Game 757 – S29E17 Review
Manly Sea Eagles 30–4 Melbourne Storm
Melbourne were never really in it as a broken and battered squad succumbed to an opposition in actual form. The Storm were disjointed and unable to do much even when momentum shifted briefly their way.
Manly – 20 (Olakau’atu 6', 11', Saab 30', Koula 35', B Trbojevic 68' tries; Fogarty 5/6 goals)
Melbourne – 42 (Warbrick 50' try; Fa’alogo 0/1 goals)
Skip the highlights this week.
Low effort
In fact, probably just skip the review this week. This post has about the same effort levels as those displayed by the Storm defensive line trying to stop Haumole Olakau’atu from scoring twice in the opening ten or so minutes of this match. To concede the first time without laying a hand on Olakau’atu was bad, but to allow it to happen twice?
It took Melbourne until the 19th minute to get the ball inside the Manly half of the field — the Storm immediately turned the ball over. The next time Melbourne got down that end, they briefly huffed and puffed, but the general disorganisation of the attack was readily apparent.
When Manly had a second run of possession deep inside Melbourne’s red zone — well they were always going to score. Jamal Fogarty had the ball on a string1 and only Xavier Coates might have been able to stop Jason Saab from scoring from a pinpoint high kick. At 18–0 down, Melbourne were staring down the barrel of a big score and didn’t look like scoring.
Two asides — Melbourne’s much-maligned forwards were shown up horribly in this match. Manly’s middles ran with pace and purpose with the ball, coming from deep on angled runs. Melbourne’s middles looked hesitant, slow and spluttering by comparison. Secondly — if anyone is tracking the number of times Storm outside players are forced into touch since the start of last season compared to their opposition… it would almost be beneficial for Melbourne never to run the ball outside of the numbers for how often it happens.
So Manly extended their lead to 24–0 straight after Alec MacDonald made his one costly handling error for the week. That was the half time score. Thankfully. Ashley Klein could have called for Manly professional foul sin bin seconds out from half time, but decided against such a move possibly with some regard to his own safety in amongst the ferals.
Oh Melbourne scored
That’s nice.2 They weren’t held to nil against those jerseys again. Will Warbrick3 scored his 15th try of the season finding the line from a hopeful pass from Trent Toelau that saw the Storm winger in just enough space to beat Lehi Hopoate to the corner.
The section where the final 30 minutes are mostly ignored
Manly went down to 12-men — Melbourne didn’t score. Instead the Sea Eagles did — firstly through a penalty goal in an effort to waste time,4 then just after Joey Walsh returned a try for Ben Trbojevic. That try ended any momentum that Melbourne had tried to build.5
In the final ten minutes, Klein put Toelau in the bin instead of penalising Ben Trbojevic for being approximately 10 metres from where he was tackled — it didn’t matter much, there would be no 40 points scored this time.
More injuries
Moses Leo was concussed in the 13th minute and didn’t return. If we see him before the middle of July, well that would be a surprise.
Joe Chan was hooked off the field after 29 minutes and apparently was suffering from back spasms. Ativalu Lisati hobbled off in the 57th minute after the hip drop tackle from Joey Walsh that saw him in the sin bin for 10 minutes.
With Manly halfback Luke Brooks off at half time with a serious knee injury, their back up should have been facing some time in the stands for his dangerous tackle that caused the serious injury to Lisati … sorry, I’m being handed a note.6
Luke Patten will always be a cunt.
Interchange watch
With three injuries, everything was just a little more FUBAR than usual for Melbourne. Josiah Pahulu sat on the bench unused yet again.7
Post match quotes
Not sure about the colours of the Beanies for Brain Cancer headwear this year, Bellyache looked like he wanted to join a enchanted forest mining crew, while Harry Grant looked a troll doll:
It was a strange sort of first half, I didn’t think we were as bad as the score indicated. They had a lot of ball in good field position. I didn’t think the score typified the effort we were putting in. I thought we were putting plenty of effort in, just a couple of dumb things cost us points.
It wasn’t a great day out, but we had a couple of injuries in our centres in the first half — we’re struggling there a bit.
I would have liked for us to play in the first half, the way we played in the second half, so that was a disappointing thing for me.
I don’t think I’ve seen the injury toll that we’ve had this year. It is what it is, we need to learn to navigate that.
We’ve just got to try and be better and more consistent.
Stat offloads
That was Melbourne’s first loss by a score of 30–4, having never played in any of the previous 14 NRL era matches to finish with that score.
Manly now have 20 wins against the Storm, equal second with the Roosters for most wins against Melbourne, only behind the Bulldogs with 23.
The Storm only had 15 tackles inside Manly’s half during the opening 40 minutes, with only four of them in the red zone.
Melbourne missed 50 tackles for the match to Manly’s 31.
