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Billy Slater well and truly buried the ghost of the 2008 World Cup final with a stellar display at Old Trafford in the 2013 decider.
Slater was outstanding in his comeback after two weeks out with injury.
Apart from scoring two tries – the first a special leap to claim a bomb, and the second supporting Darius Boyd to score on the inside – the Storm flyer seemed to be everywhere. Slater was defusing bombs, supporting the play, making tackles, breaking the line and linking with his teammates superbly.
Johnathan Thurston won the man of the match award, but Slater would have been an equally deserving recipient.
With so many good fullbacks in the Kangaroos, the 30-year-old has managed to keep his starting spot, which is no mean feat.
With his performance today he has well and truly put to bed the error he made in the 2008 decider in Brisbane.
In the 60th minute of that game, he threw the ball infield to no one, where Benji Marshall picked it up and scored. That put New Zealand ahead 22-16, and they went on to win 34-20.
Slater is the kind of mentally strong character who wouldn’t have let that kind of mistake get to him in the long run. He has a big game temperament and has proven his mettle on several occasions.
An error like that in a World Cup final would have cruelled weaker players.
But surely the Innisfail product will take some serious satisfaction from the result in Manchester this morning – kind of putting right a small wrong of five years ago.
World Cup captain Cameron Smith had refuted suggestions that revenge was on the minds of the Kangaroos team. That they didn’t want payback. That the loss in 2008 was well and truly behind him. That they’ve gotten over the pain.
It was a line that was hard to swallow.
In the post-match press conference Smith admitted that the shock at Lang Park in the last World Cup might just have provided some extra motivation at this tournament.
“I probably told a little white lie on the way there that this didn’t mean much against what happened in 2008,” Smith told the media.
“But standing there on that field after the match, I think a little bit of that disappointement from 2008 is erased.”
There are only five survivors of that final five years ago who are still members of the Kangaroos. Smith is one, along with Slater, Thurston, Greg Inglis and Paul Gallen.
Karmichael Hunt plays AFL, Petero Civoniceva, Craig Fitzgibbon and Darren Lockyer are all retired, Anthony Laffranchi and Brent Kite now represent other countries, Joel Monaghan is in Super League, Israel Folau is a Wallaby, Anthony Watmough is injured, while Anthony Tupou, Glenn Stewart and David Williams are no longer in the national team.
Even the coach, Ricky Stuart, is long gone. But Slater remains.
A career as great as his was never going to be defined by one game, or by one mistake. But I’m sure the Queensland #1 will afford himself a special sense of satisfaction for a job well done, with the World Cup back in he and his teammates’ grasp.
Follow John Davidson on Twitter @johnnyddavidson
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