Game 753 – S29E12 Review
Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs 30–20 Melbourne Storm
Midseason slopfest. Second half fade out. Errors and missed tackles galore. Melbourne are ticking all the wrong boxes in 2026.
Canterbury – 30 (Rinakama 55', 73', Tuala 19', Tupouniua 43', Kiraz 78' tries; Burton 5/6 goals)
Melbourne – 20 (Leo 4', 13', King 24' tries; Meaney 4/4 goals)
Another second half fadeout… it’s an unfixable problem now.
Not gonna lie — this match can be summarised in one sentence that I put out on BlueSky at 9:03pm AEST:
This game has stoopid written all over it.
Or if that’s not your fancy, I was (poorly) channelling Britney Spears not long after:
The laziness, it’s killin’ me (and I)
I must confess, I don’t believe (don’t believe)
When they concede I lose my mind
Give me a sign
Where oh where is The Grind
There’s only more madness from here.
Two little steps forward… one giant leap backwards
In the opening exchanges, Melbourne gave the impression of a competent rugby league team. Well except for the fact that Jahrome Hughes was tackled on the fifth play 15m out from the Bulldogs line as the only recognised playmaker on the field for the Storm. No matter. Josh King received a pass… only to pass to Stefano Utoikamanu… yeah that’s a well-drawn up final play of an attacking set. Hold up, what the hell just happened‽ Utoikamanu has gone for the grubber kick, it’s rebounded to King who has realised that it’s still the last — he flicked it up to Trent Toelau to pass out to Jack Howarth with Moses Leo on his outside against one defender. Leo beat a tackle of the winless wonder Marcelo Montoya to bump through makeshift fullback Jacob Kiraz to score in the corner. Yep, just like they meant to do. Melbourne 6–0 inside five minutes. Rugby league huh. King was cleared of being accidentally offside for those playing at home.
Befitting the conditions though — the errors started from then onwards.1 It was a case of whose error would result in points and for Melbourne’s sake it was the Bulldogs who gifted Melbourne a 12–0 lead. An attempted 40/20 kick from Hughes had Kiraz scrambling and playing out of position, the fullback gifted a second try to Leo. It was Leo’s fifth try in just his ninth NRL match.
There were injury concerns for both teams too — Jacob Preston had fucked his arm and would leave the field. Will Warbrick had been playing hurt since before the opening try. Warbrick lasted 20 minutes before being replaced by the outside back who was sitting on the interchange bench for this exact scenario. Right? Hah of course not. Joe Chan came on instead, because of course he did.2
Behind on the scoreboard, the home team needed to hit back and they did when they remembered that Leo can’t actually defend. Enari Tuala first took advantage getting around the Olympian for a long run from midfield — thankfully Howarth was able to cover that — but Tuala wouldn’t be denied a try a few minutes later after Melbourne had been able to initially stop the Bulldogs redzone attack, only for Warbrick to drop the ball coming out from Melbourne’s line. Tuala’s try saw him bounce over the tryline after a horrible miss from Leo, slicing through desperate tackles from Keagan Russell-Smith and Shawn Blore.
While that was a portent of things to come for Melbourne out wide, the attack was seemingly humming. After Fa’alogo drew a penalty for a high shot on a kick return, the Storm constructed a set where on fourth tackle they faced a back-peddling defensive line and a lovely short ball from Hughes who had engaged the line to King saw the big man cross for a try — his second in a week. Not sure what Lachie Galvin was looking at when he rushed forward in defence, but it was some Special Jack style rugby league from the Bulldogs halfback.
After such a strong start with the ball, even if they were gifted one of those tries, it would have been nice for Melbourne to have taken a bigger advantage to half time. It was the Bulldogs that looked more dangerous though — especially out wide. When Melbourne had possession in the Bulldogs redzone with seven minutes left in the half, a try was beckoning — until Alec MacDonald lost the ball and was smashed by former Sunshine Coast Falcons junior Jack Underhill.
That seemed to spark the home team, or at least their fans. Somehow Leo actually stopped a player with the ball close to the line. Wonders never cease.
