I saw this close game coming given storm struggling in all their tight games this year (panthers loss early season, two eels losses and late win over manly).
However, I still thought the storm would make me salty as **** and prove me wrong.
Panthers defence awesome and storm again looked stressed and structureless in a tight contest (making it 4 losses, 1 win in close games). I thought the exact same thing last year but they managed to get an easy run through the finals and got a great start vs penrith in the GF. They are monumental front runners. But still have plenty of flaws. No one is perfect and that has once again been proven (thank ****).
Now im OK with whoever wins next week. Big opportunity missed by us but oh well we will learn and need to get some defencive resilience into us by the time the next final series rolls around. That is unless we rely on a storm like breeze through the finals and a fast start in the GF (which I wouldn’t put behind us given our risky style of play).
It’s more respectable and fun to watch a resilient defencive team though so I would much rather that we take the Penrith-style path from 2022 onwards.