Round 18 - Manly v. Bulldogs: A Closer Look

While many considered last Monday night’s Manly – Bulldogs game to be one of the best – if not the best – seen so far this season, it was rather unfortunate scheduling for those without Fox Sports or unable to get to Brookvale. How Channel 9 passed on this game when scheduling for Friday night (or even Sunday afternoon) – while showing the St George Illawarra v. Roosters and Penrith v. Parramatta games instead – remains a mystery.

However, another victim of Channel 9’s baffling scheduling decision was the Tuesday Roast. Given the Tuesday morning publishing time, it follows that the Roast cannot be substantially rewritten after any Monday night game. This was disappointing (just quietly, how versatile is the word ‘disappointing’? It can be used to describe anything from game time weather to the worst of rugby league scandals) once it became apparent that this year’s edition of Manly v. Bulldogs at Brookvale was another classic.

With the shortened round 18 of the NRL providing few highlights or incidents worthy of a Roast of their own, below is a closer look at last Monday night’s epic.

In the lead-up to this game, Manly’s strong recent form, their need for this to continue to have a realistic shot at defending their title and the home-ground advantage meant they were a slight favourite with the bookmakers, but this reasoning ignored significant recent history between Manly and the Bulldogs.

Since Manly returned to the NRL elite in 2005, every Bulldogs’ visit to Brookvale has caused them problems. In 2005 and 2007, the Bulldogs scored 19-point victories, each of which saw long Manly home winning streaks come to an end. In (late) 2006, Manly only just got the win over the Bulldogs who were without Mason and Asotasi and who had already secured 2nd position (although Manly was without their inspirational leader Ben Kennedy), while last season, Manly finally secured a rare (relatively) easy win, although it was far from convincing against a Bulldogs team without Luke Patten.

For whatever reason in the NRL, some teams just happen to play well against others or at certain grounds; the Bulldogs at Brookvale is one of those combinations.

However, at the risk of enraging Manly supporters, the Bulldogs’ ongoing success at one of the more difficult venues in the NRL for opposing teams to score a win comes from their superior big-game mentality. The Bulldogs’ success over the last 30 or so years is built on the siege mentality, which is best seen in their important wins away from home. Typically, they know exactly how to approach big games and especially know the difference between big games during the season and big games during the finals. More on this later.

In contrast, Manly’s success in recent years has been built upon superior physical attributes than their opposition. Their backrowers possess an abnormal combination of size, strength, speed, agility, leadership, endurance and now (with Glenn Stewart) ball-playing ability. Their ability to play 80 minutes means their army of props (generally with superior physical conditioning to many) can be rotated and dominate. On the back of this, Manly’s kicking game, dummy half service and point scoring ability come from a very helpful base.

However, for those who can match Manly physically, the task of beating them is not nearly as difficult. In Matt Awful, they may have a halfback capable of (somehow) winning a Dally M Medal, but not nearly as capable of doing much to lead Manly to a difficult win. Partly because of Awful’s major limitations when his forwards are not dominant, but also because of the one-dimensional leadership of Des Hasler and legacy of Ben Kennedy, Manly’s typical response when placed under pressure – i.e. when the opposition does not break under the strain of Manly’s dominant forward pack – is, quite simply, to try even harder. In other words, they rarely try anything different or unusual to crack a team, but execute their normal game-plan at a higher intensity in the belief that their superior physical attributes will eventually break their opposition. This is especially the case for Manly without Brett Stewart, but even with him, his brilliance was only ever seen in maybe a handful of different game situations (such as him sweeping around behind the decoy runner or having an Awful wrong-way kick done for him to chase).

Last Monday night, Manly started strongly and, knowing that the Bulldogs were without props Hannant and Armit (and hence had a rather small team), tried to press home their advantage via their size. But Manly’s attack was not quite in rhythm and the Bulldogs’ defence didn’t allow any more than an early try: the fact that the Bulldogs did not break under this pressure and, perhaps, also due to memories of previous Bulldogs’ wins recurring in their head meant Manly started to…perhaps not panic, but feel less assured about their chances of winning.

So…they lifted, they tried harder. In 2005 and 2006, when Kennedy led Manly, this would happen in most games where Manly did not thrash their opposition: Manly would start strongly then fade a bit; subconsciously, the rest of the team was waiting for Kennedy to spark them. Since 2006, this pattern has not been as evident (and Manly’s winning percentage has been a fair bit higher), but the trend is still seen that, when they’re in a struggle (especially against a top team), their response is to keep it same, but do it harder.

Another sign of Manly’s inferior approach to this game was the slight changes to their game plan (or at least the play of certain individuals). Over the last two seasons, Manly used Jamie Lyon at five-eighth for much of the time, utilising (especially last season) his kicking game to take pressure off Awful. In 2009, following the signing of Chris Bailey, Lyon has stayed almost exclusively at centre, but he popped up at five-eighth again for much of this game.

Also, winger Dave Williams has made a name for himself during his relatively short time in the NRL for his hard and fast kick returns (which often bend back opposition defences). But we saw Williams introduce the pass (just before the line) into his repertoire early in this game, at times when he normally would rush into the defence.

Perhaps this was not a Hasler ploy, perhaps Williams was put off his game after Queensland jolted the ball loose on his runs in Origin 2, but the point with this (and with Lyon’s shift closer to the action) was that Manly had introduced some subtle changes to their game for this relatively unimportant (in the overall picture) match. It confirmed the always rather edgy Hasler was even more on edge for this game. In contrast, the Bulldogs have a long-established reputation for saving such slight adjustments for important games at the end of the season and kept within their set-up for all of this game.

