Scrappy wins in July is the Melbourne Storm story in 2025.
Parramatta – 10 (Addo-Carr 25', Guymer 45' tries; Lomax 1/3 goals)
Melbourne – 16 (Katoa 17', Kamikamica 34', Coates 70' tries; Papenhuyzen 1/4, Meaney 1/1 goals)
“It just hasn’t been that Storm consistent performance.”
…as we saw with their win against the Broncos, Parramatta can be a dangerous opponent. I would love to see a nice and comfortable Thursday night Storm win, so if that could be arranged, that would be lovely.
Okay, so they couldn’t arrange a nice and comfortable Thursday night.
No, please.
To say that Melbourne started with a conservative game plan in the slippery conditions would sell it short. Such is the way of things without Jahrome Hughes and with Jonah Pezet on the bench. Joining Pezet was Tui Kamikamica with Ativalu Lisati starting for the first time.
Melbourne gave away three penalties inside the first 10 minutes, but it didn’t cost them anything because, well Parramatta are bad. The Storm’s attack though was all being directed through Cameron Munster and Harry Grant. It wasn’t until Melbourne forced a second line drop-out that any real pressure was applied to the Eels defence. Grant was scheming, but it would be a pin-point kick from Munster across to the right edge that opened the scoring with Eli Katoa doing what he does best under the high kick.
Double doink
Oh Paps. We’ve seen this before too from another kicker…
Except Hazem scored from the double doink.1
Paps kick was a portent of things to come. Munster gave away another high tackle penalty, his tackling technique a little rusty on his return. When Paps then mishandled the ball a few minutes later, the Eels had field position to attack the Storm line. It only took them three tackles to then move the ball to their left edge for Josh Addo-Carr to get on the end of a slick move to get outside and through Grant Anderson to score in the corner.
At 4-all, both teams seemed to decide this game needed to go back into the grind, albeit a sloppier interpretation. On the back of a penalty and set restart it was Grant this time steering the ship, sending Tui Kamikamica to score under the posts, the big Fijian doing a nice impression of the lines that Trent Loiero has been running this season in the middle of the field. Loved the kava try celebration too.
Following the restart, there was a dangerous moment for the defence when Addo-Carr found space on his wing, but an errant kick from Dean Hawkins released the pressure when his kick was marked by Xavier Coates in the in-goal for a seven tackle set. The Storm had one last attacking opportunity for the half when Parra wasted their captain’s challenge on a Zac Lomax knock-on under the high ball. The Storm were unable to score on the ground, a right-foot kick from Munster forcing another drop-out just before the hooter. Fielding the kick, Papenhuyzen drew a penalty, but his attempt at goal from just inside the 40m line was waved away.
Ooft
Don’t show Jack Howarth the replay of the “try” awarded to Charlie Guymer five minutes into the second half. His defensive read was very ordinary. Also ordinary was the decision to award the try on the video evidence given what we saw from the Bunker in a certain moment in 2024. As ever, all we ask is for consistency.
The second big smelly odorous moment of the second half was Melbourne’s needless challenge in the 54th minute when Munster was penalised for an escort. In the pantheon of dumb challenges, it’s right up there. Lomax converted the easy attempt to level the scores at 10-all.
Defence and scraping by
Whether it was Melbourne playing down to Parramatta’s level (it was), or Parramatta aiming up (partially), the second half wasn’t one of the Storm’s best efforts for 2025. Paps missed another penalty goal attempt, which was only amusing because Mitchell Moses gave away the penalty and didn’t flop for the first time in his career.2 That miss had Paps hooked from kicking duties, and an error from Lisati gave away possession. It was a poor few minutes from the Storm.
The belated introduction of Jonah Pezet was the spark that enabled Melbourne to retake their lead. It was Bronson Garlick who was hooked after just 15 minutes on the field with the Storm only using 15 players in the first 53 minutes of the match. Maybe the bench rotations will be back to normality soon?
