Just watched the replay and I'm happy to say I just can't wipe the smile off my face today! What a wonderful feeling to get one over the Storm! I know they're probably not the side they were right now but they're still the Melbourne Storm at the end of the day.
It was just a great performance, not the flashiest, but up there with our toughest, most gritty, most determined wins of the Season. it had to be against Melbourne. That's not to say we didn't have some flashy plays though, the attack still fired for the most part but I still feel we did leave a few tries out there and the completion rate, while being decent, still wasn't outstanding. I'm just super impressed with the effort and desire shown.
Defence was probably the most impressive thing about that game for me. The two tries we did concede were a bit soft but aside from that it was outstanding! The Storm did ask a lot of questions and had a lot of tackles inside our 20 but we stayed staunch and turned them away more often than not. Some huge effort plays to stop a try, jolt a ball free, cover a kick, it was all there!! Kick chase was outstanding also.
Standouts for me were,
Mitchell: Wasn't quite as flashy as last week but I don't think we win that without him. Some freakish plays to put AJ over twice, especially that flick pass, and again on Jaxson's try. A couple of line breaks, a kick for AJ which he almost scored off, short dropouts and some big defensive plays. Still a standout.
Cartwright: Has copped a lot of criticism on here, from me too, but he really stood up last night. So much so that I think we've found our right center until Graham comes back. Massive on defence!! He had one lapse for the Storm's second try where I think he was too close to Lachie but aside from that, he shut everything down. Kept Olam very quiet and that's not easy to do. Also had that very nice play to take Trell's pass and set up Jaxson.
Ilias: How good is he going?! Was awesome with the ball in hand and his defence but it was his kicking game that was most impressive. Constantly landing it right on the try line or in the 10 meter zone to trap them down their end. Jeez it was so classy and impressive! He also produced a line drop out which we then scored off.
Our entire pack deserves a big wrap for winning the middle battle and dominating their pack. Jai, Keaon and Cam were particularly impressive.
That's a massive win for us ahead of an even bigger challenge next week!
