Melbourne Storm or Bellyaches all round…
Steve Turner's bigger, faster, and stronger replacement.
Season Highlight: Much more pleasurable than watching the Storm win the comp, was watching Greg Inglis repeatedly tell everyone not to argue with him... You think they'd learn...
Season Lowlight: Picking up Brett Finch early in the season. He is the player that everyone loves to see lose, and his team-mates' conflicting desires were apparent in their mid-season win-one, lose-one form.
Most Valuable Player: Dallas Johnson. He does nothing exceptional during the regular season, but everyone knows he is a big game player. Before the GF, I picked him to get the Clive Churchill medal but only if he was concussed in the first 5 minutes. It took about 10 - which gave Billy a headstart that Dallas couldn't catch up.
Least Valuable Player: Brett White. League Blog just doesn't like him.
Telling Statistic: Both Cameron Smith and Billy Slater were both born on 18 June 1983. Interestingly, Superman III opened on exactly the same day.
Quote that sums up their year: "No comment", by Greg Inglis
2010 Outlook: Most of the Storm's senior players are in their mid-20s (Johnson 27, Smith 26, Slater 26, Cronk 25, Hoffsman 25, Inglis 22) so unless the salary cap gets in the way, we are in the middle of a dynasty. Also, winning the Under 20s is a good sign, and they have in the wings Pulou Vaituutuu, who looks like moving ahead of Frank-Paul Nuuausala in the most-unlikely-preponderance-of-the-letter-U-in-a-name stakes.
Storm - bah, phooey, humbug. They deserved the title in the sense that they played better in the Grand Final, and in that they played brilliantly in their two finals matches to make the Grand Final, and in that during the regular season they were the only team to cause this Manly fan a slight uneasy disquiet. But in every other way they deserved nothing.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly is a concern that their key men are all still relatively young. They seem to have hit on a winning formula of retaining their core of superstars, and putting a few different faces around them each year. Why is it so hard for the other teams to follow this simple strategy?
I had hoped their humiliating dismantling in the 2008 GF signalled the end of their dynasty. No such luck. Oh well, may they crumble and fade next year instead.
The law of averages surely says at least one of Slater, Smith, Inglis, & Ringo are due for a season-ending injury soon. Either way, I predict no GF for Storm in 2010. For this year though, I grudgingly concede they are the champs once again.
Rumour has it that Craig Bellamy has overused his salivary glands so much over the years that they're on the verge of collapse. This could be the X factor that signals the premature demise of the Storm. Either that or he'll be distracted by his burgeoning Bellamy Spray men's deodorant business. Htime
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