The Manly Sea Eagles will need to be at their best if they are to keep their premiership hopes alive against the inform North Queensland Cowboys in tonight’s NRL semi-final. Join us for NRL live score updates and commentary from 7:30pm AEST.
Manly underperformed in last week’s loss to Canterbury and now have no room for error against the Cowboys.
Aside from a short dominant passage midway through the first half which saw Manly post back to back tries; the Sea Eagles were lethargic in attack against the Bulldogs and will need to play with a lot more intensity tonight if they are to defeat North Queensland.
Their only consistency was the Anthony Watmough and co. injection of niggle and hostility into tackles and back-chat.
They’ll need to be more disciplined and use their aggression in attack and defence.
The Cowboys were clinical against Brisbane last week, racing out to a 16 nil lead before eventually securing a strong 33-16 victory.
North Queensland’s win was made possible by the superb performances from Johnathon Thurston, Matt Bowen, Michael Morgan, James Tamou and Matthew Scott.
The preceding players are all in top form and will cause Manly tremendous headaches if the reigning premiers fail to improve their discipline and ball handling tonight.
Prediction
With Steve Matai suspended, Manly will be hoping that Jamie Lyon starts in the centres tonight.
Lyon succumbed to a calf injury against the Bulldogs last week and is in some doubt for the match against the Cowboys.
If Lyon is deemed unfit to play tonight, Manly’s attack will suffer outwide, given that Lyon is the general of a very talented Sea Eagles backline.
Without Lyon to dictate the attack, halves Keiran Foran and Daly Cherry-Evans will really need to fire tonight if the Sea Eagles are to score enough points to keep the Cowboys at bay.
After producing below par performances in the loss to Canterbury, expect Foran and Cherry-Evans to come out with a point to prove against master playmakers Thurston and Bowen.
Foran and Cherry-Evans will fancy their chances of opening up a Cowboys defence that still possesses chinks in its armour.
If Manly’s halves however fail to click, the Cowboys should be favoured to emerge victorious tonight.
As mentioned earlier, the Cowboys possess inform players in key positions with Bowen in particular the player most likely to wreck havoc for Manly.
Bowen was sensational against the Broncos last week, scoring a try and assisting in two other four pointers scored by Morgan and Tate respectively.
In order to limit the attacking prowess of Thurston and Bowen, Manly’s forwards have to get on top of inform Cowboys props Tamou and Scott.
Scott and Tamou are laying a wonderful platform for Thurston and Bowen to shine in attack and will take a power of stopping given their current form.
If Scott and Tamou manage to win the arm wrestle upfront, Bowen and Thurston will dominate and will turn attacking pressure into points when given the chance.
Although Manly possess home ground advantage, playing at Allianz Stadium will hold no fear for a Cowboys side that possesses the belief and attacking class necessary to cause the upset and end the Sea Eagles hopes of winning back to back premierships.
Cowboys by 4
Sleemo
Guest
Haha good one mate, another pearl of wisdom. Well guess what, I'm a Manly fan AND a Queenslander, and I'm still 100% fine after last night! Queenslanders aren't all ret@rds like you, don't paint us all with the same brush.
Sleemo
Guest
"Manly are a pack of cheats and grubs" ... what did you expect the Manly players to do? Go up to the ref and say "No sir, I knocked it on, so please don't award my team a try" or "No sir, I think it may have been a double movement, so please give a penalty to the other team". As if. Funny too that you should label Manly a team of cheats and grubs when it was the Cowboys who were lying all over the Manly players in the ruck all night, and your team contains Thurston, who as some of his former teammates at NQ would consider the biggest grub of them all...
Locky666
Guest
Totally agree with all your comments. Manly won due to inept referring and Cowboy's were ripped off. What a disgrace. If Manly make the GF, hope they get flogged and yes, Manly are a pack of cheats and grubs. Enough said.
manly_fan_central_qld
Guest
Dear Cowboys fans. I'm a huge Manly supporter and am disgrased with what has occured, that was clearly and the other call was questionable, but I would have ruled in fav of the Cowboys. Please don't blame the team, or the fans, we're backing you guys on this one!
oikee
Guest
Yeah and dont come back because your shorts dont fit. :)
Bozo
Guest
Plus his foot was over the sideline.
