Sea Eagles 19 Bulldogs 12If NSW selectors were nervous at half-time as their team was being announced, thinking about what lay ahead, imagine how they must have felt watching the next 40 minutes of football. Blues teammates many of them may have been, but it didn't stop the blues, in a game that was manic and magnificent in equal parts.
Tempers lifted like the tackles. And NSW players were in it all. No sooner had they finished patting each others' backs, the selectors must have been patting the sweat off their brows. "Two sides that went for it for 80 minutes," Manly coach Des Hasler said.
It was clear they went at it more in the second 40 though.
A lifting tackle involving Josh Perry, although Heath L'Estrange was certainly more at fault, injuries to Anthony Watmough and David Williams, although both ran them out, the latter with the game-turning try. Williams sat with his left ankle in a bucket of ice, his knee and shoulder strapped with the stuff, but said he would play tomorrow week. He'll have a lot of black to add to his blue, as will others.
As Williams slammed the ball down for his 68th-minute try, Bryson Goodwin slammed Michael Robertson onto his back. It was a poor tackle and the Manly players reacted by swarming. Goodwin was placed on report, and Robertson complained: "He dropped me on my head," he told Jared Maxwell, who acknowledged that the tackle was a "cheap shot".
The on-field stuff wasn't always as cheap as the talk. Watmough shoved his new teammate, but opponent on the night, Brett Kimmorley, and then Michael Ennis and Glenn Stewart earned the wrath of each other, having been named as teammates not long before.
And then Stewart was lifted in a tackle by Greg Eastwood that was put on report and will certainly be looked at closely by the match review committee.
Just to round out a frenetic period, Ennis caught Matt Orford late after a kick.
In amongst it all, there was a result, clinched by Perry's try with just two minutes remaining. "It doesn't get much better, winning games like that - being a front-rower, it's been a fair while," said Perry, who was told of his Origin selection during a post-match interview. "It's been a good night. I was lucky enough to get a premiership and an Aussie jumper last year, but the Blues one's the one you really want."
Perry finished the match off, but Watmough was the best player on the field, continuing a surge in form for the built-like-a-brick back-rower.
"To Anthony's credit he's worked really hard on a couple of areas of his game," Hasler said. "I think it's starting to show. He's arrived at that stage of his career where he can't be expected to make errors and he's cut that right out of his game. That's what he's got to produce now."
The Bulldogs were brave, having been left with 16 players early after losing Gary Warburton to a challenge from Manly centre Steve Matai that left him, according to Moore, with a "mangled mouth". "Our effort was tremendous," Moore said. "We showed a lot of spirit, and a lot of character."
MANLY 19 (J Perry G Stewart D Williams tries M Orford 3 goals M Orford field goal) bt BULLDOGS 12 (J Morris 2 tries H El Masri 2 goals) at Brookvale Oval. Referee: Tony Archer, Jared Maxwell. Crowd: 15,510.
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