The Sydney City Roosters overcame the immense pressure applied by a very aggressive and often controversial Manly Sea Eagles to take the 2013 NRL Grand Final championship 26 to 18!
The Roosters are the undisputed NRL premiers for 2013 and the proud moment was never more evident than in the jubilation of the entire team, the captain Anthony Minichiello and the roar of the over 81,400 crowd at Sydney’s ANZ stadium.
A peppering of early mistakes by the Roosters, and an `interesting’ Penalty Try awarded to the Sea Eagles, caused some confusion in the team, and they took some time to recover.
Jamie Lyon had been tackled without the ball by Mitch Aubusson ; according to the video referee, if Lyon had not been tackled in that way, a try would have been scored, even though Lyon never actually had the ball in his hands (?).
That was the opportunity for Manly’s Steve Matai to score a try out wide.
But when the Roosters did recover, they did so with a sequence of brilliant trys to put them back in front. The first came with Shaun Kenny-Dowall who ran from the 30 mtr line all the way to the Manly try line to score and the finishing blow to Manly came from a flying touchdown style try by Michael Jennings (pictured above).
In the end, both teams demonstrated the gutsy determination required for modern Grand Final football, but with 4 out of 4 wins against the Sea Eagles this season, the Roosters have much to celebrate.
Congrats to captain Minichiello, and the entire Roosters champion team ; Anthony Minichiello, Daniel Tupou, Michael Jennings, Shaun Kenny-Dowall, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck, James Maloney, Mitchell Pearce, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves, Jake Friend, Sam Moa, Aidan Guerra, Sonny Bill Williams, Sam Cordner. Interchange: Daniel Mortimer, Mitchell Aubusson, Frank-Paul Nu’uausala, Luke O’Donnell
It could have been argued that they won because of a forward pass.
Odette, the officials called it as Ok, but if you subtract that try from the score, plus the resulting field goal, you’ll still get 20 – 18 Easts way. So they would have won anyway. Now .. if you subtract the `penalty try’ awarded to Manly, where Lyons was not even holding a ball in his hand, then you’d get the same 8 point gap as we had in the end. Fair is fair.