And then there were four as two more teams hire Smurf costumes, Sonic the Hedgehog outfits and animal onesies for a their day long booze sessions after they had their NRL Premiership ambitions dashed over the weekend.

Seventh TackleGate
A week on and the fallout from seventh tackle-gate continued with Thurston claiming a conspiracy theory against non-Sydney teams and that the NRL is desperately wanting a Souths/Easts grand final due to Queensland’s dominance in State of Origin.

While getting the tackle count wrong was an embarrassing mistake, it was hardly the end of the world or proof that the refs were ganging up on the Cowboys.

The entire refereeing team from the game has been sacked, which is an exercise in PR and damage control rather than actually addressing the problem, which in the scheme of things, it’s a relatively small mistake.

If the Cowboys had just played a little bit better, they would have not let Cronulla travel 90 metres on the previous six tackles and been able to withstand a seventh tackle.

This mistake is not even in the same category of referees missing a dropped ball and giving a penalty for a strip instead, re-starting the tackle count when the defence doesn’t really play at a kick, or penalising a player for an innocuous tackle.

Those mistakes result in six extra tackles as well as a handy boost down the field and often result in points being scored.

Those mistakes have happened week in, week out all year, yet we don’t see all out panic and referees being sacked. One extra tackle is hadly the worst mistake a ref can make.

The NRL obviously felt sorry for the Cowboys and didn’t want to add to the conspiracy fire by choosing not to hit them with $10,000 fines.

Manly vs Cronulla
Cronulla don’t like Manly. Well, no one likes Manly (apart from Manly supporters of course), but Cronulla really don’t like Manly.

Manly were the team that thwarted the Sharks’ Premiership hopes in their only two trips to the grand final in ’73 and ’78.

Overall the Sharks have only a 27 percent winning record against Manly (25 wins in 92 games), which is their worst winning record against any team.

The record in recent years is even worse, with only one win from the last nine games back to 2008.

With history against them and after the expected withdrawal of Todd Carney, the Sharks would have been hoping that Manly’s brutal encounter against the Roosters the week before had taken it’s toll.

One player that should have been given a rest, if sanity had come into the equation, was Richie Fa’aoso.

Knocked cold last week against the Roosters, Richie was somehow ruled fit to play this week proving that the club has no regard for his long term safety and that the League needs to step in and take the decision out of the hands of the clubs.

In the NFL in America, ex-players have launched a class action against the NFL over the dangers and long term health effects of repeated head knocks.

It’s just a matter of time before it happens here. Fa’aoso dropped the ball on his first carry of the game after he came off the bench.

If there is a Sydney conspiracy by the NRL then they may want to adjust their strategy to organise matches between fans that are willing to travel and turn up to the game.

The AFL preliminary final the same night managed 85,000, while this game between two Sydney teams could attract a paltry 23,000 fans.

But onto to the game, it was a high quality affair with the two teams very evenly matched in all areas except one; the kicking game, where Manly where streets ahead and in the end determined the result of the game.

Twice in the first half Manly forced drop outs with attacking kicks and then scored in the ensuing set after the drop out from attacking kicks.

Also their long kicks in general play found open space and put pressure on Cronulla’s back three.

In comparison Cronulla’s kicking game was mostly awful and really let down the effort they were putting in in the first five tackles.

While Fifita did manage to bag a try from a Jeff Robson grubber, on two occasions Wade Graham kicked attacking kicks dead releasing the pressure valve and allowing Manly to walk the ball back to the 20 metre line.

Manly ended the game, basically at a walk as they ran out of gas. It was imperative that Cronulla make them work for every metre and not give them a moment’s respite.

The Sharks long kicking game too often hit Manly players on the chest. It was a fitting end to the game that Cronulla’s last attacking raid in the 80th minute to attempt to tie the game ended with an innocuous grubber from Robson that was as threatening as a fluffy bunny.

Carney was desperately missed, but it was his kicking game that was missed the most.

The football gods giveth and the football gods taketh away.

Last week the Sharks were the beneficiaries of rub of the green from the refs, while this week, it went the other way.

The opinion on the couch was that the tap down from Steve Matai to Anthony Watmough for Manly’s first try may well have been ruled a knock on if it was anywhere else on the field, and that Jorge Tafua’s try early in the second half after running over Beau Ryan was dropped and shouldn’t have been a try.

Last week’s saviour John Morris who pushed Kane Linnett into touch in the last seconds against the Cowboys was this week’s sinner, having a brain explosion and tackling an opposition defender as Paul Gallen appeared to score a try that would have tied the scores.