This is a dumb football team
Shawn Blore failed a HIA and didn’t return after half time. Surprisingly Will Warbrick did. Why, we’ll never know. Obviously needled and struggling, it was the first of many mistakes from Melbourne in the second half. The next was allowing Matt Burton all the space in the world with some diabolic and lazy defence. The Bulldogs came out from the break looking fast and strong, while Melbourne looked worse than mediocre. Sitili Tupouniua crashing over from a Galvin short ball, but the two plays before were the killer for the Storm.
Any of the gains made over the last fortnight were eliminated as Melbourne took a giant leap backwards in the space of forty minutes. This team’s lack of resilience is unmistakeable. Rugby league can be a simple game if you can at least do the fundamentals. This iteration struggles with that concept on a level unseen for over two decades. There’s a black humour in knowing that a 12–point half time lead will evaporate and there’s seemingly no way of arresting that slide into madness. This is a dumb football team that needs more than a couple of wins to paper over the cracks.
One shining light in this match was the signs of improvement in the defence of Fa’alogo. His effort (with KRS) to stop and hold up Montoya over the line was very nice. On a night when he was blunted in attack, it was good to see this little bit of effort to do the hard things.
Melbourne were gifted another two points when Burton was penalised for tackling Hughes as he kicked the ball, extending the lead to 20–12 with 30 minutes to play. Would love to know why Wyatt Raymond blew his whistle when Fa’alogo scooped up a pass from Warbrick after a Bulldogs knock-on, but that’s one of the mysteries of the universe. The whistle blower didn’t have a great night — especially true when Melbourne actually won a captain’s challenge in the 55th minute.3
The Storm saw their lead cut to two points not long after that. The home team ripping Melbourne to shreds out wide, then through the middle. Jethro Rinakama scored the points out wide, but again the defence had been beaten all too easily on the play before.
Canterbury almost went back-to-back — Fa’alogo with a trysaver on Burton was brilliant — but a penalty from the referee for offside when they kicked after receiving a set restart was enough to level the scores.
Let’s be real, at 20–all only one team was winning this match. It wasn’t Melbourne. In the final 16 minutes Melbourne made seven handling errors and missed 19 tackles — during the same period, the Bulldogs made two errors and missed eight tackles. Melbourne completed two of seven sets in the final 20 minutes. It was gross. It was dumb rugby league. This team didn’t learn much it seems from the losing streak.
Eventually the Bulldogs took the lead with seven minutes remaining. A Warbrick error — again, why was he on the field — coming out of Melbourne’s end on second tackle.
The final try came a couple of plays after this midair tackle on Fa’alogo:
Showing rugby league nous, Burton knew not to score on zero tackle after this incident. The way this has been officiated all season, this should have been a penalty. Whatever though. The game was already gone for Melbourne by this stage. Kiraz scored on the next play and Storm fans could switch off the television.4
Post match quotes
Belsa looked fed up sitting next to a shattered Jahrome Hughes:
It’s nothing new to be honest. Our second halves have been really poor. Not quite sure why. To repeat what’s been happening a lot at the start of second halves this year, we’re aware of it, but we can’t seem to fix it. It’s really disappointing.
We’re getting steamrolled. We’ve always prided ourselves on protecting a lead with a bit of ferocity, we’re just sort of laying down belly up and “come get us.”
There was a number of rhetorical questions too from the coach:
Is it a physical problem? Is it a mental problem?
We’re better than what we’re producing in the second halves at the moment.
The reasoning about sending Warbrick back out there though… hmmmm.
Jahrome Hughes meanwhile just repeated the epitaph of the Melbourne Storm in 2026:
We’re playing dumb. We’re doing dumb things at the wrong time. We made unforced errors and things that didn’t need to happen.
We’ve worked a lot on… when we did make errors, we were able to move on… tonight we made a lot of errors, but there was too many individual errors… to win that game. It’s just too hard… if you don’t hold onto the ball it’s hard to win.
