Time for the first road trip for the Melbourne Storm in 2024 and its to Newcastle for a Sunday evening match. I will always maintain that Melbourne should host a match on either Friday or Saturday night of the Australian F1 Grand Prix weekend, but the NRL seemingly disagree. Thankfully this one has the off-Broadway time slot after the festivities at Albert Park are complete.
Looking back at Melbourne Storm’s history playing against the Knights in Newcastle, there’s a string of losses, including one particular match that we’d rather forget,1 and after last year's look at the 1999 match, this year I’m skipping forward in time to 2004.
S06E12 – Newcastle Knights vs Melbourne Storm
Having returned to the finals in 2003 for the first time since 2000, Melbourne were building something under Craig Bellamy in his second season. There were a number of significant challenges that awaited Melbourne in 2004, one of which was winning in Newcastle for the first time.
On six previous visits to the Hunter, Melbourne had lost every single time. The home team was averaging over 36 points per game, with the Storm often failing to score more than 16 points. Coming in to this one the Knights held a 75% winning record against the Storm, including a win in round two of the 2004 season, a 36–26 win at Olympic Park on a warm March afternoon.
This midseason match up coming days after NSW’s 9–8 win in Origin I in Sydney, with Newcastle enjoying the bye the previous weekend, while Melbourne without Billy Slater and Cameron Smith had overcome Canberra at Olympic Park. Both teams were in the top eight on the ladder behind competition leaders the Roosters.
Newcastle were missing a number of representative quality players, but did have captain Danny Buderus backing up from Origin exertions. The Knights were missing halfback Andrew Johns for the rest of the 2004 season after the future Immortal suffered a season-ending knee injury earlier in the campaign.
Newcastle had opened the scoring with a penalty goal inside the first five minutes, but for the rest of the first half it was all Melbourne. The first try went to Scott Hill who cut through some lazy defence to score almost untouched.
Not long after, Dustin Cooper fielded a high kick from Kurt Gidley on the tryline, beating a number of defenders to offload to Slater on the 30m line, with the fullback dashing away to score under the posts in a scintillating length of the field try to extend the lead to 12–2.
Matt Geyer then took over the try scoring for Melbourne. His first was down the left wing after a nice passing movement with Cameron Smith dominating2. With five to go in the half, a bomb from Matt Orford was caught by Slater who’s speculating offload found Geyer to score to make it 24–2 at half time.
Not long after the break, future Storm premiership player Todd Lowrie scored his first career try for the Knights, but in doing so aggravated a shoulder injury. Geyer would complete his hat-trick with 20 minutes to go, diving on a kick from Jake Webster that Matt Gidley had failed to whack dead, although there were doubts on the put down by Geyer.3
With 15 minutes to go, Newcastle started to stage a comeback — George Carmont scoring first on the Knights left flank; while Anthony Quinn would finish off a passing movement on the right wing with five minutes to go. Quinn had another chance in the last few minutes to initiate a grandstand finish, but it wasn’t to be for the home team.
The win for Melbourne was a step in the right direction and proof positive of the hard work and dedication Craig Bellamy was instilling into the Storm. The victory all the more sweeter coming in captain Steve Kearney’s 250th NRL match. Kearney was the first Kiwi player to reach that milestone in the NRL.
Post match, Craig Bellamy praised the way the players dug deep in Kearney’s milestone match:
It's fantastic to be able to celebrate it this way, Steve's a humble guy who doesn't make a big deal about himself, but he's fantastic for this club.
But post match all the talk was about grapple tackles:
Criticism of the use of the so-called "grapple tackle" and a possible broken hand4 sustained by representative halfback Matt Orford soured Melbourne's first win in Newcastle.
Buderus's frustration was illustrated when he asked referee Tony Archer "are we better off holding them around the neck?" after his team were penalised for trying to slow a Storm play-the-ball.
Finch yesterday acknowledged his concern at the tactic, which involves defenders grabbing the head of an attacking player while on the ground, and also admitted video referee Phil Cooley had erred in awarding Storm winger Matt Geyer a try in the 59th minute of the match.
"It's clearly still a problem in our game — it's very difficult for a referee to pick them up as there is a lot of traffic in the play-the-ball area," Finch said.
Newcastle – 18 (Lowrie 46', Carmont 65', Quinn 75' tries; K Gidley 3/4 goals)
Melbourne – 28 (Geyer 20', 36', 59', Hill 9', Slater 17' tries; Smith 4/5 goals)
Stat attack
Melbourne are undefeated in three previous matches on 24 March, winning away against Canberra (2007), at home versus Newcastle (2014), and last year against Wests Tigers at AAMI Park.
That 2014 match on a Monday night at AAMI Park saw Melbourne defeat Wayne Bennett’s Newcastle 28–20 in a match more remembered for the incident just before half time that resulted in Alex McKinnon’s spinal cord injury.
Newcastle’s win last July was their first against Melbourne since 2015, ending an 11-match losing streak.
Melbourne have held the Knights scoreless once back in 2007 at Olympic Park, running in nine tries in a 44–0 win. Melbourne’s highest score against Newcastle came the previous year, the Storm winning 52–6 at Olympic Park.
Melbourne have won just 10 of 21 visits to McDonald Jones Stadium, averaging just over 24 points per game. Melbourne’s highest score coming in 2022 when they defeated the Knights 50–2.
Overall, Melbourne have won 30 of the previous 46 matches between these teams, Newcastle’s win percentage of 34.78% their third worst against all opponents.
