Now that wasn’t exactly what we had in mind, was it? Perhaps it hurts more because it’s now happened two years in a row. Perhaps it’s because that for so many years we’ve more than had the Broncos’ measure. (Just forget about 2006.) Perhaps it’s because we could say that we lost it as much as they won it. Perhaps that might be unkind. What we can be sure of is that a lot of it came down to TMW – that man Walsh.
Give credit where it’s due – the Broncos, soundly beaten in the first half, hung on enough to keep the deficit within reason and then unleashed – and we weren’t good enough to go on with them. We were held scoreless after halftime. Just one more converted try would have been enough. And we had our chances, didn’t we? I’ll come back to that.
How about our first half? Dominant in the forwards, easy metres, great defence. It looked like we’d rolled out the old sayings: forwards win matches, defence wins matches, too big too strong and too fast – all over the ground. Yeah, we conceded an early one and then a bit later TMW scored one that only he could score. Should he have gone to the bin for the tackle on Coates? On most days, yes; but you have to admit that it only happened because ‘X’ had slipped and TMW had no time to adjust. But apart from that, we were all over them. We lost Jack early but we reset and took it from there. It should have by 18+ at the break rather than just 10. But it was ours for the taking – or ours to lose.
Big Tui had the best shot at putting it to rest, except for the intervention of TMW! Then they go down the other end and score – a 10-point turnaround, a big shift in a Grand Final. Paps, probably our best on the night, put on the afterburners a couple of times late on – but his afterburners run on 95 octane these days, not rocket fuel, so he got caught. TMW again. He’s the one on rocket fuel! Xavier looked home and hosed against his smaller opponent Mariner, but the ‘little’ fella, with help from that energiser bunny Staggs, roped him in and dumped him over the sideline. It looked like Katoa was going to put Paps in the clear at the very end but a great read in defence by TMW, who else, stopped him in his tracks. See, we had our chances. Usually we’d take them.
And, let’s be honest, once we went behind on the scoreboard we lost the plot a bit – poor last play choices, we got ruffled, we overplayed our hand a bit, we lost our shape and we lost Leiro with a couple minutes to go. So we lost!
You could say that the game was played in phases – they got an early one, we came back and took control, then they got a very healthy second wind and we couldn’t match it, they went ahead, we tried hard to rein them in and almost got there. But there’s no ‘almost’ in a Grand Final. You either get there or you don’t. We didn’t. We were phased out.
Hats off to Brisbane. We were good enough to break clear in the first half, so it’s not like we had an off night. In the end, we simply got caught short by a team that lifted strongly, just like they did in their past two games against Canberra and Penrith. And they did it without Reynolds for the last 30 minutes and Ben Hunt for the last 10. (Isn’t he the good news story to come put of this game?) That’s footy. It’s an 80 minute game.
Harry got it right when he said in the press conference after the game that we won’t get the chance to change the result today, but what we do today gives us a chance to change the result next season.
Beware the Storm in 2026!
Image: en.wikipedia.com
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