Screechers,
If ever there was a team that needed a couple of days in the Room Full of Mirrors down there on the Balmain Road, it was the mob who lost the unloseable game against the Chocolate Soldiers at the foot of the mountains Friday. last
The new Super Coach Madge Maguire would have got the lot of them to take a good hard look at themselves in every reflection available.
In a game that was always going to be a tight defensive affair, E.Marsters leaving his kicking boots home at Mum's was the last thing the Mighty Tiges needed.
Both sets for forwards meant business, and no one had come close to going over the line in the first 30 minutes until Balmain scored two superb unanswered tries, but Esan missed both conversions by a width of a cigarette paper.
Then to fluff and spray a potential match winning second-half penalty goal that was waved away by the touch judges left them very vulnerable indeed
If ever there's a cardinal sin in rugby league it's gotta be caught napping [nay, fast asleep] and letting in a very soft try in the corner in the final minute of the game.
Never mind that it was the Panthers only try of the game or that it was converted by the pest Nathan Cleary to level the damnable thing.
And so to extra time, which had the Stats Guru diving for the record sheets to reveal Balmain's horrific loss rate in sudden-death.
Oh no. The faithful were shaking their heads in dismay.
In the denouement, it was like a self-fulfilling prophesy, as not one, but two easy shots at field goal - either could have won the game for the Tiges - were sprayed wide.
By now, the true die-hards were holding their heads with their hands, screaming at their television sets.
Travelling tragics who'd got on the Balmain Member's Bus to the ground would have been going entirely apeshit having paroxysms.
And to rub salt into a raw wound, it was none other than that poncy Cleary, N., again, who potted the field goal to get the single point on offer, and the victory, as the Tiges lost ground, and the match.
There is nothing quite as bad as scoring more tries than your opponents, and still losing - by "a bloody point".
Joisus.
After all the trash talking that went on during the week....sadly it was Balmain who ended up with egg on their faces, when by rights they should have got the cigar.
That said, it was one of the best games in the caper seen this early in the season, and the signs look good, despite letting that one get away.
Josh Reynolds, who spent almost the entirety of last season in Sick Bay in stead of being the Great White Hope, had a corker.
The forwards, in their second season together, are the real deal and the Best Leb in the Game toiled away manfully at dummy-half all day.
The Great Robbie got on with it, knows the set plays like the back of his hand as usual, knows other clever ways too; thinking, thinking, all the time with that enormous football brain of his.
The Great Benji hurt his leg early in the second half and went straight off and got into his monogrammed fur-lined dressing gown draped on the bench and had a cup of tea, taking no further part in the game, as is his rightat his age.
Unavailable this week.
That hard-man Russell Packer had a great game too, ripping into them after he'd called out last year's Balmain coach Ivan Cleary for telling the team he was pissing off to Penrith, when he always said he didn't
really want to coach his son, when in reality that's all the dupe wanted to do. Two-faced arsehole is an expression that comes to mind.
As far as Packer was concerned, it wasn't on; the bloke could not just walk away like that and leave them in the lurch, and he told him so to his face after Cleary, I. had just delivered the news.
Unimpressed with the turncoat to say the least, and for the first time, Packer admitted that he had called Cleary Snr names.
The general rancour and crankiness got a good run in the Meeja as you'd expect - there was more chit-chat on the mobile telephones - and then it was see you at the game for some special treatment, boys.
Expect the worst. No prisoners taken.
It's all still very tribal in the small world that is rugby league.
Not that the Balmain Club Secretary is all that worried, given he squeezed $590K compo out of the Panthers for pinching Cleary, which now pays for more than the first year contract fee of the new man-in-charge.
What goes around, comes around.
PENRITH PANTHERS 9. Tries: Edwards. Goals: Cleary (2). Field Goals: Cleary (1).
WESTS TIGERS 8. Tries: Thompson, Matterson.
At Penrith Stadium.
Crowd: 14,002.
In extra time. Full time. 8-8.
It's pleasing to see Isaac Heeney the Cardiff Zucchini come on in leaps and bounds this season.
Always thought the kiddie was the goods - got all the skills - from the moment he strutted onto a senior football paddock as an 18 year old, after the Swans pulled a clever swifty to grab him in the 2014 draft for a song.
Injury apart, he's never been out of the team since. Now he's one of the first picked. And in this game would have easily picked up the three Brownlow votes.
A good New South Wales boy born and bred; initially he had "mid-fielder" written all over him, but SC Horse has wisely decided to push him a bit further forward with outstanding results.
He's one of those slow developers that Sydney are famous for, who would now be worth a poultice on the open market, and his footy smarts are only now coming to the fore as he pops up everywhere to put the ball on the end of a string.
Everyone knows the lad's ability to climb on bloke's backs and pull down mark-of-the-season screamers, but he also seems to have been on the pickle juice over the summer as he's bulked up considerably,after finding himself targeted and bashed from pillar to post.
It's just a pity the Zuke is now missing his fetching original "sea anemone" style hair-do, after getting a pretty ordinary barber to have a go at it last year.
Of course if he played for any good Melbourne club he'd be a household name in Victoria and would be pointed out in the streets, but here in the Emerald City he'd be lucky to get a second look.
Even if he was ever very vaguely recognized, someone might say to their friend "isn't he a musician?'
Keeping a low profile has always been inflicted on Sydney, and is now embraced as part of the renowned Sydney System.At lest it keeps the boys off the front page of the papers.
The team's more or less anonymous in their own town; the players are more well known in South Melbourne, even after 37 years harbourside.
The same can be said for one of my faves, the Papley Pearl, who's really found his niche as a classic rover taking full advantage of this year's rule changes.
Never mind that he's as tough as teak, has a great kick on him, and can pivot on a sixpence.
His classic one-two with Franklin tapping it down near the goal square and not even taking a step before his boot was on the ball punting the pill through the big sticks was poetry in motion.
Pappers comes from South Melbourne football royalty [he changed into his grandfather's No.11 last year] - he would always find a bed in those parts being the pretty boy that he is - and you have to suppose his habit of jibbering away constantly and slagging opponents and bagging umpires will stay with him, and he'll forvere be regarded by other teams as a serial pest who will just not shut up. It used to annoy me too, but so be it.
The dire predictions of the proverbial Eternal Pessimist residing in the Temple of Doom about another 0-6 start to the season has mercifully failed to materialise - as My Spy at the Ground was moved to comment "that's four Premiership Points in the dilly bag for a start off".
But the way ahead is hard and the road is long, what with The Goal Kicker from North Adelaide in Will Hayward having surgery on a busted jawbone, and old man Odd Head McVeigh doing himself a mischief.
Both will spend at least a month in Sick Bay, and the depth of the Swans roster will be sorely tested, not for the first and only time this season, you'd expect, with the new rules producing a harder than usual fast running game that old blokes will struggle with come the pointy end of the season.
Even if they had to work very hard for it, a win is a win is a win, and you'll take them any day of the week.
CARLTON: 5.4, 6.5, 8.9, 10.14 (74). Goals: E.Curnow 4, Cripps, Murphy, Walsh, McGovern, McKay, Fisher.
SYDNEY: 6.1, 9.5, 11.9, 14.9 (93). Goals: Heeney 4, Franklin 2, Hayward 2, Papley 2, Parker, Blakey, Kennedy, Sinclair.
At Docklands Stadium.
Crowd: 39,290.
