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Remember who Sydney Roosters beat before getting too carried away with their big win on the weekend.
The gulf between the top and bottom halves of the final eight was clear coming into the finals series and results in the first two weeks have gone accordingly.
The only wins recorded by teams that finished from fifth to eighth were among themselves and that is how it will stay since they are all eliminated now.
The two top-four teams that lost in the first week of the finals were always likely to win their way back into the last four teams standing for week three and that is how it has turned out.
For the Roosters, the challenge of beating Brisbane in front of 50,000 people at Suncorp Stadium in this Friday night’s preliminary final is going to be enormous compared to the task of beating Canterbury at home.
The Bulldogs finished fifth in the regular season and that was their rightful place. Ditto sixth-placed Cronulla, who were never in the hunt against North Queensland.
At least the Bulldogs hung in there for a while, but while the controversial try to Roosters forward Kane Evans should be highlighted because it didn’t look like a try it wasn’t a convenient excuse for the beaten team.
To their credit, neither Bulldogs coach Des Hasler nor captain James Graham tried to make it one, either, when they spoke after the game.
The Roosters were coming to get the Bulldogs at that stage and would have got them anyway, even if that try had been disallowed. Maybe not to the tune of 38-12, but what does it matter? It still would have been easy enough.
The Sharks had beaten the Cowboys twice during the regular season, but that looked like being fool’s gold come finals time up north and that was how it turned out to be when the Cowboys won 39-0 this time.
Similar to the degree of difficulty rising for the Roosters against the Broncos, it’s going to be a far greater challenge for the Cowboys against Melbourne in Melbourne in the other preliminary final on Saturday night.
But the Cowboys look to be the better chance of winning out of the two travelling teams and there is a good reason for that which I’ll get to below. I’m tipping the Broncos and the Cowboys to advance and fight out an all-Queensland grand final.
That may not be palatable to Sydney league fans who think their city is the centre of the rugby league universe, but if they’re looking for someone or something to blame for it becoming a distinct possibility they should look no further than the Roosters in week one.
They screwed up in their loss to the Storm. Roosters coach Trent Robinson made an issue of the wrestle at the post-match media conference, but the truth was the Roosters weren’t sharp in attack and paid the price.
They piled on many more points against Canterbury, but the Bulldogs aren’t the Storm or the Broncos.
Brisbane’s defence has been the best in the competition at the business end of this season and even allowing for the attacking guns the Roosters have got it’s going to be very hard for them to crack it often enough to win.
The Roosters may have beaten the Bulldogs by 26 points, but they still made plenty of mistakes. Their completion rate wasn’t good.
Unless things change, the Broncos are not a team likely to make a lot of mistakes, but they are a team that is very likely to make the Roosters pay if they make too many.
Before the finals began, Broncos-Roosters was the match-up I thought we would get in the grand final and their clash this week could be a classic.
Mitchell Pearce’s likely return from injury is important for the Roosters, but not as important as the fact Michael Morgan will play for the Cowboys against the Storm after being out injured when the two teams met in round 25 in Melbourne and the Storm won 14-6.
Johnathan Thurston couldn’t get enough going in attack on his own for the Cowboys that night. Morgan’s presence this time tips the scales in favour of the Cowboys and that is before we factor in James Tamou, who also missed that match but will play on Saturday.
Morgan and Tamou were among the destroyers for the Cowboys against the Sharks. The Storm won’t be holding the Cowboys to six points this time around.
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