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It’s good to be back. Melbourne and Parramatta served up pretty much the perfect round one game, won 16-12 by the Storm via a late Harry Grant try in golden point, but that only tells a smidgeon of the story.
It wasn’t pretty at times, and there were more than a few occasions where the slick moves we might expect from these two didn’t come off, but after months without footy, a hard-fought, low-scoring bashathon was exactly what the doctor ordered.
The doctors will certainly be busy too. Cameron Munster wins the gross-out points for returning to the field after a compound dislocation of his ring finger – if you’re squeamish, don’t play the video embedded at the top of this story. Parramatta ended regulation with a totally new right edge, having lost two with head knocks. Xavier Coates departed early with a suspected AC joint injury.
After last year, in which Craig Bellamy lost Christian Welch and George Jennings for the season, he might consider Thursday night’s injury toll an improvement.
The first half was madcap, with offloads and endeavour that wasn’t always backed up by execution, the second a tug of war as the injuries, fatigue and bloodymindedness caught up. It started as a pick ’em game and was still one at the end of 80 minutes.
Both coaches might go home happy regardless of who won, confident that their team will benefit in the long run from this toughest of starts. Melbourne, of course, keep their 19 game opening round streak alive, too. Bellamy will love it.
“The contest was tough, physical and both teams went at it,” said Eels coach Brad Arthur. “I was really happy with our effort. We did enough to put ourselves in a position to win it but we didn’t execute well enough.
“It’s not like we made a heap of errors, but there were some big moments at the back end and we just needed to ice a couple of moments.
“There’s some positives out of it. We knew they were going to be tough and that it was going to be a tight contest, especially at the start of the year with both teams a bit rusty. We completed high, played good field position, tackled well.”
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Melbourne just find a way. At this time of year, in particular, the Storm are perhaps the best side at knowing their limitations. It’s Round 1.
Everyone is struggling with combinations and execution. Defensive resolve and taking what few chances you can create is liable to deliver competition points, which are, of course, worth the same at the start as they are at the end.
Bellamy himself admitted that his side had been guilty of showing a weaker side in the last year, and that tonight’s performance was a return to what they have done best under his lengthy time in charge.
“Just being so gutsy through the whole 80 minutes, I don’t think we have been like that as a team for the past 12 months,” he said.
“I thought we made some steps forward in that area and hopefully we can keep it up. If we keep showing the fight they did tonight, I am sure we’ll be okay.”
Munster revealed a harsh chat with a new teammate had brought the issue to a head earlier in the pre-season.
“We spoke to Tariq Sims when he came to the club and asked him what he thought we lacked,” said the five-eighth.
“Tariq is an honest man, that’s why we love him. He was brutally honest and we needed that reality check.
“He said we’d lost a bit of aggression and mongrel in us, and that opened our eyes. We wanted to get back to the style of footy that we want to play.”
(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
This was far from fluent stuff, but the non-negotiables were all there. The heroics of Munster to get back on the field with a compound dislocation in the finger will steal the headlines, but the quiet determination of the likes of Nick Meaney, Coates and Eliesa Katoa were what made the difference in a game of tight margins.
Both teams went in missing key outside backs, lined up inexperienced wingers and makeshift back rows. In those areas, the success was likely to come from the coach who best simplified their instructions and extracted the maximum cohesion from inherently incohesive players.
Parra were able to enact the first bit of their trademark power game, with plenty of offloads, but the attacking play that usually follows was nullified by the collective actions of the Storm defence, who didn’t give Moses and Brown an inch.
When the break came, it was Munster himself who gave it up: he shot the line and created a gap so wide that the biggest man on the field could wander through it and grab a vital try. Never count them out, though.
They stayed in it through collective effort and put themselves in the position to win through sheer persistence. That’s how you do it 19 times in a row in Round 1.
One of the biggest questions facing Parramatta coming into tonight was their ability to replace their superstar back row combination of 2022, with Isaiah Papali’i moved on to the Tigers and Shaun Lane sidelined with a broken jaw.
On top of that, there was the biggest question of all, surrounding Josh Hodgson’s ability to do what Reed Mahoney excelled at last year, providing those edge forwards with quick, accurate ball.
Mahoney is probably the best disher off the deck in the NRL, especially long passing, but Hodgson has always gone about the role differently: he’s a general, picking him moments to go and his moments to distribute.
On Thursday night, it looked like the attack had been remodelled to accommodate the new man.
When Parra were at their best in 2022, they kept their wingers exceptionally wide – feet on the touchline wide – to force qualitative overloads on the seams where inside defence meets outside defence, with the backrowers able to pin their opposing defender and either break the line themselves, as Papali’i was wont to do, or offload to a more dangerous runner, as was Lane’s speciality.
Hodgson wasn’t ever likely be able to get the ball wide enough fast enough to keep that going. Even tonight, he struggled badly at times with long balls to his left and might have been pinged for forward passes more than one.
Instead, Parra tried to pin in a different manner. Hodgson’s great strength is that he keeps markers interested and makes them stay alert, which offers the chance for the pin to happen in the same place from different angles, with Hodgson pinning men centrally by the ruck and the bigger men doing the same one man out.
Junior Paulo, in particular, was playing far wider and acting as a pivot player, with Dylan Brown hidden behind him in the start of shape. Hodgson held the middle up, then went quickly through Moses to find Paulo where, before, Lane might have been.
As one might have expected, Matt Doorey and J’Maine Hopgood weren’t able to replicate what their predecessors had done, but moving Paulo into a less traditional ball-playing role could well have led to more points before half time. One was called for a forward pass, but the overload had been created, just not executed. That comes.
It’s glib to say that elite players produce elite moments, but for a long time, it looked like that might not always be the case.
Munster produced the game’s best moment of quality to set up a leveller for Young Tonumaipea, but was responsible for a key Parramatta try, butchered a presentable tackle five play late in the game and sliced a field goal attempt well wide.
Ditto Moses, who struggled to influence the game in any meaningful way and fired his best chance at a field goal off the head of Nelson Asofa-Solomona. Dylan Brown, too, was quiet and threw his best opportunity forward. Both combined to provide the moment for Melbourne to win it.
You can always rely on Harry Grant, however. With everyone else watching the field goal, and the markers blowing out their backsides, he was the most alive to the moment and, as ever, the smartest.