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Message: [QUOTE="Big Pete, post: 2989549, member: 1899"] 2013 Grand Final Sydney Roosters vs. Manly Sea Eagles After years of anticipation, 2013 was set to be the year the Sydney Roosters would finally meet South Sydney in a Grand Final. Finally a match worthy of the rivalry, the stars had all aligned and it was a promoter's dream... ...only Souths decided to implode in the second half against Manly. Oh well, Sydney/Manly in the first week of the finals was a great match, so this was a decent consolation. In my review of the Blues Game 3 08 loss, I described their obsession with the inside pass and their unwillingness to go long. In this case, it was the complete opposite. Manly refused to run the ball straight, opting instead to play laterally, making their edge players sitting ducks for the aggressive Roosters defence. What Toovey would have given to have some more of his props available. Jason King, Joe Galuvao, Richard Fa'aoso were all unavailable, which meant that after Kite came from the field, Jamie Buhrer suddenly found himself as the chief prop forward in the Sea Eagle's pack. It's where the Sea Eagles needed G. Stewart & Watmough to stand up, but neither player was able to play with the authority they needed. Actually early on Watmough threatened to be the player the Sea Eagles needed with some strong hits and surging runs, but then he decided to play cute. On the other hand, G. Stewart had the luxury of running at Maloney, but appeared to be playing in a dinner suit. G. Stewart did go down in the first tackle in the game, so I wonder if he broke a rib in that exchange? I never heard anything, but it would explain a lot. I thought the Roosters were a team that had too much talent for their opposition, but made their night harder than it had to be. They struggled to get into any sort of rhythm and kept making turnovers at inopportune times. Fortunately for them they just had too much talent and when you've got so many kicking targets like Tupou and Jennings it makes life so much easier. Once Kite went off the field, the Rooster's forwards took over the contest, allowing the Roosters to put in kick after kick which the Sea Eagles couldn't defend. One player that surprised me was Minichiello. I've always been under the assumption that once his back went in 2007, he was a mere shadow of a first grade player. Truthfully that wasn't a fair take and while Minichiello was no longer the best player in the game like he was in 2004/05, he could still hold his own and be counted on when the moment called. His support play for the Kenny-Dowall try was pivotal and the way he'd return the football gave the Roosters an edge over Manly. Another player who surprised me for all the wrong reasons was Lyon. At the time I was critical of Wolfman's performance and while his defence was poor, a lot of mistakes he made in attack can be put down to Lyon's poor judgement. Jamie didn't have the type of performance you'd come to suspect, with his best play milking a penalty try when the bounce of the ball would have beaten him. His inability to field a cross-field kick led directly to the Roosters' comeback and gave the opposition all the momentum. CC Medal - Should have gone to Moa. He was a machine in the middle, bruising the Sea Eagles with and without the ball and even laying on great passes. If it wasn't for Rose's incredible try saver, he would have been a shoe in. Based on the criteria the Aus selectors usually go on (aka how many times do they appear on the highlights video) it should have gone to Maloney. Played a hand in three of their tries, most of his kicks were on-song and his goal kicking was on-point. At the time I was fine with the decision of giving it to DCE, but that's when I valued faultless performances over impactful ones. Outside of a five minute window, DCE didn't appear that threatening and struggled to straighten the Sea Eagles attack. This felt like one of those performances where DCE was in his own world and while it was a good individual performance, in a team environment it was lacking. [/QUOTE]

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