Bigjohn
Guest
Everyone associated with the NRL refs should be sacked, and replaced with a panel of refs employed by a fully independent body.
soapit
Guest
check the paper mate. it'll say the real score if you're confused.
Matt
Guest
We suck at cricket, we suck at soccer, we suck at union. There's not too much sport to watch nowadays! Should get up against the puma's tomorrow
Daniel
Guest
Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Jeffrey Baxter
Guest
Thats true but finals games should be events. rugby league is the no1 game in a city of 6million, most sports at this stage would attract neutrals but the parochalism of rugby league fans lets the sport down. play it at brookvale end of story
Jeffrey Baxter
Guest
bye bye
Sleemo
Guest
If you blindly claim that your team was robbed by decisions of referees employed by a "rigged" NRL just because they lost...if you're refusing to consider the possibility that Manly were the better team...if you're refusing to be anything but a one-eyed, biased commentator of the game...if you throw the toys out of the cot and overreact dramatically by saying something like "I'll never support the NRL again"...then you are very obviously not a true supporter of the game. And I will tell you that, repeatedly. Jeez, my team has copped some rough decisions in the decades that I've supported them (since I first touched a football) but I don't make irrational and ridiculous statements like this whenever they're beaten in a big game. Grow up son. I tell you what, if you have kids I hope they don't see this kind of behaviour...what a great example to set, in sport and in life!
blinkybill
Guest
Fair dinkum The NRL can go and get stood on ! We'll have our QLD competition with fair refs thanks. Placing a ball before then line - then rolling over as a second movement without control of the ball - you call that a try! As for next one - the video ref is as a blind as a bat! Cowboys weren't just having to play Manly, they had to play against the reffing as well...
PLANKO
Guest
I am going to try and watch my yass magpies this weekend hope you watch next year qgirl and the rest of the disgruntled fans I know personally will struggle to watch a bulldogs storm gf
Cowboy
Guest
Manly doesn't have to breach salar ycap. Obviously paying off referees is not included. Yet again the Nrl has let all game fans down
Ian Whitchurch
Guest
Matt, If you want to avoid atrocious officiating, AFL may not be your best call ... if you think hands in the back is bad, wait until you see holding the ball vs incorrect disposal.
JVGO
Guest
Anthony, I think you should just go and watch Fremantle v Adelaide, Geelong v Collingwood or some other world changing event and leave this stuff to people who actually care.
JVGO
Guest
EJ, as soon as anything becomes subjective there is a subcoscious bias in favour of the expected outcome, eg Qld are favoured to win so the less controversial outcome is for them to win, manly are favourites and at home so they should win, etc it has been happening all season...actually for a number of seasons to certain teams. For instance once it became obvious that NQ had scored of after a refereeing blunder it is almost inevitable that Manly will recieve some subsequent advantage. The problem I think arises from the fact that Bill thought they were disallowing too many tries, which suggests he didn;t think there were enough tries being scored in the game, which since the wrestle has come to dominate the ruck is pretty much true. Bill is a game manager and always has been so he has taken it upon himself to manage the style of the game and the number of tries. There is a snowball effect from every percieved error and it is getting out of control. Benefit of the doubt for instance doesn;t really make sense anyway as doubt would only be a reason to disallow a try not to allow it, and has instead come to be interpreted as any possibility or the slightest degree of inconclusiveness and the try will be awarded. They have decided that if we can find the slightest factual possibility or interpretation of a rule to allow the try then we will do it. In the end they should get rid of benefit of the doubt and just rule inconclusive and go to refs call. But firstly I think they need to clean up the wrestle and speed up the play the ball so there are more tries scored in a clear cut manner so the disallowed ones will matter less so they will be more inclined to deny tries that may have deserved to be scored but weren't, and they should let momentum changing turnovers in the ruck and from knock ons have input from the video. In the last two weeks The gallen and Tafua ruck calls seriously changed the outcomes of games and were obvious to anyone watching on TV as interference. But before they do that they need to sack Harrigan and get someone willing to implement clear guidelines across the board. I mean tonight the three calls that resulted in tries were clearly wrong, just as there many wrong calls last week in the Cronulla canberra game, in origin and all the way back to round one. The referees have at this stage completely lost the plot and don;t know whether they are coming or going and Bill has to take the blame.
Anthony
Guest
I think Qgirl would be better off telling us again how the NRL is getting record crowds & AFL is declining. 16,000 is a disgrace!