State of Origin 1 match review: Queensland v. New South Wales at Brisbane

For the first time in some years, New South Wales went to Lang Park as favourites ($1.85 to $2.00 according to that modern Shakespeare, Joel ‘Sugar’ Caine from Sportsbet). A Queensland side with no Thurston, Slater, or Inglis (but still so scarily good that Hunt, Holmes, and Cherry-Evans couldn’t crack into it) signalled a fresh start for the concept. In other words, New South Wales Might Actually Have A Chance This Year.

But in the end, the result was never really in doubt. Sure, Queensland nearly scored the first try only for Corey Oates to lose control of the ball, and they kept New South Wales from holding more than a two-point lead until half a minute short of the break, but the Blues played with a swagger not seen for some years.

After James Maloney opened the scoring in the sixth minute with a try under the posts, the combatants put on display of near-perfect rugby league: both sides were garnering an equal share of possession and registering a 100% completion rate until late in the half. The first uses of the bench came earlier than normal, and Dane Gagai looked the most dangerous Maroon, his run around the 35-minute mark setting up Cooper Cronk’s cross-field kick which led to Oates scoring the hosts’ only try.

Another line break and easily-converted try, this time grounded by Mitchell Pearce off the back of a brilliant Andrew Fifita run, put i azzurri comfortably ahead going into half-time.

The men from the Premier State kept up the pressure in the second half: Cronk was called upon to bat a ball over the dead-ball line, then a series of head clashes put both Pearce and Origin débutant Anthony Milford in the head bin. Cameron Smith’s why’d-he-do-that decision to go short on a goal-line drop-out ended with James Tedesco over for New South Wales’ third try, and the fourth came courtesy of Fifita’s tenth tackle break following a Queensland error.

The visitors’ fifth try came on the hour mark, resulting from a line break by Jarryd Hayne, but by then it was all over. Not just the contest, but a decade of the Maroons being simply too good.

Waking up the next morning, for the first time in a long time, it felt good to be a New South Welshman.

CATTLEDOG!

Queensland 4 (Oates try; Smith 0/1 conv.) – New South Wales 28 (Fifita, Hayne, Maloney, Pearce, Tedesco tries; Maloney 4/5 convs.)

NRL round 3 match review: Melbourne v. Brisbane at Melbourne

The third round of the nineteenth season of the National Rugby League kicked off with a 2-0 Melbourne Storm side facing the Brisbane Broncos, who had so far notched a win and a golden-point loss. Overshadowing the clash between these two supernovas of modern rugby à treize was the return of the king, Billy Slater, and the addition of Benji Marshall to the Broncos.

In the end, the appearance of neither was the decisive factor in a game which had it all. Slater’s entry into the fray came in the twenty-ninth minute, coterminous with a penalty which put his side 8-6 ahead. The preceding half-hour had seen one try and one disallowed try apiece, with the most spectacular being James Roberts’ interception and length-of-the-field run with Josh Addo-Carr hot on his tail.

Somehow, a Storm outfit which was tackled eighteen times in its opponent’s quarter and which completed fourteen of its twenty-two sets went into the sheds only slightly scathed. The Purple Curtain looked like it was about to burst open soon after the break, when Ben Hunt sold it the dummy and left a diving Slater in the dust to put the men from Bananaland 12-8 ahead.

La viola had an opportunity to regain control a few minutes later, when Suliasi Vunivalu and Darius Boyd had a to-do, but the selfsame Fijian winger fumbled out of bounds to blow what should have been an easily convertible penalty set. And it continued to feel as if the footballing gods had been angered by the hosts: Addo-Carr was denied a try by a Ben Hunt tackle, Cameron Munster clashed heads with Corey Oates and retired to the bench, Will Chambers lost the ball centimetres short of the line to flash up the big red ‘NO TRY’, and Jesse Bromwich knocked-on just shy of the paint.

