MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 21: Cameron Smith of the Storm scores a try during the round three NRL match between the Melbourne Storm and the Cronulla Sharks at AAMI Park on March 21, 2015 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images) Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images
Although they’ll take it as one if they think it’ll help, it’s no slight on the Melbourne Storm that Sunday’s grand final buildup appears to be all about their opponents, the Cronulla Sharks.
It’d be enough if that were simply because the Sharks have never won a premiership since joining the top flight in 1967 – a wait so long that should Cronulla win on Sunday long-time supporters may feel disorientation amongst the elation, as so much of what came to define their team will no longer be true.
But 50 years of successfully avoiding success is one thing; another is recent history. Just two years ago Cronulla were a basket case and, worse, an embarrassment. Many league fans might have been prepared to look the other way had the NRL taken the Sharks for a long drive – to Perth or purgatory, whatever came first. That year the sponsor-less Sharks finished last and the position flattered them. However, their measly five wins and a points differential of -279 were merely sniffles when measured against a body wracked on a cellular level.
The Sharks were a club in crisis, one reeling from the tail-whip of the 2013 Asada scandal. The club faced a $1m fine, staff were sacked, coach Shane Flanagan was suspended for a year, interim coach Peter Sharp, beaten and bowed, later resigned, captain Paul Gallen, among others, accepted backdated bans, and star forward Andrew Fifita publicly flirted with rugby union and Canterbury (before changing his mind).
To top it all off, five-eighth Todd Carney wrote himself a new entry in the Bumper Book of Boofheads by urinating into his own mouth while on camera. Not even this major role in contributing to the national vocabulary (it’s called “bubbling”, kids) was enough to save his skin.
Two years on and the Sharks are in the grand final. The Sharks are in the grand final. It barely computes. But, 2014 aside, the Sharks have been building for this since 2012 when, with Flanagan overseeing an overhauled squad, they finished seventh. After finishing fifth in 2013, the Sharks threatened again in 2015, performing promisingly on the back of their experienced forwards and integrating the youthful skills of Valentine Holmes and Jack Bird. It was looking good until the Cowboys thumped them 39-0 in the semi-finals. Yet again the Sharks’ “Up, Up Cronulla” team song appeared to have written for ironic purposes.
But the Sharks have progressed this year with a well-balanced squad; equal parts flair and grit, youth and experience (the Sharks’ grand final squad, in terms of their combined first grade games, will comprise the most experienced team in NRL grand final history – which should help keep nerves under control). The arrival of new halves Chad Townsend and, in particular, James Maloney, coincided with, or triggered, an Indian summer for the likes of Michael Ennis, Luke Lewis, Wade Graham, Gallen and Ben Barba, the latter of whom is back to something resembling his best.
With hit-up king Fifita popping offloads like a piñata leaks lollies, points have flowed (24.3 per game in 2016 compared to 19.5 last year), and the back three of Barba, Holmes and Sosaia Feki have scored 50 tries between them. At the same time the Sharks’ defence has tightened up (16.8 conceded compared to 19.8). Mid-year they put together a 15-match winning streak so impressive that one was forced to ignore the weight of history and declare them a real chance. That is, until they then won just one in six leading into the finals, allowing both Melbourne and Canberra to overtake them.
Would we really have been surprised if they’d then bowed out in straight sets? No, but in a sign that this Cronulla side has the ability to do what no other Cronulla side has done – sides that have included Tommy Bishop, Greg Pierce, Steve Rogers, Gavin Miller, Andrew Ettingshausen, and David Peachey – the Sharks showed togetherness and resolve to pick themselves up and see off the Raiders and, most clinically and impressively, the Cowboys. In doing so they have reached their first decider since the Super League grand final of 1997 and, before that, the 1978 NSWRL grand final.
In theory this makes the Sharks this year’s fairytale story, bearing in mind that media bylaws demand there be one for promotional purposes. But to be honest, given Cronulla’s various scandals and the on/off-field behavioural history of the likes of Gallen, Fifita, and Ennis – men as hard to love as sand in your gusset – the Sharks’ fairytale is more like something from the oeuvre of the Brothers Grimm than Disney. Cronulla are not really a team towards whom neutral fans would be inclined to feel any particular warmth, but a win on Sunday might well induce widespread sentimentalism and an acceptance that after all this time, all this pain, the Sharks have earned such joy.
If the Sharks aren’t universally loved then neither are the Melbourne Storm who, in NSW at least, will forever be tarred with the Original Sin of being based in Victoria and of being born out of Super League in the way Damien (of The Omen) was born of a jackal. Oh, and there’s the don’t-mention-the-war matter of the salary cap rorting that saw the Storm stripped of both their 2007 and 2009 premiership titles. Still, you’d have to be wilfully stubborn to overlook the Storm’s continued ability to stay at or near the top year in, year out.
In fact, ahead of what will be the club’s 500th game on Sunday, and their sixth grand final in 11 seasons, they have the greatest winning percentage of any first grade team in rugby league history (63.5%). Yes, there’s an asterisk against Melbourne’s name for many of those years, but even after shedding players to belatedly abide by the salary cap in 2010, the Storm haven’t faded away as many thought they might have. Or should have.
Helmed by Craig Bellamy – a man who can wring blood from a stone; a man whose game-day passion keeps Windex in business – they are as well-drilled as the North Korean military during Kim Jong-un’s birthday parade. New players come in and fall into stride. This year, even a season-ending injury to someone as brilliant and influential as Billy Slater wasn’t enough to derail them.
The steadying influence of their talismans Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk cannot be overestimated. Nor can their footballing brains. How reassuring and nerve-settling for some of the Storm’s younger players to look across the dressing room and see them lacing up their boots. With this pair playing the role of coaches on the field (and, in Smith’s case, the referee too), the Storm have been a model of consistency, as their minor premiership attests.
In fullback Cameron Munster, in Fijian wingers Suliasi Vunivalu and Marika Koroibete, they have line-breaks and finishing prowess. With leading forwards Jesse Bromwich and Tohu Harris they have muscle and offloads. But it’s their remarkable organisation in defence which has taken them so far this year, with the Storm conceding an average of just 12.5 points a game. It allows them, as with last week’s preliminary finals against Canberra, to score just 14 points and win. The ability of that defence to hold firm on Sunday will go a long way to determining the result of the grand final.
Cronulla, less reliant on structure, appear to have the edge in attack. Could they also have an edge in desire, one underlined by their club’s empty trophy cabinet? Captain Paul Gallen, for one, wondered if he’d retire without ever playing in a season decider, let alone winning one, and he knows well enough that it would be foolish to expect another chance to come his way. So he and his team will lay it all on the line on Sunday. It won’t bring Harold Holt back but it just might be enough to end half a century of heartbreak.
