In the first twenty-odd minutes of the game, when the Storm had set after set in attack, Eastwood was involved in almost every tackle. It looked to me like he'd come to play but unlike last week the Dogs were denied space and spent most of the first half tackling - and they never really came back from that.
There were certainly some poor individual performances by the Dogs, but that's what happens when a team gets rattled and put off their natural game. However, if the Storm started that game any less precisely than they did (a knock on or two early in the tackle count or if Perrett holds that ridiculous Slater pass for example) then the result could have been very different. But they didn't.
I thought it was pretty awesome seeing the Storm defense scything right into the Dogs backline like they were. Like Gould kept saying, "if you get round me I'll applaud you" but they never really did (and when they did the cover was epic). So many knock-downs to save tries; the kind of tries that the Dogs were scoring at will all season. That's some extemely perceptive coaching and am impressive level of ahhesion to the gameplan. I was going for the Dogs but jeez, it's hard to begrudge the Storm that one.