The final flourish came with less than three minutes on the clock. It’s still a blur to me. Melbourne gained some territory thanks to consecutive penalties. Ryley Jacks with the ball…a Bronco knocks it back…another Bronco fumbles…and Addo-Carr levels it. Cameron Smith, as is his wont, doesn’t miss the conversion.

This was the Melbourne Storm at their best: dominant, professional, and born to inspire much fear and loathing in opposition supporters.

Melbourne 14 (Jacks, Addo-Carr tries; Smith 2/2 convs.; Smith 1/1 pen.) – Brisbane 12 (Roberts, Hunt tries; Kahu 2/2 convs.)

NRL round 1 match review: Cronulla-Sutherland v. Brisbane at Cronulla

In a not entirely unexpected development, given the defection of Ben Barba and the retirement of Michael Ennis, Cronulla lost the opening match of their NRL title defence, going down 26-18 to a spirited Brisbane Broncos side.

The Sharks had Adam Blair pinned in his own in-goal area thirteen seconds in, but they never really controlled the match. Broncos’ winger Jordan Kahu was the star of the show, converting all four of his team’s tries, scoring the first himself against the run of play, and slotting a penalty goal in the eighteenth minute after which i giallomarroni never trailed.

The hosts had only themselves to blame: much of the Brisbanites’ first-half yardage came courtesy of penalties, promising advances to the goal line being snuffed out only by ball-handling errors. Cronulla equalised through Gerard Beale in the eleventh minute, but Kahu’s penalty goal and James Roberts’ grounding off a superb Anthony Milford kick put the Broncos up 14-6 at the break, having secured three-fifths of possession and completed six more sets.

When Corey Oates went over in the corner six minutes into the second stanza, it felt over, and the Harold Holt metaphors started flowing thick and fast. But there were some late flourishes: Chad Townsend broke the line and chipped for James Maloney to chase and score Cronulla’s second try. Ten minutes later, CSFC’s momentum induced a Ben Hunt dropped ball leading to a Ricky Leutele try.

With the margin at two points, it was a nervous period for the visitors. They endured Korbin Sims being held up before Milford capitalised on a Paul Gallen ‘falcon’ to put some space between the sides.

Cronulla without Barba and Ennis failed to impress in their first run, while Wayne Bennett surely has the makings of another great Broncos side under his charge.

Cronulla-Sutherland 18 (Beale, Maloney, Leutele tries; Maloney 3/3 convs.) – Brisbane 26 (Kahu, Roberts, Oates, Milford tries; Kahu 4/4 convs.; Kahu 1/1 pens.)

State of Origin 1 match review: New South Wales v. Queensland at Sydney

In front of a packed Olympic Stadium, the opening match of this year’s State of Origin series was played out and didn’t disappoint. Despite the loss, New South Wales played as well as they have done in some years, and will go into the second match with the knowledge that they have Queensland’s measure.

After just thirteen minutes, James Tamou was penalised for holding down Matt Gillett at the play-the-ball; the darling of the commentariat, Jonathan Thurston, snaring the two points which would prove decisive. Queensland dominated the field position stakes early, being tackled inside their opposition quarter twelve times before the Blues could even get off the mark.

Penrith fullback Matt Moylan had an up-and-down night, conceding goal-line drop-outs at one end and setting up attacks at the other. His effort in the twenty-first minute began a series of four consecutive attacking sets, culminating in James Maloney putting Easts second-rower Boyd Cordner over for the first try of the night.

New South Wales coach Laurie Daley unleashed the ‘Beast of Belmore’, David Klemmer, soon afterwards, but Queensland ended an even first half 6-4 up thanks to an old-school backline movement that ended with Dane Gagai’s inaugural Origin try. As the two sides headed for the sheds, they were, statistically speaking, virtually inseparable. The hosts had had fifty-one percent of the possession, but both teams had completed seventeen of nineteen sets and made two offloads.

