NRL 2021: Melbourne Storm win 20-16 over Cowboys | Match Report
Melbourne might be one of the NRL’s premiership favourites — but Craig Bellamy says if the Storm dish up another performance like Friday, they won’t go close. Here's why.
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Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy has warned his players they’ll be “making up the numbers” in the finals if they don’t better Friday night’s unconvincing win over the Cowboys.
Storm has won a club record 15 consecutive games, but Bellamy refused to accept any complacency as Melbourne looks to become only the second team in NRL history to win back-to-back titles.
“I thought it looked like to me in the first half we were looking for the easy options and it didn’t work,” Bellamy said after the 20-16 win.
“We know what works for us, and it is hard work. I like to think we know hard work matters, but it was like we forgot about that.
“It is one of those games we were very, very lucky to win … we know we can play better and we are going to have to do that or we will be making up the numbers at the end of the season.”
The big positive for Storm was the successful return of fullback Ryan Papenhuyzen, who came off the bench in the second half and finished with 72 metres from nine carries.
He said it was a relief to be get through his first game in two months after suffering a horror concussion during the Magic Round.
“It felt a little bit different, a little bit like the first few games I played in the NRL coming off the bench a bit late,” Papenhuyzen said.
“But it was good to get that 30 minutes in and to get a feel for what it’s all like again.
“I was a bit rusty sort of going out there, I’m the first to admit that, but it was good and I’m just happy to be back and to get through unscathed.”
Storm next faces Penrith in what looms as the battle for the minor premiership in Brisbane on Saturday night.
STORM SURVIVES SCARE FROM GALLANT COWBOYS
They were the patchwork Cowboys, but they had the gloves up.
An ageing dummy-half at fullback, a debutant on the wing and their halfback finished the game at hooker, but still the Cowboys went down swinging in a scrappy 20-16 loss to Melbourne.
Despite three-quarters of their top earners for the season – Valentine Holmes, Michael Morgan and Justin O’Neill – all out indefinitely, and rising star Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow ruled out midweek, the Cowboys proved there is still fight left in their finals hopes.
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The beaten and broken Cowboys, who were on the end of a five-game losing streak, took it to the premiership favourites and for 65 minutes they had them matched.
But in the end the might of the Storm, despite an atrocious 72 per cent completion rate, showed that the top sides find ways to win on the worst days.
I have no words. Forward passes, obstructions, players held for 10 seconds. This is concerning. Surely the officials involved aren’t allowed near a game for a few weeks #NRLCowboysStorm
— Martin Gabor (@MartinJGabor) July 23, 2021
NFL pass - Cecchin has had a shocker tonight.
— The Mole (@9_Moley) July 23, 2021
A controversial try to debutant Kane Bradley, which came after an obvious forward pass from Murray Taulagi in the final five minutes gave the Cowboys one last sniff at victory.
But the Storm narrowly held on to extend their historic win streak to 15-straight games and keep themselves two-points clear at the top of the NRL ladder.
WINDING BACK THE CLOCK
There were plenty of questions coming into the clash about the Cowboys but the burning one was who would play fullback?
With Valentine Holmes out long term and Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow facing six weeks out following emergency surgery this week, the Cowboys needed it to be a case of next man up.
But nobody, not even the most ardent of Cowboys supporters, expected that man to be Jake Granville.
A former Queensland Cup premiership winner in the role, Granville has not played at the back in more than five years since joining the Cowboys.
He didn’t look out of place and made several crucial saves in the first half to turn the Storm away.
Granville’s most important move though came late in the second half where he came up with a textbook one-on-one tackle to bring down a runaway Ryan Papenhuyzen.
DEARDEN’S DEFENSIVE DILEMMAS
He is a young halfback on the rise, but off the ball Tom Dearden is a fish out of water.
Todd Payten appears to have simplified Dearden’s game, but to the point it more resembled a return to under-10s style of man marking.
Dearden only had eyes for opposite number Cooper Johns, constantly rushing out of the line to put pressure on the Storm five-eighth.
But it left gaping holes all around him which the Storm exploited at will setting up tries to Addo-Carr and Justin Olam in the first half.
Olam should have had a second in the opening 20 minutes only for the bunker to pull it back deeming Brandon Smith had run behind the lead runner before delivering the decisive pass.
The Cowboys defensive efforts across the field needed work after they missed 37 tackles, but their work with the ball in hand maintaining an 85 per cent completion rate kept them in the fight.
CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF FUMBLES
If one thing is for certain, the walls inside the away change room at Queensland Country Bank Stadium will need a new coat of paint.
Craig Bellamy would be irate with his team’s performance after they struggled to show the clinical display that has become customary of their 2021 season.
The Storm appeared rudderless at times without Cameron Munster directing the troops, and their forwards lost the battle in the middle of the field throughout the second half.
Several missed opportunities and poor handling errors continually invited the Cowboys back into the contest and it would take a piece of individual brilliance from Dean Ieremia, when he toed a Jarome Hughes kick ahead, for Reimis Smith to touch down and get them back into the clash.
The one positive for the Storm was the successful return of fullback Ryan Papenhuyzen, who came off the bench in the second half and finished with 72 metres from nine carries.
STORM SURVIVE REFEREE HOWLERS
—Nick Smart
It was the dogfight Melbourne Storm needed.
For the best part of the season, the ladder-leading Storm has ran riot against hapless opponents and barely had to get out of second gear.
But in Townsville on Friday night against a gritty Cowboys side, Storm was made to earn a hard fought 20-16 victory that’ll steel it in its quest for back-to-back titles.
