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After this years' golden point GF, there was discussion as to where it ranked amongst the other great deciders in the modern game (1989 and 1997), with some in the media claiming it the best (although from people like Buzz Rothfield you'd take it with a grain of salt!) With uni done for the year and a bit of free time before the Christmas break, I decided to go back and watch a replay of these games in chronological order, pretending that it was 'live' and I didn't know the outcome already, to try and better rank the games with a fresh viewing.
First cab off the rank:
1989- Raiders v Tigers
The lead in: The Tigers were backing up in their second consecutive GF and hot favourites ever since Minor Premiers Souths tumbled out of the finals series. Raiders had a good up and coming team (Stewart, Meninga, Daley, Belcher, Clyde, Lazarus etc.) but were the outsiders against the Warren Ryan coached Tigers.
State of the game: The final chapter of arguably the games’ best ever decade, and the end to a year that had ushered in the Tina Turner campaign that saw increased interest in the game, with a surge in TV audiences and (in particular) Newcastle and Brisbane regularly drawing 20k+ crowds at home. There was a lot of optimism going into the ‘90s.
FIRST HALF- KEY MOMENTS:
- 6th minute Raiders look to have a lead-up to a try with the ball going through sets of hands, but the Tigers wrap up the movement and O’Sullivan fumbles it. The first time anybody looks close to scoring all game.
- 7th minute: Gary Freeman concedes a penalty, 20 metres out. Meninga misses the attempt.
- 11th minute: Canberra penalised 20 metres out for having no dummy half at the play the ball and a Tigers player held back while Belcher raced in desperately to stop Tigers players getting to the ball. Penalty Balmain, Currier takes the attempt just right of the posts- it goes through.
2-0 Tigers.
- 12th minute: Balmain send a kick trundling down into their in-goal. Belcher catches it, Tigers players racing up on him- he turns around and dodges two of them to get back inside the field of play.
- 13th minute: Brent Todd hits the ball up 25 metres out and, standing in the tackle, goes to offload to John Ferguson. James Grant plucks it low and darts away to dive over and score to the right of the posts. Currier punts the conversion attempt and it falls short of the posts.
6-0 Tigers.
- 20th minute: The Raiders are attacking their line, Meninga flicks the ball out to Belcher, with Wood unmarked less than 10 metres from their tryline. But Belcher fumbles it upon the catch and another chance is wasted for Canberra.
- 27th minute: Canberra launch another attacking raid close to their line with the ball flicking through sets of hands. Steve Walters is grounded JUST short of the tryline, before the ball is flicked out to Laurie Daley. The ball bounces off a Tigers player and Daley is tackled without the ball. Penalty Raiders, 10 metres out. This time it sails between the sticks.
6-2 Tigers.
- 33rd minute: Meninga gets a pass out to Wood, who tears along the sideline and all but scores- save for a copybook legs-out tackle from Jack which sends Wood into touch less than 5 metres from scoring in the corner.
- 39th minute: 70 metres from Balmain’s in-goal, Currier puts a kick in on the very right edge, the ball bounces just 20 metres out from the tryline and before Belcher can get to it, Grant plucks the ball away, pivots and offloads to Currier, who runs across field to link up with a steamrolling Sironen, who puts on the fend and scores just left of the uprights. Currier converts to make it 12-2, as the halftime siren sounds.
HALFTIME: Tigers 12-2. Raiders have had their chances to score and don’t look too far behind, but Balmain look even more comfortable with a try on the stroke of halftime. It’s looking as if the Tigers’ defence (so far) can contain the Raiders’ enthusiastic attack, which has let itself down with poorly timed passes or basic handling errors. If the Tigers score another try to go to 16-2 or 18-2, it should virtually be game over. Notably, the Tigers have never lost a game in 1989 after being 10 or more points ahead at halftime. Balmain fans should be quite optimistic about seeing the 20 year Premiership drought broken in an hours’ time.
SECOND HALF- KEY MOMENTS:
- 43rd minute: Wood darts toward the Raiders’ tryline on the right flank after taking a cross-field pass- but Pearce knocks him into touch with a textbook tackle just a couple of metres short.