The second half was a disappointment for those who want rugby league to be glorified touch football producing a collage of highlight-reel moments (which seems to be most people in this town); it was, however, a delight for those of us who savour the physical and tactical intricacies of le rugby à treize. The boys from the Premier State began to dominate the statistics, but couldn’t make it count on the scoreboard. Josh Morris came closest, having a try disallowed in the sixty-sixth minute by what the hip cats these days are calling ‘The Bunker’.

Our lads threw everything at the cocky overdogs from Sir Joh’s Mrs. Palaszczuk’s Bananaland: Klemmer and Andrew Fifita, Robbie Farah’s sumptuous kicking game, even ten minutes of Dylan Walker, but to no avail. With fifteen missed tackles and four penalties each, this was rugby league played to perfection.

New South Wales 4 – Queensland 6

Tries: Cordner 25’ (N. S. W.); Gagai 37’ (Qld.)

Conversions: Reynolds 0/1 (N. S. W.); Thurston 0/1 (Qld.)

Penalties: Thurston 1/1 (Qld.)

Anzac Test match review: Australia v. New Zealand at Brisbane

A spate of four tries in the twenty minutes leading up to half-time, coupled with a twenty-minute period of superlative defensive work after the break, have ensured that New Zealand retain bragging rights in the battle of the two finest exponent nations of le rugby à treize.

Australia attacked hard early, and when they won a penalty in front of goal against the run of play in the eighth minute, an unsure New Zealand took the two points. Five minutes later, a goal-line drop-out was returned for a Kangaroo try, Cooper Cronk hitting Sam Thaiday with a low, flat pass. And then the avalanche began.

In the twentieth minute, St. George winger Jason Nightingale intercepted an Australian pass, and the All Golds hustled the ball up the low-grade Lang Park turf, Manu Vatuvei doing the honours. The same player doubled his try tally eight minutes later, catching a sixth-tackle kick and bustling over in the corner. Then, in a manner reminiscent of Germany’s domination of the restarts in their 7-1 win over Brazil in last year’s World Cup semi-final, i bianconeri needed only one set of six to go from kick-off receivers to try-scorers; this time it was Shaun Johnson diving through the Australian defence.

The nightmare wasn’t over for the home side. A Cronk fumble was followed in short order by a penalty, which led to a Nightingale kick. Greg Inglis uncharacteristically miscued his jump, leaving Easts centre Shaun Kenny-Dowall with little to do but pounce on the loose ball, grounding just as the clock ticked over to complete its fortieth minute.

What followed after the break was quite possibly one of the finest displays of goal-line defending ever witnessed. On five occasions leading up to the fifty-eighth minute did la oro y verde advance to within metres of the Kiwi line; on five occasions were they denied. Josh Dugan was forced into touch in-goal; Cronk was tackled short of the line by Roger Tuivasa-Sheck; Dugan went close again but could only engineer a scrum from a Vatuvei knock on.

It was only on their sixth forward thrust of the period that Australia were able to score, Melbourne Storm centre Will Chambers narrowing the deficit to sixteen points, and Jonathan Thurston’s conversion shaving off two more. But that, aside from a forward pass denying Luke Lewis a try and an offside call denying Kenny-Dowall a second, was to be all she wrote.

Australia 12 – New Zealand 26

Tries: Thaiday 13’; Chambers 59’ (Aust.); Vatuvei 20’, 28’; Johnson 32’; Kenny-Dowall 40’ (N. Z.)

Conversions: Thurston 2/2 (Aust.); Johnson 3/4 (N. Z.)

Penalties: Johnson 2/2 (N. Z.)

NRL round 5 match review: Canterbury-Bankstown v. South Sydney at Sydney

The grand finalists met in a rematch at the Cathy Freeman-John Aloisi Memorial Stadium and the sequel was even better than the original.

