The Melbourne Storm defeated St George Illawarra 8-6 at AAMI Park on Friday night. It was Billy Slater’s 200th game and he was handed the Man of the Match by Channel Nine, but in reality it should have been the number nine, Cameron Smith.
Slater should have put the Storm ahead when he threw a short ball in the 59th minute instead of putting his three outside men against only Kyle Stanley.
Other than that, he was flawless, but Smith was just a touch better according to me.
The start of the first half was a good, old-fashioned arm-wrestle, with the Dragons doing the better of the two, getting good field position and a few shots at the try line.
The Storm had their chances, but it was Kyle Stanley who scored in the 18th minute, scoring a typical winger’s try, down the left hand side from a backline move.
Stanley was in for Bronx Goodwin, whose season could be over with a snapped ACL in the 12th minute.
The wrestle continued, but the Storm answered with a winger’s try of their own, to Anthony Quinn down the blind side in the 26th minute to make it 6-6.
The game took a dramatic shift in the 30th minute. The Dragons gained a penalty, but looked spent. By the last tackle from a bad set of six, nobody wanted the ball on the last, and Jamie Soward was tackled with the ball.
For the next 50 minutes, it was all Storm, as wave after wave of Melbourne attacking sets were held out by the Red V.
Two penalties in quick succession conceded by Jamie Soward for standing over the tackled player led to a Storm penalty-kick as the siren went for half time at 8-6.
That is where the score stayed, but the Storm really should have put on more.
Multiple sets on the St George line proved fruitless as they defended well there, but nowhere else.
Time and time again, the Storm made easy metres up the middle, off the back of sloppy inside man defence, and failure of the outside men to watch for a man coming through at the back of an offload.
With Cooper Cronk out injured, Melbourne were forced to switch between Smith, Widdop and Slater at first receiver, with the Englishman looking good outside of a Smith dummy-half role.
Dragons fans can come away with the game with at least one good point – the legendary goal line defence is still there, and that is what the club has built itself on.
Huge question marks remain over there defence up the middle.
Though the Daily Telegraph will probably have a field day blaming Jamie Soward, he was hot and cold, and showed some pretty nifty footwork at times, and was hardly the worst of the bunch.
Dean Young can hold his head high; he was vicious in defence and was more than willing to take the ball himself. Unlike the other Dragons, Young looked like he wanted to do some damage.
What the Storm can take away? The knowledge that on another night, they probably would have scored 20-30.
Cronk was out, but as usual, the Storms’ great system remained in place, even after the late exclusion of Maurice Blair.
All the usual suspects were outstanding, but a quick shout out to Rory Kostjasyn, who threw a couple of quality balls which showed great vision.
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