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Opinion
Brisbane have all the weapons that can bring down Penrith on Grand Final night and we won’t see another lopsided game like last year but the Panthers still should have just enough firepower to get a third straight premiership.
With their unbelievable Grand Final experience, Penrith have an edge there but when you look at how well the Broncos have played, particularly over the past six weeks, the premiers only have a marginal advantage when you weigh everything up.
I think we’ll see a much closer contest this Sunday than what we saw last year when Penrith overwhelmed Parramatta.
The Eels had to play their best game to get past the Cowboys and they didn’t have the energy and confidence to go with the Panthers.
Brisbane won’t have that problem – they wrapped up the prelim final win over the Warriors midway through the second half and didn’t have to go at full intensity.
And I reckon they can play even better than what they’ve shown. They can be a genuine threat to the Panthers if they play like they’ve been doing recently.
From a rugby league point of view, if you love to see all of the components on display at one time I think we’re going to see a couple of teams that have elite quality in their defence and in their attack.
It’s going to be a realy high-quality Grand Final and the scoreline should be close all the way to the final siren.
There is very little separating both teams when you look at the numbers across the board and if you compare the two line-ups, there’s similarities everywhere.
Adam Reynolds and Nathan Cleary are two of the best halfbacks in the NRL at managing a game, Dylan Edwards vs Reece Walsh at fullback are two players in top form, Ezra Mam and Jarome Luai at five-eighth are similar sort of players, Liam Martin against Kurt Capewell on an edge, the go-forward of James Fisher-Harris and Moses Leota up against Payne Haas and Pat Carrigan.
Billy Walters had a belter on Saturday night. He scored two tries and knows when to give it to Reynolds and Walsh or when to get a forward to take a hit-up to create the momentum for the faster guys out wide to play off the back of that.
Part of the formula to beating Penrith is you can’t let them get settled and jam you in a corner at the start of your set from the backfield. The Broncos have the ability with guys like Walsh, Selwyn Cobbo, Herbie Farnworth and Kotoni Staggs to get some early momentum in a set before the forwards take up the mantle.
Penrith rely on field position. As soon as the Storm turned the ball over, the Panthers went straight on the attack.
After playing so many finals and big games against the Panthers in recent years, Reynolds understands that and he will be making sure they’re going forward or he’s kicking them downfield to give themselves their best chance.
Even though Penrith are a very well structured team defensively, Walsh’s speed and creativity mean he’s one of only a few players in the NRL who can give them problems.
Brisbane need to do a Penrith on Penrith. Their kick-chase and physicality has arguably been up there on the same level as the Panthers for most of this season and they need to bring that aggression to Accor Stadium to have any hope.
The two best teams are there on Grand Final day – the playoffs have gone to script with the Roosters beating Cronulla in week one the only upset and that was an even money game anyway.
They’re two healthy teams – now that Jarome Luai is back, the Panthers are at full strength and Brisbane have got their first-choice 17 available as well.
For Brisbane to win, they’re going to have to limit the Panthers to 18-20 points max because it will be extremely hard for them to put points on them like they’ve done against lesser opposition in the past couple of months.
Both clubs have handled the Origin period really well even though they had a lot of players going through that extra workload in the middle stages of the season.
There’s nothing new about Grand Final week for the Panthers because they’ve been in this position the past three years but Kevin Walters played in many of these games as a player and they’ve got their weekly preparation down pat even though there will be a few functions like the Dally Ms and media getting in the way.
There was a sense of inevitability to both prelim finals. It was a bit of letdown watching both games.
Melbourne couldn’t handle the leg speed and the physicality of the Panthers and the Warriors struggled to contain the same two facets of the game against Brisbane.
That’s what those two teams have done all year and it’s why they finished one, two. They play fast and physical for long periods of games.
For the Warriors to make it all the way to the prelim final after the past three years they’ve had to endure was a tremendous achievement.
It looked like they ran out of energy against the Broncos and they’ll be disappointed their season has ended like that but what they’ve done has been exceptional considering where they’ve come from at the start of the year.
Andrew Webster will probably win coach of the year at the Dally Ms on Wednesday night although it would be hard to go past Ivan Cleary for all that he’s achieved with Penrith.
They’ve had a strong season given the quality of players that they lost in the off-season and realigned their roster a bit younger this year.
Craig Bellamy talked about them being inconsistent at times and when you redevelop your team it can take a while for younger players to learn those lessons.
They looked like they were a bit wounded with a couple of their key players against Penrith. Cameron Munster was very quiet and Jahrome Hughes was carrying a knee injury and they’ve played pretty much the entire season without Ryan Papenhuyzen so they’ve got a couple of genuine reasons why they’re not quite up there with the two best teams.
I saw the meme floating around about Reece Walsh being offered an NFL deal after his pass to Selwyn Cobbo that was let go by the officials on Saturday night.
That wasn’t just a howler of a bad call, it was a grade-two howler.
The touch judges have got to have a better feel for those sorts of things, it would be shattering for something like that to decide a Grand Final.
I’ve written about this previously that getting the obvious calls right is critical for referees and I don’t mind the idea of letting the bunker step in for decisions like that if it means we don’t have the obvious bad blue occasionally getting through.
Michael Hagan is a former dual-premiership winning first grade player and current assistant coach of Australia's Kangaroos team. Hagan played 183 games for Canterbury and Newcastle and represented Queensland five times. He transitioned into a successful coach and took the Knights to a premiership in his first year in charge back in 2001. He went onto coach 205 NRL games and six times for Queensland in Origin.