After playing just eight minutes in his NRL debut and 14 minutes in his second match, Stanley Huen played 51 minutes in his third match, making two runs for 25 metres and 19 tackles with only one miss.
Harry Grant made 56 tackles for the match.
Melbourne have conceded 20+ points in the first half for the fourth time in 2026. That equals the four times the Storm defence did that back in 2000 and 2005. Only 2001 and 2002 were worse when the club conceded 20+ points in the first half five teams in each of those seasons.
Was it worth it?
To answer the question that always starts this section — no.8
There’s about 17,000 or so reasons to avoid #FortressShithole like the plague venue that it will always be. Plus Melbourne haven’t won in The Bad Place since August last year and wasn’t going to win this week.
I commend any Storm fan who made the trip, but surely you wouldn’t have had any expectations of a good time, let alone a Storm win.
Oh plus this match did have the added shit sandwich that is any match officiated by the human roll-on deodorant bottle.
0/10
Storm Machine Player of the Year
See round 1 for the ratings explanations.
Round 17
5 — Sua Fa’alogo, Harry Grant
4 — Will Warbrick, Cameron Munster, Tyran Wishart, Josh King, Trent Loiero, Stanley Huen
3 — Stefano Utoikamanu, Ativalu Lisati, Cooper Clarke, Trent Toelau, Shawn Blore
2 — Joe Chan, Siulagi Tuimalatu-Brown, Alec MacDonald, Jack Hetherington
NR — Moses Leo
Around the grounds
Wow. Wasn’t expecting the U21 squad to take their fifth win of the season against the Eels this week. Amare Milford score the first of three Storm tries in the first half, crashing over via a Dylan Brettle pass. The halfback scored Melbourne’s second a few minutes later, and Cruz Dangerfield scored just before the break to give the Storm an 18–0 lead. This week Melbourne kept going in the second half — Milford scored his second and although the home team scored twice to bring the margin back to 14 points, a late double to Victory Isaako secured the win. Isaako scoring 18 points for the match. It’s great to see the influx of talent from the U19 squad into this team after their season finished up.
On Sunday at Tamworth it was another surprise for Storm fans. Bears winger Raymond Tuaimalo Vaega scored a double in the opening ten minutes, but the Storm came alive after that. Gabriel Satrick was in everything, setting up the second Storm try for K-Ci Newton-Whare, then scoring himself close to half time to see Melbourne take a 18–10 lead back to the sheds.
Back from the break it was all Melbourne. Alize Clarke dived over in the corner, Liam Williams scored after a crossfield run from Satrick, and although the Bears got one back, the Storm piled on three more tries including first tries for Waka Hammond (on debut) and Suli Pole in just his second NSW Cup match.
With injuries mounting, it would not be a shock if Preston Conn or Angus Hinchey are back in the NRL squad again soon.
The win didn’t improve Melbourne’s position on the ladder in the NSW Cup, but it’s always nice to see some good rugby league on display from what is a very young team.
Next up
Round 18 — Bye
Round 19 vs Gold Coast Titans – Sunday 12 July 2026, 6:15pm @ AAMI Park
Another week off for Melbourne to see if some of these injuries might heal. Yeah that’s doubtful. The way things are going in 2026 there’s likely to be more names added to the injury list ahead of a Sunday night game. Sigh. Sunday 6:15pm is the graveyard time slot in Australian sport, and it’s especially egregious when you see that Melbourne will have a short week with travel the following week. In any event, Melbourne’s season is being held together by sticky tape, with hopes and dreams already long departed.
A loss to the Titans who beat Penrith last week would drive the final nail into the 2026 campaign, with Melbourne only able to lose maybe three more matches for the season to be any chance of limping into the finals.
Preview post online Thursday week.
Ahh of course — he’s the one reason the Raiders suck this year. It makes sense now.
I’m choosing to gloss over the good kick from Trent Loiero out to the left flank that was caught by STB, mainly because he then did a second kick that was objectively bad. But hey, he tried something right?
Love that the vinyl of his number failed so clearly. If only he could have had it ripped off completely like Ben Roberts did over a decade ago at Robina.
Trying to work out how Fa’alogo got in trouble for not executing the line drop-out in time when the clock supposedly had seconds remaining, and then why Klein allowed more than the 80 seconds allowed in the rules to bleed off the time remaining was doing my head in.
Okay fine — the momentum was first lost with Loiero’s terrible kick.
No charge? Really… no charge at all. Huh. Ken Arthurson is still alive and kicking at 96 it seems.
That’s six matches now this year where he’s been named in the final 19 and not played. Interesting that Harry Grant called this out in the press conference that “he’s not a fan of the six-man bench” — that’s seemingly a club-wide opinion given how it’s been mismanaged this year by Melbourne.
Should I have went to the netball instead? Maybe.