It was a tale of two halves at Brooky last night and I’m not just talking about Dylan Walker and Nathan Cleary.
I haven’t watched another game this season in which the first and second forty minutes managed to entertain in such vastly different ways.
State of Origin Game 2 teams
» QLD: Myles out, Lillyman in
» Roar’s Reaction: Maroons
» NSW: Graham in, but faces ban
» Roar’s Reaction: Blues
With Laurie Daley’s final Blues line-up for Origin 2 around the corner, this was always going to be an important match for Dylan Walker, Josh Mansour and Matt Moylan.
All three underplayed at Origin 1, especially Walker, who was running the risk of becoming a bit of a running joke whenever the Blues jersey was mentioned over the 2016 season.
Mansour and Moylan were better, but still would have felt under pressure to put in an emphatic game against the boys from Manly last night.
Adding to the pressure was Manly’s losing streak, along with the fact that the Sea Eagles were facing the Steeden without Jamie Lyon and Daly Cherry-Evans for the first time since 2010.
With a team already depleted by the loss of Feleti Mateo and Steve Matai, that was a bit of a worry, with many punters tipping Penrith for the win.
Similarly, with so many Manly veterans out for the count, the pressure was on Brett Stewart to deliver something spectacular, especially since he was one try away from equalling Steve Menzies’ record 88 at Brookvale.
If I were a Sea Eagles supporter, however, that would have made me more anxious.
Time and again this season, Stewart has failed to live up to his remarkable record on the Northern Beaches. While his game has been far from bad – he’s still one of the best and most ingenious backs out there – he hasn’t quite lived up to his former glories as custodian of the team.
While he didn’t score a try, Stewart did help set up two, most spectacularly early in the second half, scooping up the Steeden after it was knocked back by Tom Trbojevic before passing it forward to Jorge Taufua, back from the first time since Round 7, who kicked it along the ground and then pounced on his own grubber to land it right at the dead-ball line.
To their credit, too, Manly put in a respectable attacking game, with Lewis Brown, Darcy Lussick and Matt Parcell repelling the Penrith assault up the middle of the field after Nate Myles was sent off minutes into the game with an injury.
However, it was Dylan Walker who stole the show in the first half, clocking up sixteen out of Manly’s twenty points to bring it to 20-4 by the halftime siren.
From the very outset, it was clear that Walker had a point to prove. Coming off last week’s loss against the Raiders and his depressing first ten minutes in a Blues jersey, he was Dylan Runner more than Dylan Walker.
Determined to find a break in the Penrith defence wherever he could, he was momentarily stopped in his tracks in the first couple of seconds only to make a better run for it the two-minute mark, dodging four Penrith defenders in the process.
Converting quickly and clinically, he got straight back into the game and managed to add another two points to Tom Trbojevic’s try at the Gleason minute, from a difficult angle at the edge of the field.
The best was yet to come, however, as some fairly lacklustre defence from Trent Merrin gave Walker the opportunity to chip the ball to himself, plant it over the line, and then add an additional two points from an equally difficult angle on the other side of the field.
More than any other moment this season, it felt like Walker’s definitive Origin resume.
I’ve never been a fan of Walker in the past, but watching him last night I thought: this bloke can run, kick and convert under high pressure. What’s the problem?
After a penalty kick just before half-time that saw him chalk up his sixteenth points on the scoreboard, I almost found myself wondering whether he would work as an Origin kicker as well. We’ve discovered that he can work in the halves pretty well at Manly, with last night’s brilliance marking his move back from the centre after the loss to Canberra: why shouldn’t he be given a chance with the boot at Origin as well?
After all, he couldn’t be that much more inconsistent than Adam Reynolds over the last couple of weeks.
For a player who has as much attitude and pride as Walker, a little bit of humiliation can sometimes be a galvanising thing, and you could see in the way he carried himself that he was high on Brookvale adrenalin and Origin shame, an intoxicating combination that seemed to transform him into a player I could barely recognise.
By half time, then, the match was set to be the Dylan Walker show.
For the first ten minutes or so of the second half, nothing occurred to suggest anything different. The Panthers were anxious, disorganised and lacked basic common sense.
More than any other match I’ve watched them in this year, I felt that this was one of their worst defensive outfits in a long time. While Jamie Soward had to be dropped for a bit at some point, I found myself wondering whether this was really the game to do it.
That’s not to say, however, that they’d been absolutely terrible.
A beautiful series of jagged dodges from Tyrone Peachey off a looming wide pass from Nathan Cleary suggested that there could be synergy here if only the team could find it.
Similarly, Mansour had made some headway, racking up some metres in a particularly impressive thrust at the 32-minute mark.
Still, things had been inconsistent and spotty.
That all changed, however, when Mansour brought in a four-pointer at the 49th minute. Pummelled over the try-line by a bracing tackle, he could have easily dropped the Steeden but still managed to contort himself enough to plant it behind his back.
It was a classic Mansour move: tough as guts and but also intelligent and strategic at the same time.
Minutes later, he broke from the wing to run deep into Sea Eagles territory for a bomb that he didn’t even bother to locate as it plummeted to earth.
In that moment, it seemed as if he might have managed to undo his previous try – consistency is still his issue, both with the Blues and at club level – but amazingly Penrith rallied back.
Over the next twenty minutes, the Panthers scored try after try in what has to rate as the standout comeback of the season.
Highlights included Cleary’s first NRL try as well as a beautiful setup from Peachey that saw Wallace slam over the line ten minutes from the end.
While Walker, Moylan and Mansour were the young guns most anxious to make good, it was Cleary who really shone in the later stages, sending out a kick that spun Stewart in circles – a rare sight indeed – only to slam him to the ground on top of it.
By the time Moylan kicked the final field goal it felt as if the Panthers had managed to entirely erase Walker’s ownership of the game.
While neither Moylan nor Mansour managed to put in an equally good performance – even combined – their ability to rally a losing team around an improbable victory seemed to qualify them for Blues spirit as much as Walker’s consummate sportsmanship qualified him for Blues gameplay.
In that sense, it was the ultimate pre-Origin selection match, a great foretaste of what these up-and-coming players can achieve – or at least glimpse – when the New South Wales jersey is around the corner.
For all that the Panthers owned the second half, however, the last note for me was still Walker’s genuine Origin eligibility – and that’s something I thought I would never say.
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