In a game full of referee howlers – including a blatant missed forward pass that gifted the Cowboys a late try to give Storm a scare – Storm notched up a club record 15th win in a row.
Winger Josh Addo-Carr scored a double and notched up his 100th NRL try.
PAPS IS BACK
Ryan Papenhuyzen is not going to just waltz back into the No. 1 jersey.
Friday night was the star full-back’s first game back in two months since suffering a nasty concussion in late May.
The speedster, who started off the bench and did not come on until the 47th minute, looked understandably tentative in his long-awaited return.
He did get better as the game went on and even pulled off a trademark linebreak, which would have helped his confidence.
His return saw the in-form Nicho Hynes move to the halves.
When Papenhuyzen gets back up to speed, it’ll be fascinating to see what Bellamy does with Hynes.
Will he relegate one of the game’s best players this season to the bench?
JOHNS: STORM’S PLAYER NURSERY PUTTING RIVALS TO SHAME
—Matthew Johns
The road to the NRL isn’t a red carpet or a yellow brick road.
Jahrome Hughes and Nicho Hynes are the hottest players in the NRL right now. But where some youngsters burst onto the scene, Jahrome and Nicho crafted their art in the shadows.
The long way to the top has served them well.
If Jahrome and Nicho were named to reflect their careers, they’d be patience and perseverance.
I’m a big rock ‘n’ roll man. The band that dominated rock ‘n’ roll in the 1970s was the legendary Led Zeppelin.
Zeppelin appeared to explode onto the scene out of nowhere, producing iconic hit after hit, as if they had travelled to the crossroads and did a deal with the devil himself.
However, the truth was that lead guitarist and driving force of the band, Jimmy Page, had mastered his craft as an unknown studio musician whose riffs can be heard on some of rock’s greatest songs of the 60s.
Page would be hired to add, and or fix, the sound of bands such as The Who, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and many others, receiving little or no credit.
During these studio sessions Page took note of all the things that worked, the things that didn’t and errors made in the recording process.
Page learnt all these lessons and his reward was Led Zeppelin.
Likewise the reward for Hughes and Hynes, from the years toiling away, waiting for their chance, is season 2021.
Hughes, of course, was a premiership winner last season but this year he’s really mastered his craft. His apprenticeship was lengthy, stints at the Gold Coast Titans where he played one NRL game, a Queensland Cup season with the Townsville Blackhawks, which earnt him a one-year deal with the Cowboys in 2016, where he also played just one NRL game.
He then joined Melbourne in 2017, where he sat patiently in the Queensland Cup with the Sunshine Coast, given a chance here and there until Billy Slater’s retirement, finally becoming a regular member of the NRL squad in 2019.
From there his improvement and achievements have been rapid.
The Nicho Hynes story has been well-documented, it’s one of the game’s very best.
A story of how perseverance conquers all, including difficult personal circumstance. Like Hughes, Hynes bounced around several clubs before getting a contract with the Storm and making his NRL debut in August 2019.
But he’s had to bide his time, toiling away with the Sunshine Coast Falcons until this season where, through regular football, he has proven himself as a playmaker of the highest calibre.
The Harry Grant and Ryan Papenhuyzen paths, are in many ways similar.
Grant was an NRL player 18 months before he was really given a decent chance to prove it.
He too waited patiently on the Sunshine Coast before the Storm, acknowledging he’d gone past Queensland Cup level, lent him to the Wests Tigers, where by season’s end he became an Origin star.
Papenhuyzen was also at the Sunshine Coast Falcons, but his chance to play NRL football at the Storm looked a longshot. He was fourth in line for fullback and offered to almost every NRL club, with no takers … WOW!!!
Then he gets his start, suddenly a superstar.
I use the word suddenly, but in the case of these four footballers it’s anything but.
I regularly watched all four playing together in the Queensland Cup and saw how all four steadily learnt about their own strengths and weaknesses, and how they steadily improved.
It was hard to work out if Hughes was a half or a fullback.
My first opinion was that he was a fullback because of his strong running game and his propensity to run instinctively rather than pass. But by the time he’d hit the top grade, he had developed his ball-playing and merged it perfectly with speed and power.
Same with Hynes, was he a six or a one? At first I thought six, Hynes moved well but needed to build his body to cope with the punishment dished out to fullbacks.
But he has built size, power and speed which makes his playmaking so much more dangerous.
For Grant it was all about patience.
Grant had numerous offers to leave the Storm system to fast-track his career but he chose to hone his craft a little longer out of the high-pressure spotlight.
In Papenhuyzen I saw a player who was building his confidence after hamstring problems. Nothing drains a speedster’s confidence like a hamstring tear.
On top of that he was learning what it was to be a Melbourne Storm footballer, the expectations from coaches and teammates.
Then suddenly in Round 4, 2019 he was given a chance, then another, then another, with each game, improving. By full-time in Round 9, in the Storm’s Magic Round victory over Parramatta, everyone knew who Ryan Papenhuyzen was and everyone knew he was something special.
Coming on in the 49th minute, he scored a try, had three linebreaks, two linebreaks assists and two try assists.
Why have these players had such a dramatic impact and only continue to get better?
Because of the length of their apprenticeship.
Learning the game. Learning how to improve your weaknesses.
Learning how to deal with success and disappointment.
Learning how to deal with pressure.
The Storm’s success continues because the passing of the baton from era to era is so smooth.
In recent years the Storm have lost some of the game’s greatest players but their success remains.
It’s because in the background there has always been someone mastering their game, away from the spotlight, who were ready to take the jersey 12 months before they actually did.
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