Tuesday 16 September 2008

Team of the Year...plus some comments about Week 1 of the finals

A week after the Dally M's I know, but here's the Tuesday Roast Team of the Year:

Fullback: Billy Slater
Wingers: Israel Folau and Luke Covell
Centres: Greg Inglis and Brent Tate
Five-Eighth: Terry Campese
Halfback: Scott Prince
Lock: Dallas Johnson
Second-Rowers: Anthony Watmough and Sam Thaiday
Props: Petero Civoniceva and Jason Ryles
Hooker: Michael Ennis

Bench: Kurt Gidley, Anthony Laffranchi, Jeff Lima and Josh Perry
Coach: Ricky Stuart

Such an interesting Week 1 of the finals. All the outsiders (Roosters, Canberra, Dragons and Warriors) threatened to upset at various points of their games. The Warriors got up but while the other 3 lost fairly convincingly, the 3 other winners had some weaknesses exposed. Another very interesting weekend awaits!

* The Roosters threatened to overwhelm Brisbane on Friday night, but Brisbane did just enough to hang in the game...and then exploited the Roosters' inability to play 80 minutes. It was a lot like the Round 2 game between these teams - but for the Roosters, they have to be concerned they couldn't sustain their effort given the high stakes. Brisbane looked good, but there have to be doubts about them: you wouldn't expect other remaining teams to have such an inability to play 80 minutes (not to mention struggle to score tries).

As always, this game (the 4 v 5 game) has a dubious outcome vis a vis whether it was better off to win or lose this game. But given how the system works, Brisbane would much rather be at home than in Auckland (where they've always struggled) and the Roosters would have preferred to be in Sydney against a vulnerable Storm. Of course, if you think the system should be different, then there's a whole new set of circumstances...

* Both Canberra and the Dragons were thrashed on Saturday night, but made fans of their opposition rather uncomfortable early on. But to their credit, Cronulla and Manly could have folded but they used a bit of luck (unsteady execution from their opposition and some poor refereeing decisions for their opponents) and converted relatively scarce opportunities to have almost match-winning leads at half-time.

With Canberra, their effort could not be questioned, but Campese was made to tackle his backside off and pressured with the ball. His teammates appeared a bit nervous and their execution was off...that said, they had some great chances to put real scoreboard pressure on Cronulla. If Purtell takes that intercept...if that called forward pass is viewed by another set of eyes... the game could have changed so much.

Despite this, they were attacking down 14 with just over 10 to go: a try could have made for a tense finish, but Cronulla held strong and won well. There's no question Cronulla's been playing well, but they've been doing so against struggling teams of late. Now they have a week off and will play Brisbane or Melbourne. Unless these teams bash each other, you'd have to think these teams could ask Cronulla questions they haven't been asked for some time...and had trouble answering when they were asked them.

The Dragons were in an unfortunate position in that their team selection was very difficult. Should they have stuck with form players (players who've been in their lineup while they've been winning of late) or bring back now-fit players who could have been very useful against Manly (Soward, Morris, Woolford). There was good arguments for Rogers v Soward, Morris v Sailor (or someone else) and Webb/Ellis v Woolford, so Brown's selection was always going to be second-guessed if the Dragons lost.

That said, the Dragons had a number of chances and a host of attacking possession early, but never asked any serious questions of Manly's defence. They looked out of sync like Canberra did, but Canberra is a young team riddled with injury. The Dragons could not be described that way and hence should not have looked so disjointed.

Like Canberra, the Dragons were unlucky to have a try disallowed (but Gasnier's try had what looked like a forward pass, so it may well have equalled out) but Manly somehow found 20 points by half time and the Dragons had no chance after this.

* Finally the game of the weekend. Melbourne is still a very tough team to beat, but they've shown some signs of not quite being the same team over the last few months. The cumulative workload of almost 3 years of dominance, being the team everyone wants to beat and lots of rep games might be starting to take its toll. They were just off their game a bit on Sunday and the Warriors, as inconsistent as they can be and as volatile as their playmakers can be, LOVE the challenge of playing a big-name team.

But the Storm also had the issue of Dallas Johnson playing with injury and Hoffman being injured early on. They were also without Sika Manu, one of their relatively anonymous but important bench forwards. He was replaced by Scott Anderson, who is not the same type of player and the Storm probably lacked one more ferocious forward.

That said, the Warriors did their best to throw the game away. So many dumb penalties (in contrast to Melbourne's lack of subtlety when practicing their standard 'techniques' in the tackles), so many mental mistakes (such as Hohaia not expecting Cronk's 40-20 attempt late in the game). But they pushed the Storm hard and made their defence work extremely hard to keep them out...and almost looked like succeeding when the Warriors received the ball in the last 2 minutes deep in their own territory.

But Ropati, Vatuvei and Witt (all of whom had great games) had other ideas...and could have ended the Storm's dynasty. The Storm has a great record over Brisbane and teams love playing at Suncorp...but Johnson and Hoffman playing hurt is such a loss. They won at Brookvale a few weeks back, but if Orford wasn't such a spastic...Hard to see Lockyer being that bad (but Brisbane's forward pack isn't quite Manly's either).

Well done Warriors and Brisbane. The NRL is probably saying the same thing, taking finals away from apathetic Sydney, but they are highly-anticipated games in their own right. If the games can be as good as expected...another big week coming up!

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