Game 751 – S29E10 Review
Melbourne Storm 44–16 West Tigers
A win! Melbourne’s losing streak ended in emphatic fashion.
Melbourne – 44 (Warbrick 6', 54', Munster 9', 71', Fa’alogo 3', Hughes 13', Grant 34', Lisati 78' tries; Meaney 6/8 goals)
Wests Tigers – 28 (May 26', 67', Laulilii 65' tries; Madden 2/3 goals)
Eight Melbourne tries staving off an eighth straight loss, you love to see it.1
Hot start
An early penalty put the Storm into great field position and a set restart called by Adam Gee had the Storm attacking the Tigers line as early as the second minute. There were offloads, strong runs, quick passing and support play. It was sharp. A sweeping move that saw Jahrome Hughes and Cameron Munster combine, with Shawn Blore throwing the final pass for Sua Fa’alogo to score his 12th try of the season. I’m not sure what was doing with Fa’alogo’s hair, but you do you dude.
Four points soon became eight points. If Melbourne were down on confidence coming into the match, they didn’t show it. Hughes bringing out the 2025 Storm cheat code in the sixth minute, kicking for Will Warbrick to take the speccy over a helpless Luke Laulilii. Melbourne were finding good runs through the middle for the first time in weeks, which was affording space for the playmakers. Rugby league is simple like that.
Nick Meaney might have missed his first two conversion attempts — so the Storm kept the scoreboard ticking over with tries. On the back of more hard running through the middle — Stefano Utoikamanu was especially fired up against his old team — Melbourne were relentless. An offload from Munster set up a raid down the left edge and Jack Howarth combined with Hugo Peel to again threaten the Tigers defence, this time from well outside the redzone. Peel passed inside to Harry Grant for his second involvement in the movement, the skipper offloading for Blore with just the fullback to beat. The second rower’s pass had Munster with an open line to finally score a try untouched under the posts. Shout out too to Trent Loiero who was there in support.
Effort. Confidence. Who was this team? Where had they been since March?
Melbourne must have had the Tigers thinking back to their absolutely horrible second half against the Sharks last week. When they finally had their second possession of the ball, their attack was limited to just 33m. In response, Melbourne scored their fourth try. Checkmate. If a 14 point lead is dangerous, a 20 point lead even with 65 minutes remaining is a lot.2
The fourth try — Hughes finished it, but it was created by Grant who picked out some extremely lazy and confused marker defence from Tristan Hope and Alex Twal. It was the skipper at his best and Melbourne were doing the things that have been missing for much of the last eight weeks.
Last year Melbourne beat the Tigers 64–0 at AAMI Park on this exact weekend. That won’t happen this year.
At 20–0 inside 15 minutes… I would have been happy to be wrong.
It’s not all sunshine and boxes of Cadbury Roses
A blatant strip from the Tigers on Loiero that wasn’t seen by Adam Gee gave them their first possession inside Melbourne’s half. The Storm stood firm though and looked active in defence. A set restart also helped the visitors on their next chance with the Steeden, but again the defence stood firm.
In the Melbourne sunshine, the decision to penalise and put Alex Twal on report for a raised arm into the jaw/throat of Loiero was interesting. Adam Gee didn’t want to penalise it, but seemingly was told to by the Bunker. Curious. The action by Twal was a little off though, given the height at which he put up the bumper bar to find the head of the Storm lock forward. Wests though were able to keep Melbourne from scoring on the resulting set… just. Ativalu Lisati only just stopped in a tackle from Taylan May.
That defensive stand seemed to give Wests a little confidence, but Melbourne’s scramble defence was up to the task, until it wasn’t. A try to Taylan May showing strength to get through tackles from multiple defenders, but the bigger story for the Storm was the injury to Fa’alogo after his head smashed into the melon of Hughes. Let’s hope it’s not a bad fracture for Fa’alogo and that he can add a Batman-style cowl to his get up soon. In any event, he won’t be at Magic Round next week given he’ll be in the concussion protocols at a minimum.
The Tigers try almost brought a second in the chaos after Fa’alogo went off. Meaney dropped a kick from Madden, but the Storm defence this time survived as the Tigers option plays weren’t great.
