Round 18: NRL Bizarro World

Hope you enjoyed that look back over a very weird round of NRL. See you next week.

And allow them they did – 24 in under 20 minutes between late in the first half and early in the second half. To the Cowbores’ credit, they didn’t capitulate and might have had a chance at winning if one or two things went their way, but in the end, it was a solid, although still far from impressive (from an overall perspective) win for the Eels in one of the weirder Monday night games of recent times.

The round finished on Monday night with Parramatta triumphing over the very un-boring Cowbores in a shootout in the Wild West of Sydney. Both teams’ attack has stuttered significantly of late but both teams enjoyed breakout attacking performances and, most importantly, brought aggressive attitudes to the game. Early on, any result looked possible, but once the errors returned to the Cowbores’ game, it was only a matter of time before the worst defence in the NRL would allow points.

This was in spite of a massive penalty count in Penrith’s favour. Perhaps Penrith was in shock; they are almost always on the wrong end of penalties, only the Dragons have any idea about how to get the most benefit out of a run of penalties. In the end, the Warriors grimly held on for a famous win. Only the great Melbourne defence of early 2008 recorded a win under similar circumstances.

From here on, Penrith had the better of the game and gradually dominated possession and field position – but could get no closer than 6 points. Penrith’s successful air attack, their kicking arsenal fired blanks all afternoon as the Warriors’ defensive intensity never wavered.

The weird happenings continued in Sunday’s late game at Penrith. It became quickly apparent that the big efforts in recent weeks – both at club level and at Origin – had taken their toll; it was a flat start from the Panthers and the Warriors jumped to a 12-nil lead. Their second try, to Vatuvei, was quite strange. Vatuvei ran through and caught a bomb almost unopposed to score in the corner (not unlike the famous Steve Gearin try from the 1980 grand final).

First up on Sunday, Newcastle recorded a solid win at home, while Cronulla struggled to perform away from home. Those outcomes are weirdness enough thus far in season 2010, but two of the game’s better performers are Ben Rogers (Newcastle) and Ben Pomeroy (Cronulla) well….Halley’s Comet will probably come again before these two hacks play another good game.

The Bulldogs took a solid lead to half time, as they had the past two games, but came close to relinquishing it as Melbourne came back strongly. Ultimately, it was a crazy ending as time expired when Billy Slater poked his head up from the clock-stopping scrum formation. A grin from Slater confirmed the weirdness of this match.

It’s an even crazier round and game when Billy Slater makes a number of mistakes at the back. Slater is usually so reliable but the Bulldogs found him out on several occasions. Admittedly, he would have done brilliantly well to stop the steam train that is Jamal Idris from scoring.

A rugby league game being played at Adelaide Oval for the first time since 1998 is bizarro enough. However, when that game involves the car crash that is the 2010 Melbourne Storm and the Storm, against all expectations, show fight and heart to come back into a game given the hopelessness of their situation, you know it’s a crazy round of rugby league.

With that said though, Canberra did put on two tries from close to the opposition line – where they had failed so miserably in previous weeks – to take a match-winning lead. Manly’s struggles and very poor home record since their awesome win against the Dragons a few months back continued.

The craziness got worse on Saturday night as Canberra turned around their abysmal performances from the last two weeks with a close but well deserved win over a still-scratchy Manly at Brookvale. We’ll never know if Canberra was going to sort out their diabolically poor attack because Canberra’s first two tries were gifts from Manly intercept passes.

The Tigers scored the game’s next 15 points – including an incredible field goal from Benji Marshall just before half-time – to grind out a match-winning lead: if they could only like this in the myriad of other games when Ellis plays a lone hand. A late try to the Titans made Benji’s field goal that much more important as the Tigers held on for the win.

Across town, the Tigers looked likely to fall well behind to the overdue Titans, but the usually sure-handed Titans outside backs dropped several passes where the try-line was in close proximity. The Tigers desperately needed such a leg-up as they were missing their best player in Gareth Ellis, but it became clear that the motivation to perform without Ellis and beat a hated rival in the process was strong.

Late penalties for relatively insignificant offences are perhaps not quite as rare as hens’ teeth, but are not much more prevalent. This was a surprisingly good game, but a slightly fortunate win for the Roosters.

Despite the Roosters coming back and dominating much of the remainder of the game, a try to Talanoa in the corner and subsequent conversion to the erratic Sandow saw Souths re-take the lead, a lead they seemed likely to hold onto until a crucial penalty to the Roosters led to the match-winning try to Mitch Aubusson.

The madness started on Friday night when Souths looked destined to score a significant win over the Roosters without their best player Issac Luke. Souths started very strongly, overcoming the physical Roosters and the difficult conditions to take an 8-nil lead.

Even in a league where consistency is rare and volatility much too common, the happenings of Round 18 were still difficult to comprehend. The downtrodden fought back, in the unlikeliest of situations, the favoured and in need struggled mightily, while those in a drought spectacularly farewelled dryness…but welcomed instead a severe loosening of standards, and finally many found they could perform despite the absence of crucial inputs.