February is a wonderful convergence of sporting seasons. As the cricket fades into another one-day series that will be forgotten as soon as it ends, the NRL teams are gearing up for their season.
While the trail games have no bearing on the season and feature unusual formats, they do have some interest. And a nice surprise was the grand final rematch held at Bluetongue at Gosford on Friday night. Being just down the road I went along to see how the Storm and Manly look for 2008.
The first 30 minutes (the game played over three 30 minute periods) both the Storm and Manly fielded sides devoid of NRL stars except for Cameron Smith having a hit out. Melbourne raced away to a 20 nil lead but no-one was really counting that as a true reflection of the sides. We were waiting for the big boys. They came our for the second 30 minutes and the interest went up. Orford and Cronk were not holding anything back but Melbourne won that period 12-10. The intensity did seem to waver a little and I suspect part of that was the small crowd (only about 5,000 or so).
The third 30 minute period saw Billy Slater score two tries and the Storm rack up 24 unanswered points as both teams experimented with their line ups. The Storm ended up winning 56-10. Trail games should not be used to judge regular season form but the Storm were impressive. As for Manly, they are going to really miss Monaghan. It was evident from the second 30 minutes. They lacked penetration compared to the Storm.
One interesting aspect was to see Israel Folau in the flesh. Sure he looks a big unit on TV but when you see him live you realize that the TV distorts his size. In real life he is a really friggin’ big unit.
Other games over the weekend saw Newcastle beat Auckland 22-14, the Broncos won 20-10 over the Cowboys, Canberra 34-28 over the Titans and the Panthers and Rooster had hit outs against Jim Beam cup and a collection of local teams respectively.
Gosford gets some more NRL trial goodness this coming Saturday with the Bunnies up against the Sharks. Sidelined commenter Bismarck O’Measles shall be making the trip as well so a good time shall be had.
2 responses so far ↓
Patrick // Feb 18, 2008 at 10:38 am
yea Israel is huge isn’t he?
I ride past the Storm every now and then on their way in and out of training – they are all big, obviously, but Folau is one of those kids that look like they were born in their mid-twenties.
Quick too!
Did anyone mention agile?
Club Troppo » Missing Link Daily // Feb 19, 2008 at 2:13 pm
[...] Mike Salter also continues his detailed post mortem of the A League soccer season (earlier parts are here and here) while Shaun sadistically reviews Manly’s flogging by Melbourne Storm in a “grand final replay” pre-season NRL trial [...]