Melbourne turned desperate defence into attack and built a nice set to force a dropout, and Grant took full advantage of a soft Wests Tigers middle, burrowing low from dummy half to slam the ball over the line for a try that was pretty embarrassing for the visitors.
Melbourne would take their 26–4 lead to half time, but not before a melee and some controversy. It was Grant versus Latu Fainu in the tackle and who knows what the Bunker was looking at compared to the Twal incident earlier. At least they got no try call right when Warbrick went close to scoring in the corner, with his arm just grazing the wrong white line.
Second half jitters
Okay, so who was confident that Melbourne would go on with the job in the second half? How was the blood pressure after Grant forced a line drop-out only for the Tigers to get the ball back from an error from Howarth that also burned the captain’s challenge?
Those jitters might have been alleviated a little in the 54th minute on the back of some extended possession from the Storm in the Tigers redzone. After creating some chances that went nowhere, it took a little bit of vision from Grant to use the cheat code for Warbrick to leap over Laulilii again to score. Just another entry in the Olympian’s kick catching montage from his time in Melbourne.
Melbourne were unlucky not to score from a set that included a big linebreak from Joe Chan, and they would rue that lost opportunity a few minutes later when the visitors scored through Laulilii in the left corner. It was good execution, but the passivity in defence was concerning from the Storm. More so when they went back to back to bring the score to 32–16 with 12 minutes to play. That try coming from a couple of linebreaks and kick that wasn’t contested by the Storm in what shouldn’t have been a dangerous position.
Finishing the job
The jitters though — put to bed thanks to Cameron Munster. A second try for the mercurial one looked all too easy. The Tigers were broken down in the set that ended with the try — big runs from Lisati, Utoikamanu and Josh King providing time and space for Grant, Hughes and Munster to do their thing. Simple stuff, but effective.
There was time for more and it was Melbourne that scored the final try of the match. It was reward for the hard work of Ativalu Lisati. He came close to setting up or scoring a try a couple of minutes before, but he wouldn’t be denied two minutes from full time. Steaming through three defenders from a nice short ball from Hughes, the edge forward took Melbourne past 40 points in what turned out to be a great afternoon for the Storm. Even if there wasn’t enough time to break through again to bring up 50 points.
Rotations watch
Again, a little confusing from the Storm coaches here. The injury to Fa’alogo didn’t help, but then just after he was forced off, Hugo Peel and then Jack Howarth were both the walking wounded.
It was Trent Loiero who was first rotated after 20 minutes, with Cooper Clarke coming on. Okay… sure?3 Joe Chan came on for Sua Fa’alogo to play on the edge with Meaney dropping back to fullback, while Stefano Utoikamanu’s first stint lasted 30 minutes this week for Davvy Moale to enter the field. Josh King was subbed ten minutes into the second half for Trent Loiero to return, with Moale making way for Utoikamanu at the same time.
As the Tigers cut the margin to 16 points Clarke went off for King, leaving Melbourne with two changes for the final 12 minutes. They were used by Utoikamanu to bring Moale on after Munster extended the margin and Stanley Huen to make his debut on for Shawn Blore.
Like I see the vision here, but the execution just seems off still. It would have been especially egregious had the Tigers had the wherewithal to move the ball out against Peel and Howarth when they were both hobbling around, struggling to get anywhere in defence.
Post match quotes
Belsa was back and feelin’ fine:
I thought the guys played pretty good. Obviously the Tigers were bit down in strength, so that probably helped us too to be quite honest, but I thought what we basically planned to do and how we planned to do it, we stuck at it for most of the 80 minutes and it was a good win for us in the end.
Stat offloads
44–16 is a Melbourne Storm scorigami, and the 13th time the Storm have scored exactly 44 points in a match. There have now been eight NRL matches with that final score, including the Wests Tigers win over the Cowboys in round 2 this year.
Sua Fa’alogo has scored nine tries in 13 matches at AAMI Park.
Will Warbrick now has eight multiple try scoring matches, with three of those coming in his 30 appearances at AAMI Park.
Nick Meaney’s final conversion of the day saw him move to 800 NRL points for the Melbourne Storm. He is the third player to hit that mark for the club and is now 77 points behind Matt Orford for second place.
Cameron Munster’s two tries were his first in 364 days, last scoring against the Wests Tigers on 11 May 2025. He now has 63 tries for the club, drawing level with Steve Bell and Xavier Coates.4
With his try, Jahrome Hughes moved one try clear of Marcus Bai in ninth place in the club’s tryscoring list.