The only times where the Bulldogs deviated from their “plan” was when several of their younger and less experienced players (as well as Michael Ennis – someone who really should have known better) got caught up in Manly’s (over)aggressiveness and gave away some quite unnecessary penalties for ill-timed aggression of their own. It became apparent fairly early on in this game that the Bulldogs needed to play smart and allow Manly’s aggressiveness and steadily increasing anxiety to be used against them and this almost happened (thanks to the excellent leadership of Kimmorley, Ryan, Patten, El Masri and (at times) Ennis) but, in the end, some dumb penalties given away by the Bulldogs probably cost them a win (along with some poor decision-making late on).

Manly jumped ahead fairly early and had significant amounts of good attacking possession over the next 20 or so minutes, but the Bulldogs held firm and looked gradually more threatening each time they attacked (although rarely had any good field position of their own). New Sea Eagle Ben Farrar was playing with enthusiasm but unfortunately he cost himself two tries through his haste during the first half.

When the Bulldogs scored with a rare venture into Manly’s area late in the first half, the arm-wrestle was on. Awful gave Manly a one-point half-time lead, but a L’Estrange spear tackle and a dumb defensive option by Glenn Stewart gave the Bulldogs a penalty goal and another try to Morris – and a 5-point lead.

Manly continued to enjoy quite good field position and had a number of attacking sets near the Bulldogs’ line, but with each Bulldog stop, the anxiety amongst Manly players and supporters grew: surely they can’t beat us here again?! Eventually, Manly’s weight of possession (aided by the aforementioned penalties and some errors) told and they scored in the corner. Incredibly, Awful – a notoriously poor goal-kicker – put his conversion attempt just inside the post and over the crossbar and Manly had a lead.

However, it seemed as though the Bulldogs would snatch a late victory. Despite their massive defensive workload, they had enough energy to enjoy several good attacking journeys in the game’s final 7 or 8 minutes, but took poor options on three occasions when field goal opportunities (and the potential for extra time) were on offer.

An incredible game like this deserved a great ending, and it came when Josh Perry picked up a loose pass and ran 30 metres to seal a famous win for Manly. While both teams were not quite at their best, they certainly played their hardest. A tight, absorbing, intense battle; it was a game for the ages.

Round 18 recap

Unfortunately, Manly’s passion on the field is also seen off the field as well. Specifically, they truly believe they are being hard done by when they have to play without their Origin players and truly believe the game would be better off if they could have their Origin players whenever possible. They conveniently ignore that virtually every good team since the early 1980s has had to make do without their Origin stars; it’s a fact of life for teams at the top in the NRL and a key plank in the NRL’s de facto measures to make the competition more even.

They should also thank their lucky stars they had such a small Origin representation last season (compared to Melbourne’s gargantuan contribution). Without this advantage, Melbourne is now shooting for three premierships in a row and Manly is nursing their wounds after their 11th grand final loss.

Yep, Manly was thrashed (although they competed for much of the game and was unlucky to concede a series of tries to the Dragons’ incredible speed) on Sunday and they had a whinge afterwards. It’s a little bit tough to blame your loss on missing players when your opposition was without just as many….

In other matches, Souths finally provided a glimpse of their potential as they soundly defeated Penrith. John Sutton led the way for Souths and is a serious threat for Orig…just kidding.

On Saturday, Newcastle’s inability to defeat teams below them on the ladder was set to be tested with the visit of the Raiders, but they received a major boost just three minutes into the game. No offence to Jarrod Mullen and his perhaps severe injury, but his loss meant Newcastle’s approach to the remainder of the game was similar to that of playing a top-four opponent: focus, intensity, a relatively simple game-plan and a huge defensive effort. Anything less without such an important player would have meant certain defeat. Their defence was outstanding, their attack was somewhat limited but did the job (led by the much-maligned Ben Rogers, who was forced into halfback but led his team brilliantly) and it was an amazing score-line of 23-4 in favour of a team who was dominated.

On Sunday, the Warriors had a brilliant opportunity to turn their season around: the 2008 Bulldogs (plus Stagg and Hodgson) came to town. The Warriors could have killed them early but didn’t and the severely limited Bulldogs (eventually) seized on this and threatened to post a big lead. It was only Andrew Ryan’s poor handling which prevented this, but then the Warriors – who can be so good when well behind – responded and took the lead back rather quickly. They had a number of chances to seal the win, but screwed them up or never got there and inexplicably allowed the Bulldogs to get all the way down field without anything more than running hard. They fully deserved their loss and will be nothing more than nuisance value from now on.

Finally last night, a rare thing happened: a team actually worried more about their next round opponent than their current round one. It does get talked about quite often, but this time, the Titans – with their next game just four days away (Friday vs. the Bulldogs) – thought 14 points was enough to beat Parramatta and pretty much stopped. They gave Parramatta about 50 minutes to beat them before firing up again for another 3 minutes to extend their lead slightly. They held on for the win in perhaps their least impressive effort this season.

Hopefully so much talk about Manly and the Bulldogs won’t make this Roast my least impressive effort of the season! Enjoy Origin, good luck trying to tip the ‘dead rubber’ and see you next week.

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