- 53rd minute: Bruce Macquire carts the ball up as Steve Walters retreats from the marker position in front of him. Harrigan awards the Raiders a penalty 30 metres from their line for a shepherd. Was Macquire intentionally using Walters as a human shield, or did Walters take advantage of his position, knowing the strong chance of getting a penalty in his sides’ favour? Stuart’s kick for touch reaches 10 metres short of the tryline- and is touched by a Tigers player. Raiders scrum.
- 56th minute: 4th tackle from the scrum and Belcher finishes a cross-field passing movement by darting in-field from the left hand side, slipping from the grasp of Andy Currier and scoring to the left of the posts. Meninga converts.
Tigers 12-8
- 62nd minute: a Tigers kick towards their in-goal is fumbled by Martin, which on replays appears to be knocked back. The Tigers have a scrum feed just 10 metres out and the chance to get a try which would firmly position them to be Champions, with less than 20 minutes to go in a tough encounter.
- 63rd minute: 3 tackles out from the scrum, the Tigers attack is swarming to the left of the posts. The ball goes to Michael Neil- with open space in front of him he darts towards the tryline- but Meninga clips his boot which trips him up and enables the Raiders defence to wrap him up in the tackle just short of the tryline. Neil was denied by a fingertip- literally.
- 63rd minute: Balmain pass the ball to the right hand side of the field. Pearce has a man unmarked to his right- if he passes it the Tigers have another clear chance to score and ice this game. But (in a sentence that would become all too familiar in Origin matches 25 years later) Pearce fumbles the ball and kills off the second clear chance his side had to score in a single set.
- 64th minute: Warren Ryan substitutes Blocker- arguably the Tigers’ most imposing player in the game so far- for Kevin Hardwick. This indicates that Ryan’s plan is for Balmain to focus now on defence, rather than regathering the 10 point lead they held at halftime. Blocker is clearly pissed off at this decision.
- 70th minute: Elias puts up a bomb which is caught and passed by Michael Pobjie, but falcons Meninga and goes to Stuart who is in an offside position. Penalty to the Tigers less than 10 metres out from their line. Currier takes the penalty kick and effortlessly slots it away.
Tigers 14-8
-74th minute: The Tigers are just over 10 metres out from their line and looking to get a field goal, a penalty, a try- anything that will put them beyond a converted try and (surely) seal this Grand Final. The ball goes to Elias, standing deep. He slots a low range drop-goal attempt that looks as if it will just clear the crossbar- clunk! It hits the crossbar and bounces back into the field of play. Freeman is offside and in the passage of play- but Harrigan doesn’t penalise it. No 7 point buffer, but Balmain get lucky for the time being.
- 75th minute: Tigers have the ball on their halfway line, carting up steady hit-ups as a massive ‘Tigers’ chant goes up around the SFS, willing them home with 5 minutes left. But then Macquire knocks on. Scrum feed Raiders. Balmain then give away a penalty which enables the Raiders to make up field position from the kick for touch.
- 77th minute: Ricky Stuart puts in a little chip kick and despite being knocked down by the Tigers defence, Daley scoops up the ball before being tackled. 6 more tackles to the Raiders, inside their half. The Raiders begin throwing the ball around with time running out- this could be their last legitimate chance to grasp a result in this game.
- 78th minute: On the 5th tackle, O’Sullivan puts up a cross field bomb which misses the attempted grab by Currier and is picked up by Daley. Daley fires it overhead like a torpedo to Ferguson, who weaves, steps and evades four Tigers players (including breaking through the tackles of Elias and Sironen) to crash over and score just right of the posts. Meninga converts. With seconds remaining, the Grand Final is going to extra time. Sironen is replaced as Meninga converts.
Fulltime: 14-all.
The Raiders have a new spark and self-belief evident. Balmain look like deer in the headlights- they were expecting to be up on the podium right now, weary but joyful at winning. Now they have to play extra-time, with no guarantee that they will leave as the victors. The Raiders hung in and it’s paid off. Steve Roach is interviewed on the sideline and says “The boys can hang in there” but his voice sounds like that of a man who doesn't believe what he says.
