Crash: One bad call overshadows a classic rugby league contest
The call was bad and will go down in history as the defining moment, but let’s not forget how good the match was before that, writes Robert Craddock.
NRL
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WHAT a game. What a shame.
In a way it was sadly fitting that the last game of NRL for the decade was decided by the one consistent theme of that period … a stunning refereeing blunder.
Ben Cummins will never live down the brain snap decision seven minutes from time in which he signalled six tackles to go for Canberra when they had nailed the Roosters to their line then changed it without the Raiders players realising it.
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Had he gone either way it would have been acceptable – but going both ways ruined the game.
The Roosters scored soon after and a Raiders dream which has been brewing for 25 years vaporised as the Roosters ran out 14-8 winners and became the first back-to-back premiership winners since the Broncos 26 years ago.
The Roosters were defiantly brilliant but the Raiders deserved better and it was a bitter end for a team which will never play together again.
You can get beaten a hundred different ways in a grand final but a referee changing a decision mid-stream – when does it ever happen? - would be in nobodies top 100 predictions. Unbelievable.
Until that moment it looked as if the Raiders would prove that passion would beat structure, that raucous determination can overcome cool class, that a great team can sometimes out-hussle a side brimming with great players.
You don’t have to love the Roosters but you do have to respect them.
They are premiers again not because they have the flash, dash and cash but because when they have to play like beggers scrambling over a biscuit they get down and dirty. The Roosters are happy to scramble like headless chooks if they have to.
The amazing Cooper Cronk, the original good looking Rooster, retired a winner after a dramatic game in which he was sin-binned but played with bottomless heart and courage.
The match was contest between a club that had played eighth grand finals in 20 years against one having their first appearance in 25 years but the men in green never looked like greenhorns despite trailing 8-0 early.
The occasion roused rather than rattled them. Inexperienced grand final teams can either be inspired to fire-breathing extremes or simply over-cook and collapse and the Raiders were very much the former.
At half-time, trailing 8-6 they were hustling around their dressing room like hungry kids at dinner time while the Roosters looked subdued and concerned.
The Roosters play such a steady, structured brand of football it’s chastening to see them rattled. But when Cronk was sin-binned for a professional foul early in the second half they certainly did not look like the team who had beaten the Raiders 17 times in their last 18 starts.
Canberra has been tackling like mad men all winter and so they did again. They’ve been attacking with un-nerving randomness for six months and again they were delightfully unpredictable, rattling the Roosters.
This was the machine versus the mavericks, the romantics versus the realists and hard-nosed pragmatism won the day.
Rugby league has a habit of delivering something you’ve never seen before and the Roosters first try followed an incident where a kick bounced off the heads of a Canberra Raider then a Roosters trainer – a Double Falcon – was the Three Stooges moment of the night.
The Roosters were sentenced to life the hard way when their experienced utility Mitch Aubusson his leg and was out of the game early.
Nothing came easily after that.
Big guns like James Tedesco were shut down by a defence which attacked like a swarm of bees. Dangerous talents like Lattrel Mitchell went quiet.
Cronk leaves the game not simply as one of its finest servants and greatest achievers but his story is all the more inspiring because initially he was not that good early on.
People forget his great deeds were preceded by a career at Brisbane Norths which featured more than 60 first grade games and the Storm once sent him back to Brisbane not even knowing whether he was a fullback or a halfback.
When people waxed on about the Big Four at the Melbourne Storm he was seen as a Ringo Starr like beneficiary of the great deeds happening around him.
A few decades ago the Roosters were known as the transit lounge, a club you passed through to collect your big bucks. They had endless supplies of money but no deep rooted team spirit. Now they have both.
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Rival clubs whisper in cynical wonderment about how the Roosters miraculously shoehorn their star-studded line-up into the salary cap.
They feel it is as remarkable as hiring the cast of the latest Marvel movie on the budget used to put together your suburban friends and family musical.
Not since the masses were fed by loaves and fishes in the bible has there been a better use limited resources.
Cronk will study in the United States and the Roosters backers will help him on his way, retiring as one of the game’s finest players and a happy man.
Originally published as Crash: One bad call overshadows a classic rugby league contest