Results NRL 2009 – Round 25 Cronulla Sharks v Manly Sea Eagles

Manly Sea Eagles win 18-16.

Sharks tries to Luke Covell, Grant Millington.  Luke Covell 4 goals.

In a game that everybody thought Manly would win by 50 points, with Brett ‘Ladies man’ Stewart returning to the Manly team after 20 weeks on the sidelines, the Sharks came close to causing one of the great upsets of all time, at a ground where the Cronulla Sharks have only won 6 times in their 43 seasons in first grade rugby league.

In the lead for 78 of the 80 minutes played, the Cronulla Sharks were clearly superior to Manly in both attack and defence.  The referee was the difference on the day.

After 26 minutes, the Cronulla Sharks were leading Manly 10-0, and the Brookvale Oval crowd had been silenced by a poor defensive effort against a Cronulla Sharks team that was breaking tackles easily and offloading frequently.

Then the crowd gave their loudest cheer of the day when, to everybody’s amazement, Cronulla Sharks prop forward Luke Douglas was sent off for a high tackle.

While the Brookvale Oval crowd were inspired to again envisage a Sunday afternoon shark slaughter, with Brett Stewart to feature, the initially stunned Cronulla Sharks regained the confidence to believe that they could still win the game.  And if some calls had gone their way, they would have.

After 76 minutes, Cronulla Sharks centre Mitch Brown was taken off the field after receiving a high tackle from Manly forward Brent Kite.  As was typical of the referee, who was clearly Manly’s man-of-the-match, no penalty was awarded, or warning given, and minutes later Manly scored a try by attacking the Cronulla Sharks line where Mitch Brown would have been defending.

On a bright note, it was fantastic to see the Cronulla Sharks playing like men possessed.  The first 25 minutes of the game, and the first 35 minutes of the second-half showed the Cronulla Sharks have real heart.  It’s become commonplace for the media to say ‘the Sharks are a team who still give one-hundred percent’, and the Sharks are a ‘team who play for each other’.

It wasn’t a cliche yesterday.

Perhaps unheralded was the defensive performance of Blake Green, who was targeted by the big men in Manly’s attack, and didn’t seem to ever flinch or fall in the face of it.

Kade Snowden outplayed all of the high-profile Manly prop forwards, and Anthony Tupou, Paul Gallen, and Luke Covell showed the strong leadership that senior players in a young team should.

In fact, it’s hard to think of a Cronulla Sharks player who had a bad game, and it’s hard to think of a Manly player who had a good game.

The Cronulla Sharks team had only one change from the team named the week before.  Lancen Joudo was replaced by Terence Seu Seu.

Paul Gallen and Kade Snowden made Big League magazine’s team of the week for round 25.