- 82nd minute: Stuart puts up a kick- and Jack knocks on. As every minute goes on, Balmain fade away more and more.
- 83rd minute: From the ensuing Raiders set of 6, O’Sullivan does what Elias couldn’t- and kicks a clinical field-goal.
Raiders 15-14
- 85th minute: Steve O’Brien knocks on. Another Tigers mistake. The Raiders, collectively, are playing as though they’ve been thinking about extra time all week. The Tigers, evidently, can’t believe they are still playing this game.
- 86th minute: Currier knocks on. Another Balmain mistake. This is a completely different side from the one who went into the tunnel at halftime, 10 points up.
- 88th minute: Brasher drops an Elias inside pass. Mentally, the Tigers might as well be on the bus back to Balmain Leagues. Rex Mossop: “The errors are really coming in now at a rate that we wouldn’t have heard of in the first half!”
- 89th minute: Penalty Canberra, after Hardwick flops in with a late tackle on Walters. Meninga takes the penalty goal attempt from 20 metres out- but it goes far to the right of the posts…..and Tim Brasher touches it! He gets a fingertip to it in the in-goal. No doubt a few Tigers fans had seen this coming the night before- but woken up from it at least!
- 89th minute: Benny Elias takes the goal-line drop out. Ricky Stuart gets his hands to the ball and, 40 metres out, puts up a towering field goal attempt- but it’s wide of the posts. That brings the end of the first half of extra time.
- 94th minute: For the first time in extra-time, Balmain look somewhat threatening in attack. They’ve made over 30 metres and are inside their own half. Then Pearce throws a loose pass that Kevin Walters intercepts before he’s tackled. Even this effort from Balmain comes undone.
- 96th minute: Currier loses the ball with a missed kick just outside their 20 metre line, Meninga scoops it up and offloads to Steve Jackson who charges ahead, freight-trains through Tigers defenders and burrows over the line, never losing control of the football. It’s a try! That’s the Grand Final (bar a small miracle). Meninga misses the conversion, right of the posts. The Tigers are now in this game as much as Wayne Pearce’s son will one day be ‘in’ any Origin game he plays.
- 100th minute: It’s all over and the Raiders are Champions. This Grand Final was a long story- but an epic one- and worth the wait. The Raiders hit their prime at just the right time and their tenacity has been rewarded. This is a truly deserved Premiership for them.
FULLTIME Raiders 19-14
VERDICT:
This Grand Final isn’t still talked about just because of rose-tinted glasses and nostalgia. This feels less like a Grand Final and more like an epic Rugby League trilogy- it virtually feels as if 3 Grand Finals’ worth of highlights were packed into just one game with this one. Aside from the on-field action, there were the hangover stories and sub-plots coming away from this game: The shepherd ruling on Macquire that lead to the Raiders’ first try, Warren Ryan’s decision to substitute Blocker and promote a different style of play that had got Balmain out to such momentum in the first place, the (seeming) expectation from Warren Ryan that a 6 point lead would suffice to win the game. Not only that, but having 20 minutes’ extra time helped to give this Grand Final even more of a “story” feel to it- one that began with the Tigers, the favourites, full of puff and seemingly charging away to a near certain victory over a brave and skilful Raiders team who couldn’t put the finishing touches on their attempts to score- and ended with the Raiders having their persistence rewarded and the Tigers showing their physical (and mental) exhaustion.
The beauty of extra time is that we got to see, well and truly, that the Raiders didn’t just “get lucky” in the space of a few minutes and fluke a result- nor were the Tigers desperately unlucky- but that the Raiders well and truly got the upper hand. No doubt there would have been a LOT of Balmain fans who didn’t sleep that night (or for the next week) and sank a brewery’s worth of kegs to drown out the disbelief at how this game slipped away from them- but extra time showed, without any doubt, that the Raiders deserved to win the Premiership. They earned the victory through skill and tenacity. Few things are more satisfying than a great Grand Final like this one, where you come away knowing that the team who won proved themselves as deserved champions.
