Game 752 – S29E11 Review
Parramatta Eels 8–34 Melbourne Storm
Melbourne win two in a row, defeating their Magic Round bunny again.
Parramatta – 8 (Russell 8', Papalii 60' tries; Moses 0/2 goals)
Melbourne – 34 (Leo 11', Howarth 16', Munster 47', Clarke 55', Grant 73', King 77' tries; Meaney 5/6 goals)
Melbourne’s messy Magic Round manifested more points than missed tackles.
After four matches, two of which were affected by the predictably typical Brisbane May weather — Suncorp Stadium wasn’t in the best condition, but alas this match was always going to go ahead.
A trick shot from Harry Grant kicking early in the tackle count on Melbourne’s first visit to Parramatta’s redzone resulted in a penalty against Sua Fa’alogo for the slightest push on Joash Papalii as the ball was heading over the dead-ball line. Sure. Okay. It didn’t seem to matter much as the Eels could complete their set with an error around midfield. Melbourne were fortunate that Jordan Samrani was called offside after he looked to have taken an intercept. The Storm couldn’t capitalise on the field position though — Nick Meaney was stopped short of the line and Cameron Munster kick was easily read by Brian Kelly with a tackle to spare.
Those lost chances, well it hurt Melbourne a minute or so later when the Eels opened the scoring through Sean Russell. His right arm fend to break through a Meaney tackle — uggh. It’s not a pretty replay for the Storm centre. Thankfully that future Bear on Bear crime didn’t cost Melbourne dearly.
Melbourne took their next chance and levelled the scores at 4–all in the 11th minute on the back of some hard running from the outside backs and the edges forwards, plus a handy set restart on fourth tackle. In the end though it was a combination play that broke the Eels — starting on the right edge, deep passing through Munster, Jahrome Hughes and nice hands from Jack Howarth put Moses Leo outside the Parramatta defence on the left flank, with space to use his pace and agility to dive over in the corner. It’s what Leo does best — up against a broken line he is swift and light on his feet. It’s why he’s especially dangerous in broken play.
Parramatta almost hit back when they attacked the Melbourne line, only for Russell to knock-on in an aerial contest against Meaney, that sparked a fantastic Storm set with the ball. From their own 10m line, Will Warbrick took the first run, with Leo taking the second. Fa’alogo’s run on third tackle resulted in a quick ruck on the 30m line, with Stefano Utoikamanu taking the ball over the 40m with another fast ruck — that gave Grant all the space he needed against a retreating marker, pushing off the offside player to burst through the line at midfield. From there the skipper timed his pass perfectly to Munster in support — after drawing the defence, the mercurial one passed to Hughes and avoiding the referee with his pass to Fa’alogo, the fullback summed up the situation well to draw the widest defender infield for Jack Howarth to score in the corner. It was a Melbourne Storm try that looked oh so familiar. Attacking from beyond midfield, using pace and timing to find the gaps, draw in the defence and play intelligent footy. Support play. You love to see it.
The lead secured at 10–4, this game devolved. Quickly. Errors from both teams were all too common. Trent Loiero made his customary one (1) error for the weekend.1 Unlucky for him, Grant was credited with one when he tried to go for a kick on last tackle. After a scintillating kick return from inside Melbourne’s 20m where he avoided tackles and swerved through the choppy turf, all Moses Leo needed to do was take a tackle if he couldn’t get to the line ahead of a flying Josh Addo-Carr — but the Foxx was able to dislodge the ball. Sigh. It would have been a magical moment. Instead it just added to the error count. Davvy Moale, on for Utoikamanu, well one of his first involvements was to give away a penalty to relieve any pressure that Melbourne had been able to build on the Eels. Oh, wait… Melbourne won a captain’s challenge.
The errors seemed to put this into a phase not often seen in 2026… THE GRIND.2 Was it back? Melbourne were able to defend their errors and show enough with the ball to create space, if not scoring opportunities. The Storm even held firm on their own line late in the half, winning a second challenge… what madness!3
Things you don’t like to see — Davvy Moale losing the ball on the first play of the second half.
Things you do like to see — Melbourne defending as a cohesive unit to support each other and attack through defence.
Things you love to see — the Storm getting over the advantage line, playing fast and using the space created for the playmakers.
