Almost 32 hours till kick-off and boy am I nervous!
All the hard work the boys have done this year will become unravelled if we lose the big one on Sunday. That said, i'll be pretty damn proud with just how far they've come after everyone writing us off in the Pre-Season (i'm looking at you Phil Gould).
Forecast for tommorow looks great, i'm just wondering what the boys mental state is like. Unlike the Broncos, we don't have too many experienced campaigners who have been here and done this before. Boofa is the only one for us, and i'm sure he'll pass on the experience to the others.
I'm worried in particular about the performance of two players come Sunday.
Greg Inglis
and
Billy Slater
We know how good both those players can be. The thing i'm worried about is that under the pressure of a Grand Final, they'll feel the need that they need to do 'something special', and may be defensively caught out.
I read in the papers this morning how Billy was desperate to have a huge game on Sunday. That said, I have no doubts that he'll be given alot of bombs by Lockyer and Perry for him to defuse. Let's just hope he plays his natural game.
And there is ofcourse, Inglis. If anyone recalls, when he played his first Origin match, he made a couple of uncharacteristic errors early on but came back very strongly, scoring a couple of excellent tries. After all the media attention that has been on him this week (e.g Andrew Johns calling him potentially the best player ever), I really hope he doesn't have the teams expectations on his back.
I know this is unrelated, but I watched the movie 'Kickin' and Screamin'' last night (it had Will Ferrell
). It spoke a team of kids playing for their district soccer side. Anyhow, the teams gameplan was basically "kick it to the Italians and let them do the work" . I thought that was pretty funny, but it struck me that in recent weeks, that's been the gameplan of the Storm as well. Rather than Coops and Hill kicking it to the wing of King and Turner equally as much as the wing of Inglis and Boofa, at least 75% of the kicks and passes in recent weeks have been to 'The Italian', Inglis. 
Oh well, maybe i'm over-reacting, but I doubt i'll have any hair to pull out come approximately 9:30pm tommorow night.
Go Storm!
All the hard work the boys have done this year will become unravelled if we lose the big one on Sunday. That said, i'll be pretty damn proud with just how far they've come after everyone writing us off in the Pre-Season (i'm looking at you Phil Gould).
Forecast for tommorow looks great, i'm just wondering what the boys mental state is like. Unlike the Broncos, we don't have too many experienced campaigners who have been here and done this before. Boofa is the only one for us, and i'm sure he'll pass on the experience to the others.
I'm worried in particular about the performance of two players come Sunday.
Greg Inglis
and
Billy Slater
We know how good both those players can be. The thing i'm worried about is that under the pressure of a Grand Final, they'll feel the need that they need to do 'something special', and may be defensively caught out.
I read in the papers this morning how Billy was desperate to have a huge game on Sunday. That said, I have no doubts that he'll be given alot of bombs by Lockyer and Perry for him to defuse. Let's just hope he plays his natural game.
And there is ofcourse, Inglis. If anyone recalls, when he played his first Origin match, he made a couple of uncharacteristic errors early on but came back very strongly, scoring a couple of excellent tries. After all the media attention that has been on him this week (e.g Andrew Johns calling him potentially the best player ever), I really hope he doesn't have the teams expectations on his back.
I know this is unrelated, but I watched the movie 'Kickin' and Screamin'' last night (it had Will Ferrell
). It spoke a team of kids playing for their district soccer side. Anyhow, the teams gameplan was basically "kick it to the Italians and let them do the work" . I thought that was pretty funny, but it struck me that in recent weeks, that's been the gameplan of the Storm as well. Rather than Coops and Hill kicking it to the wing of King and Turner equally as much as the wing of Inglis and Boofa, at least 75% of the kicks and passes in recent weeks have been to 'The Italian', Inglis. Oh well, maybe i'm over-reacting, but I doubt i'll have any hair to pull out come approximately 9:30pm tommorow night.
Go Storm!
