That was a great watch. Jesse Sene-Lefao. Who even remembers him?
Prior huge. Capewell, huge. Bird, huge. Especially when he came in closer after Chad was hooked.
Reviewed the stats
Maloney only missed one tackle. Unheard of. Ennis kicked for 174 metres (watch the game Tinkerbell), Feefs 205 metres & 38 tackles, Prior 232 metres and 31 tackles etc etc.
Talk about dig in and set up a GF win.
I remember the lead up to that very well.
My wife and I had foolishly booked a month in Thailand for September earlier in the year.
It was only mid way through the season I realise - pharque, I won't be able to watch the semis! (no sports bars where we live).
We flew out the day the Storm belted us in the final round and, having read through the summations of it all after we landed I still felt confident we'd give it a good shake.
I spent the week poring over the final 8, the match ups and who I thought would progress, and what the ensuing matchups would be.
If all went well, I figured:
Week 1;
Melbourne get up in a touch match and go to the Prelim
The Donks will do the Tits, putting them in a matchup with Cows in week 2
Panthers/Dogs - who cares. The winner goes onto the loser of us/vs Raiders and onto the Storm's side of the draw.
So it's up to us. Give it absolutely everything against the Raiders and, if we get through, sit back and watch week two.
Week 2;
Hopefully week 1 went as planned and we can watch the Donks and Cows absolutely belt each other.
Who cares about the other match, they'll be up against the Storm.
If we make it to the GF, whoever we're up against will have had a tough one the week before.
For us, if week 2 goes according to plan, we face either the Donks or Cows who are heavily busted from the week before.
Week 3;
Storm get a tough match to progress to the GF and will be feeling it.
We play a badly busted side, win it well and without too much in the way of injuries/fatigue.
GF
We arrive fresher than the Storm and ready to play.
That's how I saw it all unfolding.
The day of the Raiders semi we were up north visiting the extended family and spent the afternoon visiting
this temple
We arrived pretty much on kick off time and, as I was on very limited data, I wasn't constantly checking my phone for updates. I planned to wait ~100 minutes to allow for the game to finish and then check at full time.
Inside the grounds at the front there is a grassed square which is roped off and, in the middle sits a
giant bell.
There are signs saying if you toss a coin at it and it hits, Buddha will grant your wish.
So I spent the next hour and a half throwing 5 baht coins at it, raising my hands to sawaat dii and saying 'go sharkies, go sharkies'.
Finally we headed back to the car and, checking my watch I realized it was pretty much exactly full time.
So I opened the NRL.com app and saw Sharks 14 Raiders 12 - game time 78:30
No way! 1 and a half minutes to go and we're up.
Then the app froze!
Pharque!!
REFRESH
REFRESH
REFRESH
REFRESH
Finally, about 5 minutes later it updated - FULL TIME!
Unbelievable! I still get goose bumps thinking about.
The rest, of course, unfolded exactly as I had envisaged.
Must have been all that praying to Buddha haha.
!