Stat offloads
This is the fourth Melbourne match to end with a 30–20 final score, with Melbourne winning two matches by that score. There have now been 27 NRL-era matches that have finished with this score.
Melbourne missed 63 tackles and made 13 handling errors.
The Storm were unable to get any second phase play, registering three offloads to Canterbury’s nine.
In his NRL debut, Gabriel Satrick was on the field for 24 minutes. He touched the ball 37 times but did not run with the ball once. He kicked once and made 12 tackles, missing two.
The only Storm player not to register a missed tackle was Sua Fa’alogo with nine tackles and no misses.
Melbourne had two linebreaks for the entire match. Canterbury had six in the second half.
Was it worth it?
Having learned a few expensive lessons over the years to not bother with travelling to watch Storm matches during this part of the season, there was absolutely no point heading to The Bad Place for this match.
Rightfully so as it turned out. Of course it was raining there. Of course there are still no plans to finish that stadium to the original specifications with a roof. The Bulldogs bandwagon is currently broken, so well done to anyone who bothered really.
If Melbourne were to salvage anything from this season, this was a necessary two competition points. But this is where Melbourne are now in 2026. Unable to compete with teams mired in their own mediocrity and issues.
1/10
Storm Machine Player of the Year
See round 1 for the ratings explanations.
Round 12
4 — Sua Fa’alogo, Jahrome Hughes, Stefano Utoikamanu
3 — Moses Leo, Jack Howarth, Keagan Russell-Smith, Trent Toelau, Josh King, Shawn Blore, Cooper Clarke, Alec MacDonald
2 — Will Warbrick, Ativalu Lisati, Gabriel Satrick, Davvy Moale, Joe Chan
1 — Nick Meaney
Around the grounds
Ooft. That’s a shellacking for the U21 squad. With the hill under reconstruction at Belmore, the Storm were held scoreless conceding ten tries. Chelden Hayward scored a hat-trick, and the Storm conceded three tries in the ten minutes before half time when Keaton Stutt was sent to the sin bin.
The day (nor the weather) did not improve either — the NSW Cup squad conceded two tries in the first ten minutes, the second an almost length of the field intercept to Bulldogs winger Jonathan Sua. Down 22–0 after half an hour in the dire conditions, both Jack Hetherington and Josh Curran were sent to the naughty corner for an early half time break. Curran had tipped up Preston Conn which started a melee — to try and calm things down the officials decided that both of them should be sitting down to think about what they had done. Melbourne did score not long after their departures through Angus Hinchey5 to make the score 22–4 at the interval.
The Bulldogs scored again after the break, exploiting some bad Storm defence, although Lazarus Vaalepu was able to bounce out of a tackle and drag a couple of defenders to the line to score Melbourne’s second try not long after. But it was a moment that was few and far between for the Storm. A late try to Hayden Watson the only joy in the final 20 minutes.
Melbourne are holding up the ladder in the NSW Cup, while the U21s are equal last. 2026 — it’s going well.
Next up
Round 13 vs Sydney Roosters – Saturday 30 May 2026, 7:30pm @ AAMI Park
Melbourne will be embarking upon another lengthy losing streak in 2026 — this will be match two. Can Cameron Munster, Harry Grant and Trent Loiero back up after Origin I? Would they even bother. Shawn Blore won’t be there so maybe we’ll see a young player thrust into that role, but again, does it even matter.
Preview post online Thursday.
I’m trying really hard to gloss over the pass from Trent Toelau that resulted in an intercept by Marcelo Montoya. Lets just say in the pantheon of bad passes from the ruck, it’s in the finals for worst pass of the season.
Again, interchange options and rotations are an issue for Melbourne. I know I’m not the only one who has complained about this, but I’m tired boss.
There were more challenges later that were overturned. Again, I would love to know what the accountability is from the NRL in this area.
Stefano Utoikamanu trying to start something in the 78th minute… do it in the first 20 minutes maybe.
Playing on the left edge of attack he was put into a hole by Manaia Waitere after some good lead up work from Dylan Brettle and Hayden Watson.