BILLY SLATER V BRETT STEWART: HOW TWO BRILLIANT FULLBACKS HELPED REDEFINE A RUGBY LEAGUE RIVALRY
Nick Campton, The Daily Telegraph
September 1, 2017 12:20pm
Subscriber only
ERAS in rugby league can be defined by their rivalries.
When you mention the 1970s, the conversation eventually works around to Manly v Wests. Same with Canterbury v Parramatta in the 1980s, or Canterbury-Roosters in the early 2000s and after that, Melbourne and Manly.
From 2007 to 2012, the Storm and the Sea Eagles couldn’t put on anything but a classic.
There was the Sea Eagles’ one-point victory in early 2007, one of only three losses by Melbourne that season, which was sealed by ex-Storm halfback Matt Orford’s field goal in the dying minutes in front a Brookvale crowd that shifted between frenzied and bloodthirsty.
The 2009 semi-final where a transitioning Manly side were torn apart by Billy Slater, who ground their bones to make his bread by scoring four blistering tries in one of the great individual performances of his entire career.
The Battle of Brookvale in 2011, which needs no introduction or explanation.
Tension between Manly and Melbourne exploded with 2011’s Battle of Brookvale.
Melbourne’s thunderous victory in the 2012 prelim which ended the rivalry in comprehensive, dominating fashion.
And of course, the two grand finals: Melbourne’s 34-8 smash up in 2007, the apex of the first wave of Craig Bellamy’s coaching, even if it was assisted with some creative accounting, and Manly’s 40-0 slaughterhouse revenge the next year.
With each match, the stakes became higher as the rivalry became more charged and the relationship between the two teams intensified.
The players on those teams should always be linked, contrasted and compared, because from their matches came the dominant force that ruled over rugby league for almost five years.
Nowhere is that better examined than the careers of Brett Stewart and Billy Slater.
Billy Slater and Brett Stewart headlined an enduring rivalry between Melbourne and Manly.
Stewart is a prominent example of how quickly a player can fade from our memories. The lanky fullback wasn’t just good, he was great in every sense of the word. The most gifted support player of his generation, a man who could finish chances other players wouldn’t or couldn’t get near, Stewart never overtook Slater, his ever-present rival, but he always kept it close.
From 2004 to 2008 Stewart ripped off 92 tries in 111 games, a strike rate that had him on track to break Ken Irvine’s record (212 tries in 236 games), the only mark that he and Slater, the two greatest tryscorers of the NRL era, could never reach.
Then came the knee injuries that changed his career and the court case that changed his life. Only Stewart knows how the case changed him off the field but on the field he had to remodel after playing six matches in 2009-10. And in a sign of his true greatness, Stewart did just that. He was no longer the quicksilver flyer who was all over the park running his guts out and running some more whenever there was the slightest of chances — his knees couldn’t take that kind of punishment anymore. He became a savvier ball-player, a more cunning operator, able to pick his spots to go like the blazes and thus prolong his career despite having knees held together by strapping tape and positive thoughts.
Brett Stewart was great in every sense of the word.
But those knees did get him in the end. He was good in 2015 but in 2016, at the age of just 31, the injuries finally got him. He played 11 matches, scored one try, looked nothing like the player of old as Tom Trbojevic loomed on the wing and looked every bit the Sea Eagles future. At some point in the 2016-17 off-season, Stewart just faded from view. He was finished at 32, something that seemed unthinkable as recently as 2015.
As Stewart’s career wound down it seemed that Slater’s would go the same way. In two seasons he played seven matches at an age where one injury can change a player beyond repair. There was a widespread belief that if he did ever come back, he could never be the same. How could he, at 34, be anything close to his glory days after two years on the sidelines.
And yet, Slater has roared back to life in glorious, unrelenting fashion. He hasn’t just returned to the Slater of years past he has reshaped his play, just like Stewart did. Slater still has the speed that made him famous, but only when he really needs it. He’s now a better distributor of the ball, capable of slotting into first receiver whenever he’s needed, and has even showcased a sharp little kicking game nobody outside the Storm ever knew he had.
Billy Slater has returned to sizzling form for the Storm..
Melbourne continue what seems to be an inevitable, unstoppable run towards the title, a run that is still built around the core of Slater, Smith and Cronk
But the last heroes of the first Sea Eagles title, the ones who were cruelly whooped by the Storm in 2007 and took their vicious revenge 12 months later will be doing a farewell lap at Lottoland on Saturday.