Rumour has it that at halftime, Wayne Pearce said out to his team-mates “The only thing that’ll make me prouder than this win will be when my boy Mitchell plays for New South Wales one day!” I don’t blame the Tigers players for their subsequent performance- imagine having to try and win the remainder of a Grand Final while contemplating something like THAT...
Tomorrow: The 1997 ARL Grand Final...
First cab off the rank:
1989- Raiders v Tigers
The lead in: The Tigers were backing up in their second consecutive GF and hot favourites ever since Minor Premiers Souths tumbled out of the finals series. Raiders had a good up and coming team (Stewart, Meninga, Daley, Belcher, Clyde, Lazarus etc.) but were the outsiders against the Warren Ryan coached Tigers.
State of the game: The final chapter of arguably the games’ best ever decade, and the end to a year that had ushered in the Tina Turner campaign that saw increased interest in the game, with a surge in TV audiences and (in particular) Newcastle and Brisbane regularly drawing 20k+ crowds at home. There was a lot of optimism going into the ‘90s.
FIRST HALF- KEY MOMENTS:
- 6th minute Raiders look to have a lead-up to a try with the ball going through sets of hands, but the Tigers wrap up the movement and O’Sullivan fumbles it. The first time anybody looks close to scoring all game.
- 7th minute: Gary Freeman concedes a penalty, 20 metres out. Meninga misses the attempt.
- 11th minute: Canberra penalised 20 metres out for having no dummy half at the play the ball and a Tigers player held back while Belcher raced in desperately to stop Tigers players getting to the ball. Penalty Balmain, Currier takes the attempt just right of the posts- it goes through.
2-0 Tigers.
- 12th minute: Balmain send a kick trundling down into their in-goal. Belcher catches it, Tigers players racing up on him- he turns around and dodges two of them to get back inside the field of play.
- 13th minute: Brent Todd hits the ball up 25 metres out and, standing in the tackle, goes to offload to John Ferguson. James Grant plucks it low and darts away to dive over and score to the right of the posts. Currier punts the conversion attempt and it falls short of the posts.
6-0 Tigers.
- 20th minute: The Raiders are attacking their line, Meninga flicks the ball out to Belcher, with Wood unmarked less than 10 metres from their tryline. But Belcher fumbles it upon the catch and another chance is wasted for Canberra.
- 27th minute: Canberra launch another attacking raid close to their line with the ball flicking through sets of hands. Steve Walters is grounded JUST short of the tryline, before the ball is flicked out to Laurie Daley. The ball bounces off a Tigers player and Daley is tackled without the ball. Penalty Raiders, 10 metres out. This time it sails between the sticks.
6-2 Tigers.
- 33rd minute: Meninga gets a pass out to Wood, who tears along the sideline and all but scores- save for a copybook legs-out tackle from Jack which sends Wood into touch less than 5 metres from scoring in the corner.
- 39th minute: 70 metres from Balmain’s in-goal, Currier puts a kick in on the very right edge, the ball bounces just 20 metres out from the tryline and before Belcher can get to it, Grant plucks the ball away, pivots and offloads to Currier, who runs across field to link up with a steamrolling Sironen, who puts on the fend and scores just left of the uprights. Currier converts to make it 12-2, as the halftime siren sounds.
HALFTIME: Tigers 12-2. Raiders have had their chances to score and don’t look too far behind, but Balmain look even more comfortable with a try on the stroke of halftime. It’s looking as if the Tigers’ defence (so far) can contain the Raiders’ enthusiastic attack, which has let itself down with poorly timed passes or basic handling errors. If the Tigers score another try to go to 16-2 or 18-2, it should virtually be game over. Notably, the Tigers have never lost a game in 1989 after being 10 or more points ahead at halftime. Balmain fans should be quite optimistic about seeing the 20 year Premiership drought broken in an hours’ time.
SECOND HALF- KEY MOMENTS:
- 43rd minute: Wood darts toward the Raiders’ tryline on the right flank after taking a cross-field pass- but Pearce knocks him into touch with a textbook tackle just a couple of metres short.