Following some great runs by Stefano Utoikamanu, Pezet’s presence in the middle provided space for Munster to launch a pinpoint kick, this time for Coates to run and jump. Melbourne Storm’s cheat code flying about Lomax to score the try, his 14th of the season. Nick Meaney’s conversion gave Melbourne a six point lead with ten minutes to play.
Were the final ten minutes stressful… yeah. Does Grant need to stop trying to win penalties at dummy half… oh god yes, especially when Sutton is the referee. Wishart even started looking good once he was in the running middle role.
Did Melbourne’s scramble defence hold up and eke out the win… yeah. Praise be.3
Post match quotes
The Craig Bellamy comedy routine made a 2025 appearance:
Yeah, I wasn’t doing so good up there. It was a bit close for comfort, we weren’t really playing that well… so we’ll need to have a bit of a look at that and fix that up.
We just got a bit undisciplined at times. In the second half we gave away seven penalties. You can’t do that at this level of footy and not pay the price. They were fortunate to get out of it tonight.
[on goal kicking] it would want to be 10m out in front for me to kick them.
Stat offloads
In the NRL-era 35 matches have ended with a 16–10 scoreline, including six Melbourne Storm matches. Melbourne had previously lost to Parramatta 16–10 at Parramatta Stadium in 2012.
Five of Eli Katoa’s ten tries this season have come from kicks.
It was the third time in his NRL career that Ryan Papenhuyzen had missed at least three shots at goal in one match.
Xavier Coates’ match-winning try was Melbourne’s 100th for the season.
Chris Butler has been the NRL Bunker official in six of Melbourne’s last seven matches.
Was it worth it?
Only 9,402 through the gates for a Thursday night match after a rainy day in The Bad Place. Maybe they should have built a roof over that stadium. It’s the eighth time since the start of the 2022 season Melbourne have played in front of less than 10,000 fans, all of them away matches, three of them on Thursday nights.4
The benefit of small crowds at this venue is that the snappers can get quality photos with dark backgrounds like this one.
As for the fans at home, well Voss versus Speed is never a first choice microphone battle.
4/10
Storm Machine Player of the Year
Thursday matches mean the Storm players get the weekend off. I might ask anyone not scoring two points below to be running extra laps when they return to training.
It was interesting hearing players comment on “not looking for perfection” in the post match. That’s an interesting attitude to have.
One of the players getting points this week wasn’t perfect by any stretch, but sometimes imperfect is okay.
Round 22 points:
2 – Stefano Utoikamanu
1 – Cameron Munster
1 – Eliesa Katoa
Leaderboard
22 – Eliesa Katoa
13 – Ryan Papenhuyzen
12 – Jahrome Hughes, Trent Loiero
11 – Cameron Munster
9 – Harry Grant
7 – Shawn Blore, Xavier Coates, Stefano Utoikamanu
6 – Josh King
3 – Grant Anderson, Sualauvi Fa’alogo, Nick Meaney, Jack Howarth
2 – Nelson Asofa-Solomona, Alec MacDonald, Kane Bradley, Tyran Wishart
1 – Joe Chan, Bronson Garlick, Ativalu Lisati
Around the grounds
Jersey Flegg Cup — Newcastle Knights v Melbourne Storm
Saturday 1.30pm
NSW Cup — North Sydney Bears v Western Suburbs Magpies
Sunday 3pm
Next up
Round 23 vs Brisbane Broncos – Thursday 7 August 2025, 7:50pm @ AAMI Park
Melburnians get to see their team live at AAMI Park this week. That’s a welcome change. Oh it’s on Thursday again though. Sigh.
Preview post online Thursday.
Yes that snippet is from a match from last time Melbourne conceded 50 points in a match. No I don’t want to talk about it.
He did whine about it to be true to form though.
Oh how I hate it when they’re passive. If you’re going to be beaten one-on-one, do it by attacking and not being passive.
Including 2020 and 2021, Melbourne have played 173 NRL matches with less than 10,000 fans in attendance. 114 of those matches have been outside of Victoria. Melbourne’s last sub 10,000 crowd outside of the pandemic era was in 2015.