Campo’s Corner: Previewing the second week of the NRL finals
Everything from here on out in the NRL is sudden death, the highs are high, the lows are low and the takes have never been hotter. Here is Campo’s Corner’s preview of the second week of the finals.
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It feels like only yesterday Joey Leilua was half-blinded by a firework and Brisbane were waiting to land a feature as Parramatta gave them the old More Chilli.
The first week of the finals had plenty of highs and lows, which were all covered in Monday’s edition of Campo’s Corner.
Now, we can only look forward - not too far forward though, because if I think about Canberra’s home prelim for too long I start sweating and drop whatever it is I’m holding.
Here’s where both of this weekend’s clashes can be won and lost.
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SOUTH SYDNEY RABBITOHS VS MANLY SEA EAGLES
Trying to tip this game essentially boils down to how much stock one puts in South Sydney’s loss to the Roosters last week.
On the one hand, the Rabbitohs have named their strongest squad in some time for this week’s clash with Manly. Dane Gagai is a big inclusion, Wayne Bennett has acknowledged his backline reshuffle last week didn’t work and has fixed it right up. Jaydn Su’A is mercifully out, Sam Burgess is back. Everything seems to be coming up cardinal and myrtle.
But last week was so bad, not just in a “well, the boys played badly, that’s how it goes sometimes” type way, in a “this team has lost the will to live” type way. Maybe the Rabbitohs couldn’t fire up after the emotional and physical toll of their win the week before, maybe they took it a bit easy to throw everyone off the scent, but in any case it’s a difficult loss to move past entirely.
The Rabbitohs do their best work through the middle of the field via Damien Cook and Cody Walker and for that to happen they need to hold the middle to some extent. Last week they totally failed in this endeavour, in no small part due to a truly anaemic performance from their back five. Gagai returning will help that to some extent and they should be able to get better yardage from their own end.
Burgess returning on an edge is an interesting wrinkle. He switched to the middle after the Round 20 loss to Cronulla but given the size and power Manly possess in Addin Fonua-Blake and Martin Taupau it could have made sense for Souths to buttress their own forwards.
Cam Murray has been South Sydney’s best player this year and Liam Knight and Tevita Tatola among their biggest improvers, but the Burgess twins have had years to forget and if they repeat their poor showing from last week it could be a long evening followed by an even longer summer.
We tipped the Sharks to target Moses Suli last week and instead Suli mashed Bronson Xerri into a fine powder, but the big Sea Eagle should still come in for plenty of attention from Souths. Their left edge is not as potent as it was last year but it’s still where Walker and John Sutton do their best work. Forcing Suli to move laterally and confronting him with complex defensive decisions should be a recipe for success.
It’s easy to be sucked in by Manly’s performance last week, and it was extremely impressive given their lack of personnel, but how much more can they give? The Sea Eagles have an average away record and a worse than average record in matches played at night. It’s easy to say the semi-finals is an entirely new competition, but a team is the product of the matches they’ve played through the season. It’s too late for DNA to change.
Having said that, their robust middle is enough to carry them in just about any match. Taupau’s return will be a massive boost, especially given how well Manly can create chances off the back of his offloads. If current conditions hold and ANZ Stadium is underwater by Friday that suits Manly all the better – if this turns into a grinding, forward dominated type of match I think the Sea Eagles will fancy their chances all the more. Such a dour encounter would also limit Cook and Walker’s impact, and without them the Rabbitohs can struggle to generate points.
As much as I like the backline changes the Rabbitohs have made there’s still some very green combinations there. James Roberts will move back to the right with Campbell Graham, Dane Gagai slots it on the left with Johnston and Manly will back themselves to exploit these raw combos – look for Cherry-Evans to target Walker with Jack Gosiewski, and for the Sea Eagles to work off the skilful backrower, exploiting his soft hands like they did last week.
Manly were without Tom Trbojevic entirely for one of their matches against Souths this year and lost him after 20 minutes in the other – both matches were decided by field goals. They will hold no fear of South Sydney and their confidence will be sky high after last week, but I just can’t go past South Sydney’s superior quality across the park, even though it hasn’t come to the forefront much lately bar that last round win against the Roosters.
It won’t be easy, but I like Souths to win it late and set up a prelim clash with the Raiders.
Rabbitohs 22 Manly 20
Man of the match: Damien Cook
First try scorer: Alex Johnston has 31 tries in 30 games on the wing at ANZ Stadium, which is exactly the kind of tenuous statistical link on which this column thrives. Of course, he’s played one game on the wing at the ground since 2017, so let’s go with Sam Burgess instead, off a Damien Cook pass.
LISTEN! Matty, Finchy and Kenty address “Pokies-gate” and the Broncos self-combustion, Joey Leilua’s fireworks mishap, and how Wayne Bennett and Des Hasler know exactly how to get the best out of their individuals. PLUS, the Roosters had a sleepover at the SCG?