The Sharks season looked like it might not get off the ground in March with the peptide storm, board implosion and coach suspension, however they battled through the controversies and distractions to go one match further than in 2012.

The season ended in a similar fashion, with Todd Carney watching helpless from the sidelines, but at least they can be proud of the effort they put into this game which is far cry from the 2012 surrender in Canberra.

Manly go through to face Souths next week, but they look battered, bruised and exhausted.

Melbourne vs Newcastle
Melbourne absolutely own this match-up – losing only three matches of the last 15 going back to 2006 including winning the last seven in a row, with 2004 being the last time Newcastle has won in Melbourne.

One of the frustrations with Newcastle this year has been the inconsistency and not being sure which team is going to get off the bus each week.

Anyone thinking that this would be one way traffic, was right, but it was in the opposite direction to what most people expected.

Newcastle carved up the Storm in the first 10 minutes but failed to turn the domination into points.

That wasn’t the only thing that was from bizarro world, with the refs calling everything the wrong way around.

There were some more examples of the untouchable Billy Slater effect. In the opening try, Slater made no attempt to tackle Uate with his arms, instead he charged into Uate with his shoulder – let’s call it a ‘shoulder charge’.

For more players that is a penalty, but when it’s Billy it’s only worth a warning.

It was a foul committed in the act of scoring and should have been an eight-point try.

Later, Slater was tackled where Newcastle’s Alex McKinnon accidentally, unavoidably made contact with Slater’s head.

Any other player in the comp, it’s player on, but Billy stayed down and sure enough the video refs caved to the Untouchable Slater rule and recommended a penalty.

Melbourne scored on the next play.

Perhaps balancing the ledger, Alex McKinnon shoulder charged Melbourne’s Jordan McLean who was laid out with a broken jaw as a result of the hit.

Because the shoulder charge didn’t hit McLean in the head, the refs said it was OK, ignoring the fact that the act of the shoulder charge accelerated the whip lash of McLean’s head into McKinnon causing the damage.

No penalty against McKinnon, Newcastle scored in the next set.

Grub of the week award goes to BJ ‘Joey’ Leilua who ran up to McLean as he laid obviously seriously injured on the ground and gave him a verbal spray – looked very ugly indeed.

Usually Melbourne rely on the ‘Big Three’ to save them when in times of trouble, but in this game they were all showed signs of fragility.

Smith missed a relatively easy shot at goal which proved to the difference in the end, Cronk put the ball out on the full from a kick and Slater gift wrapped the Knights six points with a dropped ball in front of his posts.

Trailing 18-4, Melbourne stage a come back and got to within two points to make it a nerve wracking last 10 minutes, but the Knights held on to snap their losing streak in Melbourne and against Melbourne.

Storm supporters would no doubt have been blowing up when clinging to that two-point lead, the Knights’ Danny Buderus stopped and stepped back into the way of Billy Slater to stop him chasing through on a bomb right in front of the referee was not penalised.

It should have been a penalty and would have given Melbourne the chance to tie the score – perhaps the one time this season where Billy Slater affect was missed.

A bad night for defending Premiers, with both the NRL and AFL defending Premiers having their seasons ended on the same night on opposite sides of the country.

Newcastle have proven to be the one surprise team in the finals.

From seventh they have taken out both of last years grand finalists in sixth and third spots in consecutive weeks, but now face their biggest test in coming up against the rested Roosters.

It’s going to take a brave person to bet against the East/Souths grand final that the NRL allegedly covet.

Canberra Raiders vs Canberra Raiders
One of the few clubs challenging the Eels for worst club of the year are the Canberra Raiders.

Widely tipped to improve on their 2012 season where they came within two games of reaching the grand final, 2013 has been an annus horribilis.

The season that started so full of promise, quickly turned to ashes seeing the club miss the semi-finals, finish in the bottom four, sack two star players and their coach and then get lumbered with Ricky Stuart for three years.

Even though their season is finished, they can’t help but get into more drama with this week senior player David Shillington fined by the club for saying in interviews that the Raiders players wanted interim coach Andrew Dunemann to be given the coaching job.

That is way off script.

Those sort of comments are great in the period when the interim coach is in charge, but when the new guy gets the gig, that is the time to toe the party line and say how great it is and how much you are looking forward to playing under the new coach.

It gets very awkward when the new coach has been announced with great fanfare, to say that, actually the players wanted the other guy!

But what is David talking about?

After Furner was sacked, under the interim coaching of Dunemann, Canberra won precisely zero games from three attempts with an average losing margin of over 22 points a game, and a couple of players were caught out drinking prior to their match against the Warriors.

If the players liked Dunemann that much, perhaps they should have tried a little harder when they were playing for him.