It is the very nature of sport.
Sometimes you can pit the two greatest teams of their generation, packed with off-the-charts talent and firepower, into the most important match of the season and you get explosive action throughout, an unending series of fireworks.
You know, like Origin III this year, which was as good and as intense as football gets.
And other times you get matches like the 2024 NRL grand final between Penrith and Melbourne. No-one could doubt either side’s talent, pedigree, nor their intensity of purpose. It was just that for most of the opening half it was a straight-out arm wrestle rather than wild swings.
If this was, as they say, the Big Dance, to this little black duck at least, it didn’t feel like the band was playing that old-time rock’n’roll like I expected. Not that it was exactly a fox-trot, either – just not Origin III, which probably spoiled us this year for truly memorable football.
For what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? You get Penrith attacking the Storm’s line for the first 22 minutes for no nudge on the scoreboard of nil-all and nothing particularly memorable, and versa-vicky.
Panthers players celebrate victory over Melbourne.Credit: Getty Images
And yes, the impasse was broken first with typical individual brilliance by Melbourne’s captain Harry Grant finding a gap in the Riff line that was completely invisible to the rest of us. Bravo.
Ditto, double-ditto, double-bravo, foxtrot, Roger for the two tries Penrith scored in reply to go to a 10-6 lead at half-time. It was great football, just not put-this-in-a-bottle-and-take-it-out-in-20-years-as-a-super-vintage-GREAT football.
Perhaps the second half would deliver?
Sort of.
But again we were left with the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, and never more than shortly after the break when the storming Storm centre Jack Howarth took a ball from Xavier Coates just out from the Penrith line, which would surely have been scored 99 times out of 100 – only to be met by such a mass of stiff Riff biff that the ball got no closer to being grounded than a urinating bee would have had to pull up his fly. Or something like that.
Harry Grant scores the opening try of the NRL grand final.Credit: Getty Images
From that point on, it seemed obvious that Penrith had this game in hand and were on their way to topping last year’s three-peat with a this-year’s four-on-the floor – and they would do it without any of the kind of epic genius Nathan Cleary displayed in last year’s grand final. It just wasn’t needed, you know?
You, too, Jarome Luai. We need you to play well, but no genius needed.
Oh, alright, Liam Martin, you can be the stand-out, but only in a general way, rather than particular binocular-shattering actions.
Ten minutes later, Penrith centre Paul Alamoti scored in the corner to give Penrith an eight-point buffer.
Yes, with a dozen minutes to go the Storm made such a sustained attack on the Penrith line it seemed they must crack them, but the Riff was stiff like stone and simply refused to break. The immovable object did not move any more than any of us got any closer to the edge of our seats.
With that final failure to penetrate the Penrith line the result was never really in doubt – and a lady of wonderfully generous proportions could be heard warbling in the stands. No doubt she went up an octave in tune with the referee’s final whistle, but again, it wasn’t rock and roll, doll.
Good game, certainly. Great game, maybe. But Penrith IV was not Origin III.
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