Stefano Utoikamanu broke seven tackles to run for 104m on 13 carries, while Ativalu Lisati broke eight tackles to run for 143m on 17 runs. Lisati was credited with 54 post contact metres.
Stanley Huen became the ninth player to debut for the Storm in 2026 and the 250th player to play for the club. He is the fifth player to make their NRL debut for the club this season.
Was it worth it?
It must have been a happy Mother’s Day for those in the Storm family. A return to a more spacious AAMI Park with 15,684 through the gates.5
In any event, the May sunshine was nice and Melbourne did the thing and didn’t lose. That’s a Sunday fun day in any season, let alone ending a seven match losing streak against a team that was in the top eight.
Oh hey, arts and crafts time made the News.
8/10
Storm Machine Player of the Year
See round 1 for the ratings explanations.
Round 10
8 — Harry Grant, Ativalu Lisati
7 — Cameron Munster, Jahrome Hughes, Stefano Utoikamanu
6 — Sua Fa’alogo, Will Warbrick, Josh King, Trent Loiero, Cooper Clarke
5 — Jack Howarth, Nick Meaney, Hugo Peel, Shawn Blore, Joe Chan
4 — Davvy Moale
NR — Stanley Huen
Around the grounds
Another loss on Saturday afternoon at Gosch’s Paddock for the Storm U21s. They’re not the worst time in the Jersey Flegg Cup, but results are not going their way so far this season. Wests Tigers took the lead early before Victory Isaako converted his own try to level things up at 6–all. But a late converted try and a penalty goal saw the visitors leading 14–6 at the break. It was mostly all the Tigers in the second half until a double from Keaton Stutt drew the Storm to within eight points, but that was the end of the scoring for the afternoon, with neither team adding to their tally in the final ten minutes.
On Sunday morning before the sun broke through at AAMI Park, the NSW Cup team went behind early, but a converted try to K-CI Newton-Whare gave the Storm squad a 6–4 lead. Jerry Musu answered a try from the Magpies — crashing over from close range, but two tries in the shadows of half time put Wests up 22–12 at the break.
To open the second half Liam Williams scored under the posts, finishing off a break caused by some nice running from Moses Leo cutting in the his position at left centre, but that was as close as Melbourne came. The Magpies extended their advantage to 32–18 with 20 minutes to play, although Storm fullback Blake Kehl did score a try finishing off a nice passing move. Kehl was playing on the wing after Siulagi Tuimalatu-Brown left the field with a concussion in the first half — Eli Morris moved to the back, the playmaker combining well with Keagan Russell-Smith on the Kehl try.
Jack Hetherington started from the bench and played just over 40 minutes, as did Lazarus Vaalepu. I was impressed with some of the stuff being offered by Moses Leo — I’m still not sure what position he would be best suited to in rugby league, as he’s fantastic in broken play, but still struggles in some situations.
Next up
Round 11 vs Parramatta Eels – Saturday 16 May 2026, 7:35pm @ AAMI Park
An away game at Magic Round… does that mean we get 12 home games in Victoria?
Oh, of course not. In any event, will Melbourne go into a Magic Round matchup as underdogs even after belting the Eels in round 1? It could well be the case, especially without Fa’alogo and Parramatta checks notes — beating the Cowboys in golden point by three points… Huh. We live in confusing times.
Preview post online Thursday.
Less so the commentary of Jake Duke and Michael Ennis… both of whom were in The Bad Place.
Because I like to tempt fate, I literally spoke this into existence when Melbourne had a 20–0 lead: “well Melbourne have never lost after leading by 20 points… so they’ll have to set a record here the Tigers.” I mean it is the second for some records, this one might have been amusing to lose.
Loiero might have been hurt attempting to tackle Alex Twal, but it wasn’t a HIA interchange.
The Fox Sports Lab stat that “Melbourne had won 52 of the 53 matches that Munster had scored a try in…” — that one match was when Melbourne lost 20–6 to the Knights at AAMI Park in round 24, 2015.
By comparison big club Richmond across the way had just 22,123 in at the MCG, while the Demons game at Docklands didn’t have their attendance figure available, but from what I heard it was about the same at the Storm attendance.