- 53rd minute: Bruce Macquire carts the ball up as Steve Walters retreats from the marker position in front of him. Harrigan awards the Raiders a penalty 30 metres from their line for a shepherd. Was Macquire intentionally using Walters as a human shield, or did Walters take advantage of his position, knowing the strong chance of getting a penalty in his sides’ favour? Stuart’s kick for touch reaches 10 metres short of the tryline- and is touched by a Tigers player. Raiders scrum.
- 56th minute: 4th tackle from the scrum and Belcher finishes a cross-field passing movement by darting in-field from the left hand side, slipping from the grasp of Andy Currier and scoring to the left of the posts. Meninga converts.
Tigers 12-8
- 62nd minute: a Tigers kick towards their in-goal is fumbled by Martin, which on replays appears to be knocked back. The Tigers have a scrum feed just 10 metres out and the chance to get a try which would firmly position them to be Champions, with less than 20 minutes to go in a tough encounter.
- 63rd minute: 3 tackles out from the scrum, the Tigers attack is swarming to the left of the posts. The ball goes to Michael Neil- with open space in front of him he darts towards the tryline- but Meninga clips his boot which trips him up and enables the Raiders defence to wrap him up in the tackle just short of the tryline. Neil was denied by a fingertip- literally.
- 63rd minute: Balmain pass the ball to the right hand side of the field. Pearce has a man unmarked to his right- if he passes it the Tigers have another clear chance to score and ice this game. But (in a sentence that would become all too familiar in Origin matches 25 years later) Pearce fumbles the ball and kills off the second clear chance his side had to score in a single set.
- 64th minute: Warren Ryan substitutes Blocker- arguably the Tigers’ most imposing player in the game so far- for Kevin Hardwick. This indicates that Ryan’s plan is for Balmain to focus now on defence, rather than regathering the 10 point lead they held at halftime. Blocker is clearly pissed off at this decision.
- 70th minute: Elias puts up a bomb which is caught and passed by Michael Pobjie, but falcons Meninga and goes to Stuart who is in an offside position. Penalty to the Tigers less than 10 metres out from their line. Currier takes the penalty kick and effortlessly slots it away.
Tigers 14-8
-74th minute: The Tigers are just over 10 metres out from their line and looking to get a field goal, a penalty, a try- anything that will put them beyond a converted try and (surely) seal this Grand Final. The ball goes to Elias, standing deep. He slots a low range drop-goal attempt that looks as if it will just clear the crossbar- clunk! It hits the crossbar and bounces back into the field of play. Freeman is offside and in the passage of play- but Harrigan doesn’t penalise it. No 7 point buffer, but Balmain get lucky for the time being.
- 75th minute: Tigers have the ball on their halfway line, carting up steady hit-ups as a massive ‘Tigers’ chant goes up around the SFS, willing them home with 5 minutes left. But then Macquire knocks on. Scrum feed Raiders. Balmain then give away a penalty which enables the Raiders to make up field position from the kick for touch.
- 77th minute: Ricky Stuart puts in a little chip kick and despite being knocked down by the Tigers defence, Daley scoops up the ball before being tackled. 6 more tackles to the Raiders, inside their half. The Raiders begin throwing the ball around with time running out- this could be their last legitimate chance to grasp a result in this game.
- 78th minute: On the 5th tackle, O’Sullivan puts up a cross field bomb which misses the attempted grab by Currier and is picked up by Daley. Daley fires it overhead like a torpedo to Ferguson, who weaves, steps and evades four Tigers players (including breaking through the tackles of Elias and Sironen) to crash over and score just right of the posts. Meninga converts. With seconds remaining, the Grand Final is going to extra time. Sironen is replaced as Meninga converts.
Fulltime: 14-all.
The Raiders have a new spark and self-belief evident. Balmain look like deer in the headlights- they were expecting to be up on the podium right now, weary but joyful at winning. Now they have to play extra-time, with no guarantee that they will leave as the victors. The Raiders hung in and it’s paid off. Steve Roach is interviewed on the sideline and says “The boys can hang in there” but his voice sounds like that of a man who doesn't believe what he says.
- 82nd minute: Stuart puts up a kick- and Jack knocks on. As every minute goes on, Balmain fade away more and more.
- 83rd minute: From the ensuing Raiders set of 6, O’Sullivan does what Elias couldn’t- and kicks a clinical field-goal.
