S28E05 Preview – Sunday scaries

From Fortress Shithole it's about 2km to the nearest beach and 9km to the nearest train station.

Apr 03, 2025

Suburban shithole number two for the season. Sigh.

As is tradition around here there’s no looking back at old matches against Manly, especially at Fortress Shithole. Plus I looked at this rivalry last year.

Instead I’ve been looking through the NRL Scorigami chart from Rugby League Project that I linked to last week. I’ve been parsing that data into a Storm specific chart, separated into winning and losing scores.

The immediate thing that stuck out to me when looking at the data — Melbourne’s most common winning score is 28–6 with eight of the 717 matches finishing with that final score in Melbourne’s favour. There is also one Storm loss with the final score of 6–28 too.

The other unique scores that are most common are:

Melbourne 24–10; Melbourne 22–12; Melbourne 16–12; Melbourne 24–16; — All with seven occurrences.1
Melbourne 40–12; Melbourne 14–12; Melbourne 16–14; Melbourne 28–18; and Opposition 20–16; — all with six occurrences.

My personal favourite common score with five occurrences is Melbourne 48–6, which for a score that has only happened 12 times in the NRL-era for Melbourne to win on all five occurrences, it’s just fun.2

A snap shot of the data sheet as it currently stands

The other data that I enjoyed from the dataset are the overall common Melbourne Storm and opposition scores. Melbourne’s average score across their matches is 24.60 points, while their mode score is 16 with 57 occurrences. The opposition’s average score is 16.63, with a mode score of 6 with 71 occurrences.3

Stat attack

Melbourne have played four previous matches on 6 April winning three of those matches. The Storm defeated Parramatta away in 2002, lost to the Titans in 2014, beat the Warriors in 2015, and the Roosters in 2023.
The Storm have won 10 of their 23 previous trips to Brookvale Oval, losing their last three matches at the venue. Melbourne did enjoy a five match winning streak at the venue between 2016 and 2020.
Of the venues currently in use, Melbourne’s win percentage of 43.48% is their worst with the exception of the QCB Stadium where Melbourne has one just once from four visits.
Two Melbourne players scored four tries in matches against Manly — Billy Slater in the 2009 qualifying final played at Docklands, and Suliasi Vunivalu at Brookvale in 2016.
Since 2020 Grant Atkins has controlled this fixture on three occasions with Melbourne winning both matches that were played at Sunshine Coast Stadium.
Grant Atkins refereed seven Melbourne matches in 2024 with the Storm winning three. He sent three Storm players to the sin bin in those matches.

Team line-up

Ryan Papenhuyzen
Will Warbrick
Jack Howarth
Grant Anderson
Xavier Coates
Cameron Munster
Tyran Wishart
Stefano Utoikamanu
Harry Grant ©
Josh King
Shawn Blore
Eliesa Katoa
Trent Loeiro
Bronson Garlick
Alec MacDonald (50th match)4
Tui Kamikamica
Lazarus Vaalepu
Joe Chan
Kane Bradley
Sualauvi Fa’alogo
Moses Leo
Jahrome Hughes

Referee: Grant Atkins (Bunker: Kasey Badger)5

Preview

Manly Warringah Sea Eagles vs Melbourne Storm
— 4 Pines Park, 4:00pm Sunday 6 April 2025

Jahrome Hughes is feeling 22? The halfback has been given every chance to shake it off and return to action this weekend, because quite clearly there’s a blank space where Bellyache would love to write his name come Sunday.

While Hughes is a chance to return, there was more injury news from the Storm this week with Jonah Pezet screaming, crying, throwing up and on the sidelines for another lengthy stint with a knee injury. Marion Seve also joined the rehab group after picking up an injury at training. Still in the concussion protocols is big NAS,6 which makes me wonder exactly how hard Nick Meaney’s head is.

But such is the nature of Sunday afternoon matches that we’re happy, free, confused and lonely at the same time given that the teams named on Tuesday could bear little resemblance to those updated on Saturday and finalised on Sunday. Could Joe Chan make his first appearance for the season? Might Kane Bradley get to run out on the field during the 80 minutes rather than running about after the final whistle?

Meanwhile Manly will be doing it with a broken heart as fragile Tom Trbojevic will be sitting on the sidelines again for the next month after injuring his knee. In his place comes Lehi Hopoate the fourth of the Hopoate brood to play in the NRL. He made his debut in this fixture last season and will be keen to rise up again after scoring a try last week against the Eels.

Even without Trbojevic, Manly’s backline still looks dangerous. There ought to be some friendly sledging between Tyran Wishart and the guy who knocked up his sister, Reuben Garrick, but apparently people still have children in this economy. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Garrick or Jason Saab (five tries against Melbourne in five matches) get a try this week.

As I noted earlier this season, Manly are going with age and experience in their halves pairing in 2025 with a combined age of 66 years between them. Daly Cherry-Evans has been there and done that, while Luke Brooks has certainly been there in his 12th full NRL season, getting older but just never wiser. Those two don’t need much space in order to make life difficult for the Storm. While Eli Katoa and Shawn Blore have been great so far in 2025, this week will be a tough test of their defensive structures on the edges. The right edge especially will need to be better than what they showed last week.

To win this week Melbourne need to do anything else than what they tried in attack against the Dragons on Saturday afternoon. By some minor miracle there’s no rain forecast, so hopefully that helps their enthusiasm. Harry Grant might even need his zinc cream to avoid sunburn. What I would really like to see this week is a big game from Stefano Utoikamanu. Up against Nathan Brown, Siosiua Taukeiaho and Jake Trbojevic in the middle, it would be nice to see him fire up and get through the advantage line in some damaging runs and have them running scared. Some more judicious use of the bench would not be asking for too much after the melancholia and scrutiny from last week.

But when you look at the fixture when it drops, Storm fans usually pencil this match in as a loss, taking our broken hearts and putting them in a drawer. Especially at this stage of the season. After losing last week though, a win would be a nice little treat. Restricting Manly to less than 20 points has to be the goal, but scoring might be issue unless some fluency and hard running comes into play. But then I know I’m just repeating myself.7

What else is going on?

Moses Leo will line up for the Bears for his second rugby league match on Saturday afternoon (12pm kick off) as the North Sydney Bears travel out to Penrith. The third placed Panthers are playing their matches at Parker Street Reserve in 2025 which looks very much like park footy.

Following that match at 2pm will be the Storm Jersey Flegg squad up against the Panthers. The home team are undefeated through the opening four rounds of the season, while the Storm will be looking to get the two points after gaining just one in their draw last weekend.

Meanwhile down at The Swamp, the SG Ball Cup squad will be looking to avoid tetanus against the Sharks and the elements (1pm kickoff). Both teams are relying on other results to make the finals, but a win could see them qualify.

The HM Cup team will be wanting to end their season on a high against the Raiders. That match is starting at 1:15pm at Seabrook Reserve.

In Queensland Cup on Sunday afternoon (2:10pm kickoff after an extra hour sleep for us AEDT fans) it’s Storm Bowl 2025 in the only meeting between the Tigers and Falcons for the season. Both teams have been struggling of late and looking over the selected teams there might not be much of a Melbourne flavour to the proceedings. Kane Bradley (Tigers) and Sua Fa’alogo (Falcons) may come into the final squads, but beyond that it’s all up in the air. The Falcons have won the last two Storm Bowls and hold a winning record against the Tigers.