Forty-one years ago Manly Warringah Sea Eagles were awarded the NSWRFL premiership trophy after playing six games in 24 days. There was a drawn semi-final on the Sunday against Parramatta Eels and a replay on the subsequent Tuesday. That was followed by a drawn grand final and another Tuesday afternoon replay, this time against Cronulla Sharks. It’s safe to say Manly were bashed up, tired and emotional.
Six games of rugby league in three weeks, five of them sudden death (in a period of brutality in which minor premiers Western Suburbs Magpies were masters of the dark arts) will bash and tire a man. Manly did, however, have The Wombat.
Graeme “Wombat” Eadie was the greatest fullback of his time. Manly also called upon Australia’s five-eighth Alan Thompson, hooker and captain Max Krilich, and a second-rower called Terry “Igor” Randall, about whom people told scary stories.
Yet they were all playing broken; running on fumes and muscle memory. And to beat the Eels, Magpies and Sharks on such a long and bumpy run to grand final glory remains an anomaly, a freak of history, a relative impossibility. It’s still more likely than the Sea Eagles winning the premiership in 2019.
For after Manly’s thumping loss to Melbourne Storm on Saturday evening at Brookvale Oval a line can surely be run through their premiership aspirations. They’d have needed luck anyway to get over the competition’s big dogs but instead they lost their most dangerous player, fullback Tom Trbojevic, to a season-ending pectoral injury. Not even peak Wombat could save them now.
The top four is all but set. Storm (40) are minor premiers, Roosters (36) are outright second. Canberra Raiders (32) play New Zealand Warriors in Canberra next Saturday afternoon and will finish third if they win. If they lose to the Warriors and the Rabbitohs beat the Roosters, they’ll play an away game against Storm in Melbourne. If they win it’s an away game against the Roosters.
The bottom half of the top eight is more interesting. Parramatta host Manly at Bankwest Stadium, the winners will finish 5th, the losers 6th. Brisbane will finish 7th if they beat the Bulldogs at ANZ Stadium and 8th if they do not.
All this means that the final spot in the playoffs comes down to Wests Tigers or Cronulla Sharks who, quite deliciously, play each other in a sudden death blockbuster at 2pm on Sunday afternoon at Leichhardt Oval. The winner makes the eight; the loser makes plans for Mad Monday (or equivalent). The old joint will be packed.
It’s likely immaterial to the big picture, however. Several NRL teams have made the grand final after finishing the season outside the top four; none have won it.
In 1998 Canterbury came from 9th in a top-10 finals series before succumbing to Brisbane. In 2017 North Queensland Cowboys rose improbably from eighth before losing to Storm. Parramatta Eels rode the Hayne Train from eighth in 2009 before also falling to Melbourne.
Everyone will need luck, of course, even Roosters and Storm. All will need to play to the vagaries of the referees, and it’s here that Melbourne have one of their greatest advantages. In captain Cameron Smith they have a master manipulator, a man who knows the flow of a game, its rhythms. Smith knows how long to hold a man down before the referee will blow the whistle. Timing is all.
Two weeks ago against Canberra, with the Raiders on the boil, Smith held a 30-second conversation with referee Ben Cummins that effectively scotched the visitors’ momentum. Smith had his say. Storm breathed in. Everything reset. The Raiders ran at a committed and “set” line of defenders.
Of all his talents, talking to referees may be Smith’s greatest point of difference among his peers in the pantheon of Immortals.
That’s why Melbourne Storm is your minor premier, even with a round to go. More should perhaps be made of winning the JJ Giltinan Shield given it’s the mark of the best team for the longest in the season proper. Fans of other football competitions – England’s Premier League, say – can’t comprehend how the “best” team of the year can be decided by one sudden-death Super Bowl rather than a body of work across a season.
As it stands Storm have scored the second-most points and conceded the fewest for a differential 63 points better than their nearest rivals and likely grand final opponents, Sydney Roosters.
Of the other contenders, the Rabbitohs will get themselves up for their arch-rivals on Thursday night but it’s hard to see them getting over the Roosters machine, at least based on exposed form. The Raiders are not out of the picture either. In their favour is defence and patience, it’s what keeps the good teams in games when their attack is sputtering, as Canberra’s was for large parts against the Sharks. Defence kept them in the win over Storm in Melbourne too, and it kept them in the four-point home losses to Manly and the Roosters. If their attack can find some fluidity, and they’re patient enough to wait for it to work, they remain capable of upsetting the big two. They’ll need better luck than Manly, however.
