Round 19 featured some intriguing performances. Some were poor, some were good and others extremely impressive.
Poor: Manly Sea Eagles
Trent Barrett could not have expected this season to be filled with poor performances, off-field dramas, rifts in the locker room and a few good s.
Sunday’s 56-24 thrashing at the hands of the Sydney Roosters looked to be the cherry on top of it all.
In front of the Brookvale faithful, Manly turned in a showing where they were not only down on the scoreboard but down on enthusiasm with some players efforts questionable at times.
It was their eighth loss this year with their opponents scoring 30+ points and their biggest loss against the Roosters.
While the 2018 season is over for them, coach Trent Barrett has the challenge of instilling some pride and passion back into the great squad.
Better: Melbourne Storm
They may not be the dominant force they were last year, something that possibly fell under some people’s radars, but the Melbourne Storm have begun to blossom at just the right time.
Although they have blown out teams like the Bulldogs, Knights, Cowboys and Dragons, they have made a habit of having tight wins or losses this year.
With champion halfback Cooper Cronk missing this year, the Storm seem to miss a certain finishing blow during tight and tough games.
With that being said, Melbourne have found themselves in a groove during the second half of the season.
The Storm are currently enjoying a seven-game winning streak and in the conversations for winning the premiership just when we all thought times were a changing.
They’ve got the roster and coach to do some serious damage. Coupled with confidence, they’ll be one team to watch.
Best: Sydney Roosters and Wests Tigers
Round 19 featured two incredible team performances.
The Wests Tigers are playing like a group possessed to crack the top eight. They sit just four points outside of it and only sitting behind the New Zealand Warriors whose wheels look a little shaky at the moment.
(Photo by Michael Dodge/Getty Images)
Adding to the fact they’ve beaten all teams in the top four, the Tigers definitely have the makings of a team that could go all the way in 2018.
Benji Marshall and newly recruited Robbie Farah are running around like its 2005 all over again.
An assortment of young talent was brought in to help them out and all are playing with the right attitude and vigour.
Staying consistent and staving off injuries can see the black, white and gold mob shaking up the competition in the springtime.
While the Wests Tigers have been a surprise packet this year with their outstanding performances, the Sydney Roosters didn’t share the same type of consistencies in the first half of the season.
However, the days of being ‘hit or miss’ appear to be behind the Eastern Suburbs team after racking up a massive 56-24 victory over the Manly Sea Eagles.
This latest win saw them take six of their last seven, as the loss they suffered was a narrow golden point to current competition winners the Melbourne Storm.
In the early days of the 2018 season, it seemed the Roosters were struggling with finding the right formula to play with to accommodate all their stars including their two newest members Cooper Cronk and James Tedesco.
There have been flashes of what the team is capable of achieving when firing on all cylinders but they were too few and far in between.
The adjustment period appears to be over and now the Roosters are ramping up a rampage onto the finals.
Their big guns Blake Ferguson, Latrell Mitchell, Luke Keary, Cronk, Tedesco, Boyd Cordner and Jake Friend are just hitting their strides when it is beginning to matter most.
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