That speed and space had Melbourne bringing out the classics. Set plays are back — putting players into holes. Hughes and Munster combining is always great to see and the halfback laying on a try for his partner on the right edge was perfect. Parramatta couldn’t cover everyone and Munster reaching out to score his third try in a week after a year-long drought… raise your glasses at The Milton for that.
Cooper Clarke sparked another Storm surge on the following set, as Melbourne looked to get a roll on. Clarke has looked so much better coming from the bench as he settles into his role in the team in what has been a great debut season. It wasn’t all sunshine though for Melbourne — Moses Leo was injured in a twisting tackle and was left on the ground for what seemed like ages. Thankfully Parramatta were not able to take advantage of the gap in the Melbourne line, even if JAC looked like he was about to launch down the left sideline at one point. Hopefully Leo’s injury isn’t too bad.
After more frustrating errors — Melbourne split the game wide open with another old favourite making a 2026 appearance. The time-honoured outside-inside play is back… in Cooper Clarke form. How good was it though! On the back of good defence, Melbourne again found a line break, this time through Hughes on a kick return. Playing hard and fast against tired Eels defence, Munster pulled the play from the classic Storm playbook to run the perfect line for Clarke. Even if the youngster celebrated before he put the ball down over the line.
With a 22–4 lead with 20 minutes to play, Melbourne were in the territory of just needing to close out this one with some solid play. Except a dropped high ball from Fa’alogo sounded the wrong kind of alarm…
🚨 SCRUM TRY ALERT 🚨
Melbourne failed to number-up in defence at a scrum 15m out from their own line. Just schoolboys stuff. Yes Joe Chan missed the tackle, but watching from behind, it was a four-on-three play from the Eels and they set it up well. But it if was obvious to me…
That sparked a spell of the match where the Storm were stuck in their own half for a spell. The next time Parra had a scrum, Melbourne numbered-up this time and were able to scramble to stop the Eels. They even withstood an extended set. Maybe the corner has been turned in defence.
I’m going to gloss over whatever was doing in the final 20 minutes between Josh King and Mitchell Moses. Suffice to say though that Moses was one of the least liked players all weekend in the stands.
Eventually, after more defence, Melbourne finally put this match to bed. Sparked by a lightning Fa’alogo 70+ metre kick return — he was only stopped by a JAC ankletap. Munster getting to dummy half laid the try on for the skipper to score under the posts with the Eels shot to bits.
The Storm found enough time for one more try in the final five minutes to send the few remaining fans home happy. From a messy catch attempt from a Hughes kick, Munster did the right thing by not scoring on zero tackle, instead fortuitously slipping over and seeing Josh King rumble over to score in front of the Storm fans at the Milton Road end of Suncorp Stadium. There was a couple of more minutes of footy after that, but whatever. Melbourne had won on the back of solid defence (except for one major lapse) and some good attacking play that adapted to the conditions. Energy, support, effort. A team with a little bit of confidence is an interesting thing.
Post match quotes
On field with Jahrome:
I thought the boys really dug deep. It wasn’t the prettiest game, but we were able to get over the line. I felt like last week’s match gave us a lot of confidence and I felt like we built on that.
Thought this from Munster was interesting:
I know defence wins games but at the moment, with the way the six-agains are going, it’s attack, attack, attack. You can’t afford to be sitting back and playing negative footy because teams can score points now. You look at all the score lines — they’re big score lines.
So yeah, obviously the six-agains are here to stay so we need to adapt. And I think we didn’t do that for that five or six week period. I think we were kicking cans and being victims and I was probably being a victim too — “oh this is not what we want to do, this is not football.”
At the end of the day, that’s the product the NRL wants and that’s just something we’ve got to adapt to – and we have. We bit hard on the mouthguard and worked hard as a group and that’s all you can do.
We just defended our errors. We’re scrambling really well, defending for each other.
Belsa seemed like he enjoyed the grind at a minimum:
It was a reasonably scrappy game, but I was really happy with our defence. We can’t afford to make that many errors, but we were fortunate Parramatta made a fair few errors as well.