Both teams went into the match with 3-1 records, and it was last season’s runners-up who opened the scoring in the fifth minute when a double knock-on led to a scrum, which led to Curtis Rona being put through in the corner. When Sam Perrett took advantage of some poor defending to score in the other corner nine minutes later, the Bulldogs were up 10-0 and it was looking like turning into a rout.

The weather, however, was to be a constant factor throughout the match, and the Berries’ next two line breaks failed due to fumbles and poor footwork caused in part by the precipitation. They looked as if they would go into the sheds with a comfortable lead when an Alex Johnston kick was saved by Brett Morris, followed by a Glenn Stewart line break being quashed through Tom Burgess’ knock-on. The sight of the trainer strapping Greg Inglis’ knee was another worry for i rossoverdi.

In the thirty-ninth minute, however, the complexion of the match changed. A Canterbury infringement at the play-the-ball gave Souths a scrum feed, and the resulting passage of play put Isaac Luke over, but not before Sam Kasiano’s knee collided with his head, ruling him out for the rest of the match. Adam Reynolds, as is his wont, made no mistake with the conversion or the penalty, and the eight-point try put them two points behind.

The second half, however, opened with little sign of a Rabbitohs comeback. Canterbury extended their lead in the twelfth minute of the period when Josh Morris’ chest and hands were on the right end of a kick, and Trent Hodkinson’s conversion put the score at 16-8. Souths responded soon after, front-rower David Tyrrell getting on the end of a deflected grubber kick and grounding underneath the posts.

In a brutal war of attrition at a rain-soaked Stade Olympique, that would turn out to be the final try. Both teams had bombs defused in the in-goal area, and a Canterbury play-the-ball infringement resulted in Souths being held up over the line and then blowing a kick. A South play-the-ball infringement well within goal-kicking range soon followed, but i biancoazzurri gambled and went for the try. When that failed, Souths ran the ball down the pitch, drawing a penalty from Canterbury’s Lancastrian prop James Graham. Reynolds’ kick tied the scores and one readied oneself for that David Gallop-induced abomination, golden point extra time.

The post-penalty kick-off, which looked to be sailing out of bounds, was inexplicably misfielded by two Rabbitohs players. The line drop-out was long, but not long enough to prevent Hodkinson from getting within field goal range and putting the Bulldogs ahead. When Reynolds tried the same from an impossible situation forty-five metres out, he was cleaned up by Graham, charging in to smother the kick. The fracas, if you will, that followed resulted in a report, a sin binning, some crowd trouble, and the awarding of a penalty to Souths. Bryson Goodwin did the honours for the injury-ravaged reigning premiers, and another chapter in this great rivalry was written.

Canterbury-Bankstown 17 – South Sydney 18

Tries: Rona 5’; Perrett 14’; J. Morris (C.-B.); Luke 39’; Tyrrell 59’ (S. Syd)

Conversions: Hodkinson 2/3 (C.-B.); Reynolds 2/2 (S. Syd)

Penalties: Reynolds 2/2; Goodwin 1/1 (S. Syd)

Field goals: Hodkinson (1/1)

NRL grand final match review: South Sydney v. Canterbury-Bankstown at Sydney

It has been nineteen years since noted sporting expert Tina Turner proclaimed rugby league ‘simply the best’. South Sydney and Canterbury-Bankstown proved her right in front of the [Insert Sponsor’s Name Here] Stadium’s largest post-Olympic crowd, as they played out a bruising and entertaining encounter, the result of which broke the former’s forty-three year premiership hoodoo.

The signs that the match wouldn’t disappoint were evident from the kick-off, whereupon the head of Canterbury enforcer James Graham collided with that of his compatriot Sam Burgess, doing a number on the tough Yorkshireman’s cheekbone. The Bulldogs were jittery and error-prone in the first few minutes, and when they fumbled a sixth-minute bomb into the waiting hands of Lote Tuqiri, the Souths faithful thought that the wait was finally over, until the video showed that the fumble had been caused by a high shot by a Souths player.

