm steadied and ran away with it in the final 20 minutes, scoring five tries to end up comfortable winners.

Queensland Cup — Sunshine Coast Falcons 18–46 Wynnum Manly Seagulls

At half time on Saturday evening the Falcons were looking good. Three tries each saw the teams head to the sheds with the home team up 18–14. Then Delouise Hoeter scored two tries to complete his hat trick as the Seagulls piled on the points to take an easy win. Jonah Pezet made his Falcons debut playing 55 minutes, while Lazarus Vaalepu started in the middle and played 51 minutes making 10 hit up and 20 tackles. The loss leaves the Falcons in seventh on the ladder with six wins from their 12 matches.

Queensland Cup — Brisbane Tigers 36–16 PNG Hunters

A better story for the Tigers who trailed 16–8 at the break on Sunday against the Hunters. Two tries to Ryley Jacks to complete a hat-trick that started in the second minute had Easts run away while keeping the visitors scoreless. Coby Williamson scored a try, while Keagan Russell-Smith had a better day with the boot, converting four of six attempts at goal. Josiah Pahulu got through 44 minutes starting at prop, while Kane Bradley ran for 179m on 22 runs, including 72 post contact metres.3 The win jumps the Tigers into the top eight at the expense of the Hunters with six wins and a draw from their 13 matches.

NSW Cup — North Sydney Bears 12–24 Newtown Jets

A Coby Thomas try just before half time gave the Bears a 12–10 lead at the break, but they couldn’t hold out the Jets as the second half wore on, conceding two tries against 12-men after Chris Vea’ila was sent off in the first half. Ativalu Lisati, Bronson Garlick, Gabriel Satrick and Joe Chan all featured for Norths who are struggling this season in eighth position on the ladder.

Super Netball — Sunshine Coast Lightning 65–68 Melbourne Vixens

A poor second quarter proved costly for the Lightning on Saturday against the Vixens. Leading by four goals at quarter time, the Vixens dominated the second quarter, outscoring the Sunshine Coast 21–11 to take a six goal lead at half time. Without Cara Koenen the Lightning resorted to taking a bunch of super shots in the last quarter with Steph Fretwell draining five straight to end the game, cutting the margin from 10 goals to three. The loss leaves the Lightning precariously placed in the top four a game clear of the Thunderbirds with matches against the top two teams to come in their final three matches.

Next up

Round 17 vs Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks – Sunday 29 June 2025, 2:00pm @ AAMI Park

Back home on a Sunday afternoon. Cronulla were weird against the Broncos in their 34–28 loss at Suncorp Stadium, so it will be interesting to see which version of the Sharks show up. Melbourne have a lot of areas to improve upon if they are to beat teams sitting at mediocre or above at the moment, so another frustrating game awaits?

Preview post on Thursday.