Love to see it! Always a fun match between manly and the storm. My favourite match in our calendar. Albeit it’d be misleading to call it a high quality game.
I was a negative nelly this week (for good reason) although reluctantly tipped us to get the job done this week. It’d be criminal if we saw no response after last week’s funeral. The formlines dont tend to matter too much leading in with Manly vs Storm too. It was good to see the players get up for it again this year.
But are we really going to open up new threads every week about the last year vs this year thing based on if we get either get smashed, draw or win? It’s like a see saw I cant keep up. That was a fun win but if we want to analyse it seriously, it’s hard to say it was anything more than a high-effort, low-quality, wet weather, scrappy, entertaining and tough game. It was in the balance for ages, and there’s plenty to work on with it being just 2 tries to 1 despite all the ball, penalties and sin bins. In terms of comparison, we did win last year and the storm are an unknown quantity this year (but certainly depreciated). Rather than us respond to the weekly ebbs and flows, I think the only way to truly compare will be by the overall trends as the season goes on (although given we are full strength this year 2021 is always the reference as opposed to 22’).
Anyways that gripe aside, we are both (and all) pleased as hell to win against Munster, Bellamy and co! It was a great result for the boys, and will serve us very well if we build on it. It was built almost purely on effort, pressure and ruck control, although our attack in the 20 is rubber hammer stuff. We looked best when things got adlib / unstructured. Thanks to the courageous effort of our forward pack tonight we were saved the palpitations of watching our edge defence being tested. I think Saab is showing he is keen to play this year.
Great win. Fun game, but nothing more, nothing less. Jot it down as a win over the storm 🍾🎉