The Rabbitohs only had to wait another fourteen minutes to open the scoring, when a penalty put them downfield and Alex Johnston received a crafty shove-pass on the wing. Adam Reynolds made up for the missed conversion in the twenty-seventh minute: Greg Inglis intercepted and advanced to within forty metres of the Bulldogs’ line, the fourth play-the-ball of the set of six was interfered with, and Reynolds duly followed his coach’s instructions to take the two points.

The remainder of the first half proceeded trylessly but not without incident. Josh Morris almost scored Canterbury’s first try but lost control of the ball, which was then pounced on by quick-thinking Souths defenders. Sporadic outbreaks of argy-bargy occurred, usually involving Morris, and threatened to break out into good old-fashioned fisticuffs on the half-time whistle until cooler heads prevailed.

The second half started much the same way as the first, with Souths pressuring Canterbury into making crucial errors in the vicinity of their goal. They failed to capitalise, and the match took a turn seven minutes into the half when i rossoverdi lost the ball inside their own ten. Tony Williams was the beneficiary of a perfectly-weighted grubber on the last tackle, and Trent Hodkinson’s conversion tied the scores at six points apiece.

The Rabbitohs hit back in the fifty-sixth minute, when George Burgess, back on the field after being cleaned up in the first half, received the ball from dummy-half and waltzed his way around a few Canterbury players before grounding under the posts. Two penalties in successive minutes, one for a shoulder-charge and one for interfering with the play-the-ball, gave Adam Reynolds the chance to put Souths further ahead; he fluffed the first and hit the second, bringing the scores to 14-6.

Souths had the momentum, and it was up to Graham to stop it. The feisty Lancastrian stopped the clock in the sixty-eighth minute with a hip-and-shoulder hard enough to put David Tyrrell on a stretcher, and when normal service resumed, Canterbury looked the more likely side. Twice in two minutes they forced Souths to knock on in-goal, and it was when the Bulldogs’ third consecutive set of six was arrested prematurely that the tide finally turned for Souths.

The avalanche began in the seventy-third minute, when a Canterbury smother gave Souths a second kick on the last tackle; Greg Inglis aimed for the far corner, the ball bounced over the heads of one chaser from each team before Kirisome Auva’a grounded. Five minutes later, Adam Reynolds couldn’t believe his luck when he duelled with Sam Perrett for receipt of a kick and the Bulldogs player ran into the goalpost in a slapstick fashion; by converting both of these, he helped put the Bunnies up 26-6, and we had reached the Gatorade-bucket-over-the-head moment.

The icing on the cake was provided by Inglis in the final minute, when he broke through a tired Canterbury line, went one way and then the other, and scored his team’s fifth try. Sam Burgess was given the honours but failed to convert, but it didn’t matter. For the twenty-first time, South Sydney were premiers.

Although he failed to get on the scoresheet, this was Sam Burgess’ match. The man from Dewsbury had Clive Churchill Medallist written all over him, from his first-up head clash, to the blood evident on his face for most of the match, to the tears of joy he shed at the final whistle. I was going to label him the Joel Selwood of the NRL (one of the highest compliments this Geelong supporter can give a sportsman), but my knowledge of northern English sporting history gave me an even better comparison: Bert Trautmann’s match-winning performance in the 1956 FA Cup final, when Manchester City’s German goalkeeper inspired his team to victory despite breaking his neck making a diving save.

Sam, and Souths, you were simply the best.

South Sydney 30 – Canterbury-Bankstown 6

Tries: Johnston 20’; G. Burgess 56’; Auva’a 73’; Reynolds 78’; Inglis 80’ (S. Syd.); Williams 49’ (C.-B.)

Conversions: Reynolds 3/4; S. Burgess 0/1 (S. Syd.); Hodkinson 1/1 (C.-B.)

Penalties: Reynolds 2/3 (S. Syd)