Panthers and Raiders show how to weather the Storm

Good poets borrow but great poets steal. And so it was that last night the Penrith Panthers, in their fetching traditional chocolate soldier garb, stole many a verse from the playbook published a week earlier by the Canberra Raiders.

The book is titled ‘How to defeat the Melbourne Storm’ and from now on it will be included in every NRL teams’ curriculum.

Last weekend the Raiders lived up to their moniker and ravaged the Storm on their home turf like a marauding pack of rugby league Vikings.

Constantly raiding the Storm flanks, Canberra took their namesake’s penchant for attacking their enemy’s weakness to heart by using their pace out wide to expose a defective defensive set up.

Even Reece Robinson’s burst through the ruck for an 80-metre try came more towards the Storm’s right edge and found the defenders clasping at an apparition: like a ghost he appeared, and then was gone.

(As an aside Robinson would not look out of place in a sky blue jersey, should an Origin fullback crisis need averting)

Canberra are a dangerous side. Their full devastating potential was displayed yesterday against the Knights.

It is one thing for the Storm to lose to a talented Raiders outfit that are on the rise, but it is quite another to lose to a Penrith team that has counted defeating the hapless Eels as their 2013 highlight to date.

Penrith are not the swashbuckling, throw-caution-to-the-wind team that Canberra have become. They are a tradesman-like outfit; they do an honest job though more often than not they arrive just a little late.

They do not have a Terry Campese or a Blake Ferguson or even a Josh McCrone to provide spark in attack.

But they do have a Robinson in Reece’s twin brother Travis, and it was his intelligent stretching out of an arm that helped secure the Panthers a 12-point lead at half time.

Perhaps it was Reece that passed on the details of the cleverly executed game plan of the Panthers, because like Canberra last week they relied on the disciplined effort of their unheralded but hard-working pack to set a good platform for their backline to do what they had learnt from the Raiders.

Attack Melbourne’s glass jaw, the edges.

Sisa Waqa had been brought in earlier in the year as a new washer trying to stop the leaks, but Craig Bellamy’s plumbing seems to be faulty.

To the Storm’s credit they refused to give in, and even looked likely to get the better of the Panthers on several occasions late in the contest.

But their chance at victory was more due to a Panthers outfit searching rather than surging for the finish line.

It is far from panic stations for the Storm; the last time they were manned was during their surprising 2012 mid-season five-game losing streak. And we all know how last year ended!

But those 2012 losses came after a gruelling stretch that included injuries and Origin duties to many of their stars. Fatigue being an obvious factor, Bellamy had the luxury of early season victories and was able rest key players for the late-season surge to the title.

The Storm coach is again talking of his tired big three, but it is unusual for a Storm side with its big three intact and in pre-origin mode to have slumped to two early season losses like this.

Bellamy relies on the early season bank of wins to set the Storm up for the inevitable pain that will come later in this most brutal of sporting schedules.

This plan appears to be on shaky ground in 2013.

While it would be a brave and wealthy person that bet against a Bellamy-coached side to not rectify its obvious deficiencies, what the Panthers and the Raiders have shown in consecutive weeks is that the perceived Strom weakness is in fact no longer just a perception, but a full blown reality.