MELBOURNE STORM VS PARRAMATTA EELS
The Eels are this years line of demarcation – if you’re better than Parramatta, you can probably win the competition and if you’re not, you probably can’t.
Parramatta have the third best attack in the competition but the second-worst defence of any team in the top eight. Their 9-3 home record was the equal best in the league over the regular season, but of the top eight teams only Cronulla were worse on the road.
They put 58 on the Broncos and 51 on the Tigers but conceded the season’s highest score when Melbourne put 64 past them in Magic Round. Two weeks before the record win over Brisbane the Broncos beat them in golden point. They’ve won two from five matches against the top four this year, but one of those wins was against an Origin-depleted South Sydney and the last match against the cream of the crop was way back in Round 15.
This Parramatta roster is well constructed and has been crafted with a specific view in mind – consider their sheer size and power across the park. With the likes of Maika Sivo, Waqa Blake and Blake Ferguson out wide and Junior Paulo and Kane Evans with Shaun Lane, Manu Ma’u and Marata Niukore thrown in, the Eels might be the most physically powerful team in the NRL on a man-to-man basis.
When the Eels can overwhelm their opponent with this size and power, they’re very difficult to reign in and when they’re on top, like they were against Brisbane last week, they hunt points with a frenzied zeal. When they’re contained and have to rely on their craft they find it far more difficult.
On paper, Melbourne are well-designed to do just that. Their own forward pack is one of the best in the competition, certainly one of the most rugged, and their record against Parramatta in recent years is strong – the Eels have just two wins against Melbourne since 2013 and both times the Storm were without their Origin stars.
On a very basic level, I’m not sure the Eels have enough points in them to beat the Storm. They did break records last week, but even then their early lead was built on attacking kicks, Parramatta’s favourite weapon. As we noted earlier this week, their first three tries came off the boot and from there they were never headed.
At the risk of flogging a dead horse, there’s a reason teams who’s red zone attack is built around kicks rarely go deep into the finals – it’s not a consistently replicable way of scoring points. Mitchell Moses is a tremendously gifted all-round playmaker, but can he still create points against a quality defensive side when his best weapon is taken away from him?
Think of the Panthers in 2010, who finished the regular season in second place. Their halfback, Luke Walsh, topped the try assist count with 35, most of which were off the back of his excellent attacking kicking game. Despite their lofty finish, Penrith crashed out in straight sets following losses to Canberra (7th) and the Roosters (6th) in part because they did not have any other fully developed weapons.
Parramatta aren’t as one-dimensional as those Panthers – they offload well and can play with great width, even in broken play – but we’re not far removed from examples of times when they took on teams far less defensively sound than Melbourne and, without kicks to aid them, were unable to score the points required. Just two weeks before the record win over Brisbane, the Broncos beat them 17-16. The week before that Canterbury held them to six points, at Bankwest Stadium no less.
If points from kicks are denied to them, offloads become the key for Parramatta. Structured plays are easy for the Storm to shut down but the frantic, improvisational play that comes off the back of offloads is impossible to plan for and thus harder to shut down. Parramatta lead the competition in offloads this season – Junior Paulo is third in the league with 55 and Manu Ma’u is seventh with 39 despite only playing 19 matches.
Paulo, Ma’u and to a lesser extent Brad Takairangi become key players for the Eels in this one. The former Raiders prop has enjoyed a fine season on return to Parramatta and Ma’u has been one of the best backrowers in the competition over the last eight weeks. If they can generate second-phase play it will give the Eels every chance.
Having said that, the Storm played within themselves last week, copped some rough refereeing decisions and made un-Storm like errors and still only went down due to a freakish dropped ball and an even more freakish pass. This is still the team that lost four games by a combined eight points in the regular season, only now they have a point to prove and any question of complacency has been burned away. Look for Dale Finucane, Cameron Smith and Jesse Bromwich to have the job of locking up Paulo and limiting ball promotion.
It also wouldn’t surprise if the Storm use the Eels own tactics against them. The blue and golds ran Brisbane ragged with their ball movement last week, slinging the ball back and forth across the park and forcing the Broncos to chase them. Melbourne will likely focus less on constant movement and more on repeat efforts – that is, attacking one or two defenders three or four times over the course of a set.
For reasons unknown, there’s an idea in the water which claims Melbourne’s attack is predictable. This couldn’t be further from the truth. They may have only scored one try last week but it was more due to stout Canberra defence and a curiously conservative game plan than anything else. The Storm scored the most points in the league over the regular season. Claiming they’re unpredictable compared to Parramatta ignores the greater body of work the Storm have put together and a total surrender to recency bias.
As stirring as Parramatta’s win over Brisbane was, Melbourne are well-equipped to break the Eels down, prise them apart and draw them into the kind of game they don’t want to be in. There are levels to this, and as good as they were against Brisbane the Eels are about to see if they can hack it at the very top.
Melbourne 28 Parramatta 14
Man of the match: Cameron Munster
First try scorer: Let’s say Justin Olam goes in off a Kenny Bromwich pass.