Newcastle won six straight games against Melbourne from 2000-2003
A Newcastle junior, Josh King made his NRL debut for the Knights in 2016, playing 78 games between 2016 and 2021 scoring two tries. Nick Meaney made his NRL debut for the Knights in 2018, playing five games for the club before moving to the Bulldogs.
Team line-up
Ryan Papenhuyzen
Will Warbrick
Reimis Smith
Nick Meaney
Xavier Coates
Jonah Pezet
Tyran Wishart
Tui Kamikamica
Harry Grant ©
Josh King
Joe Chan
Eliesa Katoa
Trent Loiero
Kane Bradley
Tepai Moeroa
Chris Lewis
Alec MacDonald
Grant Anderson
Aaron Pene
Jack Howarth
Marion Seve
Shawn Blore
Referee: Grant Atkins (Bunker: Liam Kennedy)
Preview
Newcastle Knights vs Melbourne Storm
— McDonald Jones Stadium, 6:15pm Sunday 24 March 2024
When the nonsensical decision to charge Jahrome Hughes with a grade two contrary conduct charge was announced on Sunday, it had to have been a joke right? Surely if there’s any charge from an incident of a referee inferring with a defender during live play, a grade one charge would have been sufficient with the referee coaches providing constructive criticism to Chris Butler for his poor positioning.
Instead the disgrace that is the match review committee process offered Hughes a one-match suspension with an early guilty plea, or a two-match suspension should Melbourne fight the charge. Make it make sense.5 If Jarome Luai can obtain a fine for pushing a touch judge when not in play, this decision in the wise words of Jackie Childs:
It left Melbourne with little choice but to accept the sanction, accompanied with this terse missive:
Melbourne Storm and Jahrome Hughes have reluctantly accepted the early plea and grading for his contrary conduct charge from Saturday night.
Whilst both Jahrome and the club fully support and totally endorse the protection of referees in our game, we believe Saturday’s incident was an accident.
Further, we believe the contact was unavoidable and the grading on the incident was too harsh given the circumstances where Jahrome was concentrating on making an important tackle in the context of the game and not fixated on the movements of the referee.
We are disappointed that an unsuccessful challenge on the grading would have also resulted in an extra week suspension.
We acknowledge the system is in place to avoid judiciary hearings but, in this case, we believe the risk of the penalty for contesting the charge is too high considering the circumstances of the incident.
In the end, the threat of an extra week suspension on top of our club’s bye next weekend was the overriding factor in our decision but we don’t believe this is a fair outcome.
Without Hughes, Melbourne will have to embrace the next man up philosophy yet again. At selection, the coaching staff opted for the safe route, subbing in Tyran Wishart at halfback to partner Jonah Pezet, and plopping Kane Bradley and Tepai Moeroa on the bench to come in for Christian Welch. When Welch wasn’t seen after half time last week after failing his HIA he was always missing this match. That Cameron Munster and Nelson Asofa-Solomona haven’t been rushed back is mostly due to the bye coming up after this match.
The reserves list sees Sua Fa’alogo missing due to injury, with Falcons duo Grant Anderson and Jack Howarth named with Aaron Pene and Shawn Blore. It will be fascinating to see which of these players are kept out of the Queensland Cup (Falcons play the Hunters in PNG on Saturday afternoon; Tigers play Jets on Sunday afternoon) given those eligible for the Bears can play the curtain-raiser against Newcastle.6
For the Knights, 2023 Panthers Grand Final game-changer Jack Cogger is their new halfback, displacing Jackson Hastings. Knights co-captain Jayden Brailey is on the comeback trail from injury and has been named to return off the interchange, while Greg Marzhew has a wrist injury and has been replaced by Enari Tuala.
Last year in the preview for the match against the Knights, I noted that it was a trap game. That Melbourne fell for the trap was annoying in many ways. Hopefully the 2024 iteration of the Storm don’t fall for the same mistakes from July 2023.
This Newcastle side, with Cogger at halfback looks somewhat more dangerous than I might have given them credit for in my season preview, although Tyson Gamble is still barely above replacement level as an NRL playmaker. With the Knights winless so far this season, you suspect that they will be up for this one, especially after falling short against the Cowboys last week. As always, the player to watch for Newcastle will be Kalyn Ponga. The key for Melbourne will be making Ponga work in defence, and limit his space when the Knights have the ball. Melbourne’s defence has been able to somewhat stymie both Nathan Cleary and Shaun Johnson so far this season and will need a similar effort against the dangerous fullback.
In the forwards, the Knights pack might not have the same quality as the Panthers or Warriors, but they have enough mobility to potentially worry Melbourne. I would be surprised should Lewis, Moeroa and Bradley are the three on the bench with MacDonald. Look for at least one change with Blore and Howarth strong possibilities to come in to the final squad.
It’s hard to go past picking Melbourne to make it three in a row, but there’s always that niggling doubt that the Knights could score enough points to grab the win against the Storm, especially without the guiding hand of Jahrome Hughes when the match is on the line.
Never forgetting the terrible penalty in the final minute from #Kleined though.
Smith would get the three Dally M points.
It was a knock-on. Video ref Phil Cooley having a shocker.
Scans later cleared Orford of a broken hand, and he didn’t miss any matches.
Annoyingly all three feeder clubs have next week off too. The Queensland Cup not running over Easter and the Bears have what seems like an ill-timed bye.