Raiders 15-14
- 85th minute: Steve O’Brien knocks on. Another Tigers mistake. The Raiders, collectively, are playing as though they’ve been thinking about extra time all week. The Tigers, evidently, can’t believe they are still playing this game.
- 86th minute: Currier knocks on. Another Balmain mistake. This is a completely different side from the one who went into the tunnel at halftime, 10 points up.
- 88th minute: Brasher drops an Elias inside pass. Mentally, the Tigers might as well be on the bus back to Balmain Leagues. Rex Mossop: “The errors are really coming in now at a rate that we wouldn’t have heard of in the first half!”
- 89th minute: Penalty Canberra, after Hardwick flops in with a late tackle on Walters. Meninga takes the penalty goal attempt from 20 metres out- but it goes far to the right of the posts…..and Tim Brasher touches it! He gets a fingertip to it in the in-goal. No doubt a few Tigers fans had seen this coming the night before- but woken up from it at least!
- 89th minute: Benny Elias takes the goal-line drop out. Ricky Stuart gets his hands to the ball and, 40 metres out, puts up a towering field goal attempt- but it’s wide of the posts. That brings the end of the first half of extra time.
- 94th minute: For the first time in extra-time, Balmain look somewhat threatening in attack. They’ve made over 30 metres and are inside their own half. Then Pearce throws a loose pass that Kevin Walters intercepts before he’s tackled. Even this effort from Balmain comes undone.
- 96th minute: Currier loses the ball with a missed kick just outside their 20 metre line, Meninga scoops it up and offloads to Steve Jackson who charges ahead, freight-trains through Tigers defenders and burrows over the line, never losing control of the football. It’s a try! That’s the Grand Final (bar a small miracle). Meninga misses the conversion, right of the posts. The Tigers are now in this game as much as Wayne Pearce’s son will one day be ‘in’ any Origin game he plays.
- 100th minute: It’s all over and the Raiders are Champions. This Grand Final was a long story- but an epic one- and worth the wait. The Raiders hit their prime at just the right time and their tenacity has been rewarded. This is a truly deserved Premiership for them.
FULLTIME Raiders 19-14
VERDICT:
This Grand Final isn’t still talked about just because of rose-tinted glasses and nostalgia. This feels less like a Grand Final and more like an epic Rugby League trilogy- it virtually feels as if 3 Grand Finals’ worth of highlights were packed into just one game with this one. Aside from the on-field action, there were the hangover stories and sub-plots coming away from this game: The shepherd ruling on Macquire that lead to the Raiders’ first try, Warren Ryan’s decision to substitute Blocker and promote a different style of play that had got Balmain out to such momentum in the first place, the (seeming) expectation from Warren Ryan that a 6 point lead would suffice to win the game. Not only that, but having 20 minutes’ extra time helped to give this Grand Final even more of a “story” feel to it- one that began with the Tigers, the favourites, full of puff and seemingly charging away to a near certain victory over a brave and skilful Raiders team who couldn’t put the finishing touches on their attempts to score- and ended with the Raiders having their persistence rewarded and the Tigers showing their physical (and mental) exhaustion.
The beauty of extra time is that we got to see, well and truly, that the Raiders didn’t just “get lucky” in the space of a few minutes and fluke a result- nor were the Tigers desperately unlucky- but that the Raiders well and truly got the upper hand. No doubt there would have been a LOT of Balmain fans who didn’t sleep that night (or for the next week) and sank a brewery’s worth of kegs to drown out the disbelief at how this game slipped away from them- but extra time showed, without any doubt, that the Raiders deserved to win the Premiership. They earned the victory through skill and tenacity. Few things are more satisfying than a great Grand Final like this one, where you come away knowing that the team who won proved themselves as deserved champions.
Rumour has it that at halftime, Wayne Pearce said out to his team-mates “The only thing that’ll make me prouder than this win will be when my boy Mitchell plays for New South Wales one day!” I don’t blame the Tigers players for their subsequent performance- imagine having to try and win the remainder of a Grand Final while contemplating something like THAT...
Tomorrow: The 1997 ARL Grand Final...
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