Sea Eagles 22 defeated Cowboys 12 @ SFS, National Rugby League Semi Final 14Sep12
Awesome to see the reigning premiers lift from thier poor performance last week and win another finals match!
Went to the game, whilst the crown of 16,678 was a bit of a disappointing total, it felt like more and was beautiful to see & be a part of so much Maroon and White, so glad I went down for it.
There was a pretty even spread of poor ref decision for both sides, for mine 1 try for each side should not have occurred and overall some of the officiating continued a somewhat worrying trend of inconsistency lately.
Regardless, the best team certainly won on the day - Manly played the better footy for over 3/4 of that game and deserved the win.
Seeing Brett "Snake" Stewart go over for another NRL try was, once again, beautiful to watch!
Daly Cherry-Evans stepped up well out-playing his opposing number, Manly's forwards put in pretty good low-error performances, but crucially Manly's less-accomplished players Jorge Taufua, Dean Whare & Michael Oldfield all played solid games, especially Taufua with a great man-of-the-match performance.
Also great to see the captain Jamie "Killer" Lyon play well, virtually unhindered by a leg injury from the week before, lets hope he recovers fully and continues to play well as he is often the catalyst for Manly's success on the field.
They out-played, out-classed and out-lasted thier opponents.
And in the process completing the trifecta of elimination of Queensland-based teams from the NRL competition - the icing on the cake!
Manly Warringah have the trophy, and all others have to work real hard to wrangle it away.
Next week the cheatin' mexican Storm host the Sea Eagles down in Melbourne and THAT will be a real tough encounter for the premiers who will need to lift even more and perform better again if they hope to make another Grand Final. They CAN do it, let's hope they do!
Go Manly!