We’ve just been inconsistent with what we’ve done and haven’t done. As a club we like to pride ourselves on being consistent — with our actions, how we prepare and how we play our footy — but the last six or seven weeks it’s the furthest thing we’ve been away from is being consistent. Hopefully the last couple of weeks we’ve been a little closer to that consistency and hopefully we can keep improving.
It’s always interesting to hear what questions are asked in the press conference — you can sense the narratives that the journalists want to pursue just by what they ask.4
It’s good to see Bellamy back in good form joking around in the post match.
Stat offloads
This was the second win by Melbourne with a final score of 34–8, with the Storm previously winning the 2007 NRL Grand Final with that score. Melbourne have been involved in two of the five NRL-era matches with this final score.
Melbourne missed 27 tackles for the match,5 meaning in all four wins this season the Storm have scored more points than missed tackles.
10 out of the 17 Melbourne players were credited with a handling error for a total of 15 for the match. It’s the first time since round 21 last season that Melbourne have made more than 10 errors but won the match. Since the start of the 2025 season, Melbourne have won eight of the 16 matches where they’ve made 10 or more errors.
The result ended a four-match losing streak for Melbourne at Suncorp Stadium.
Melbourne’s 34 points reduced Parramatta’s average points against in 2026 from 34.5 to 34.46. It’s the little things.
The Storm have scored 86 points against the Eels this season — 10 points less than the 96 points they put up on the Eels in two matches during the 2019 season.
Ativalu Lisati (119m), Cooper Clark (116m), and Stefano Utoikamanu (106m) all put in strong shifts to gain over 100 running metres, while no Parramatta forward topped that mark.
Was it worth it?
Well hydrated humans
Yep, that about sums it up Billy Slater.
As a known detractor of Magic Round, seemingly I am a glutton for punishment by going back again. But I can be excused for going when there’s a favourable schedule.6 There is no way that I would be going to a Sunday Magic Round Storm game at Suncorp Stadium though. The venue just isn’t capable of surviving that long. To my eye, the stadium is showing its age badly. Surely it could do with some essential redevelopment, but with the LNP in charge north of the Tweed, I doubt their ability to run anything let alone the frivolities of sports stadiums.7
At some point though, Suncorp Stadium is going to need a redevelopment that might bring the venue into the 21st century. Locking in Magic Round until 2032 though without any commitment to capital improvements… someone stuffed up there.
As for the game itself — Melbourne are not yet back, but things are slightly more positive come mid-May than they were in the depths of April. Two wins, even against bad teams are still two wins. Getting out of dodge with the points is always welcome ahead of the #wrongpriorities part of the season.
7/10
Storm Machine Player of the Year
See round 1 for the ratings explanations.
Round 10
7 — Sua Fa’alogo, Cameron Munster, Harry Grant, Cooper Clarke
6 — Jahrome Hughes, Stefano Utoikamanu, Ativalu Lisati, Josh King, Will Warbrick
5 — Moses Leo, Shawn Blore, Trent Loiero, Nick Meaney, Jack Howarth
4 — Davvy Moale, Joe Chan, Stanley Huen
Around the grounds
NSW Cup: Warriors 46–4 Melbourne Storm
Didn’t see anything of this match. The Storm’s only try came from Joseph Litidamu in the final couple of minutes.8 The Wahs led 24–0 at half time and seemingly Jett Cleary was the star, although he was put in the bin late in the match, so there’ll be no trip to Maccas with Ivan this week.
Next up
Round 12 vs Canterbury Bulldogs – Friday 22 May 2026, 8:00pm @ Accor Stadium
It’s space camp week. Joy. Who will be missing from the Storm line-up to face Canterbury who were pretty dire on Friday night at Magic Round? It’s not like playing the Bulldogs during #wrongpriorities periods hasn’t infuriated me before right…
Preview post online Thursday.
Notably zero penalties conceded though.
Hey Cameron Smith even said they were in the grind in the second half.
Do the officials get penalised for successful challenges?
Especially when questions are longer than 20 words.
Fox Sports Lab stats.
Shout out to Geelong for doing the thing on Thursday night at The Gabba.
The Gabba deserves to be knocked down by the way. It’s not as bad as the ShitCG, but it’s not fit for purpose.
Okay, so I watched the only angle of this “try” being awarded in the corner. NSWRL refs are wild. The touchie is nowhere near it either.