Stewart and Steve Matai, like so many of that Manly team, have faded from view so gradually you could be forgiven for forgetting how it happened.
Jamie Lyon departed as we always knew Jamie Lyon would, vanishing into the general population to shoot pigs and never be heard from again. Matt Ballin was ravaged by injury and barely played a match for the Tigers before he retired earlier this season.
Anthony Watmough went to the Eels and looked like a shadow of his former self before vanishing. Glenn Stewart spent an awkward year with Souths before exiling himself to the Super League wilderness.
Injuries finally got to Brett Stewart, who played his last game for Manly in 2016.
Matt Orford split town after 2009, bobbed up two years later with Canberra for a stint that backfired so badly Raiders fans still roll their eyes whenever he’s mentioned.
There was no closure or definitive end to the Manly-Melbourne rivalry. The Storm continued as they always have under Bellamy, with their core remaining untouched while the edges are chipped away until you blink and all of a sudden there’s 14 new faces to the team you started with.
They have grown and reshaped and reformed and been reborn in 2017 as perhaps the finest legal team Bellamy has ever coached.
We’re approaching the day that seemed like it could never come, the day that the first of the big three leaves. It seems certain that Cooper Cronk will be leaving with a riotous, possibly premiership-winning bang that makes the whimper of those veteran Sea Eagles seem even meeker by comparison.
Manly were rebuilt on the fly as well, and the combination of veterans and new parts pulled them to two more grand finals and one more win, but for such a glorious era for the club the end has been rather subdued.
Brett Stewart flies high for the ball against Billy Slater.
Stewart, Matai and Ballin will be given the farewell they richly deserve this weekend against Penrith but as the club reformed around Daly Cherry-Evans, the Trbojevic brothers and Martin Taupau the heroes of the 2008 premiership that held on for the 2011 triumph were cast aside in brutal, cold fashion.
Cherry-Evans is the only player left from the 2011 premiership and amid all those rumors about a falling out with the senior players that dogged the star halfback for years, he was the future and he is the man on whom the club staked the next decade.
While Melbourne reformed, Manly rebuilt. Now the matches between Melbourne and Manly are just like any other. The great showdowns of the past will always be mentioned but the games can’t have the same fire, the same stakes, as they did in the past. How could they? Almost all the players who made it that way are gone.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...y/news-story/c44e71c290e49ebfac0c5cc237f02c4a
Nick Campton, The Daily Telegraph
September 1, 2017 12:20pm
Subscriber only
ERAS in rugby league can be defined by their rivalries.
When you mention the 1970s, the conversation eventually works around to Manly v Wests. Same with Canterbury v Parramatta in the 1980s, or Canterbury-Roosters in the early 2000s and after that, Melbourne and Manly.
From 2007 to 2012, the Storm and the Sea Eagles couldn’t put on anything but a classic.
There was the Sea Eagles’ one-point victory in early 2007, one of only three losses by Melbourne that season, which was sealed by ex-Storm halfback Matt Orford’s field goal in the dying minutes in front a Brookvale crowd that shifted between frenzied and bloodthirsty.
The 2009 semi-final where a transitioning Manly side were torn apart by Billy Slater, who ground their bones to make his bread by scoring four blistering tries in one of the great individual performances of his entire career.
The Battle of Brookvale in 2011, which needs no introduction or explanation.
Tension between Manly and Melbourne exploded with 2011’s Battle of Brookvale.
Melbourne’s thunderous victory in the 2012 prelim which ended the rivalry in comprehensive, dominating fashion.
And of course, the two grand finals: Melbourne’s 34-8 smash up in 2007, the apex of the first wave of Craig Bellamy’s coaching, even if it was assisted with some creative accounting, and Manly’s 40-0 slaughterhouse revenge the next year.
With each match, the stakes became higher as the rivalry became more charged and the relationship between the two teams intensified.
The players on those teams should always be linked, contrasted and compared, because from their matches came the dominant force that ruled over rugby league for almost five years.
Nowhere is that better examined than the careers of Brett Stewart and Billy Slater.
Billy Slater and Brett Stewart headlined an enduring rivalry between Melbourne and Manly.
Stewart is a prominent example of how quickly a player can fade from our memories. The lanky fullback wasn’t just good, he was great in every sense of the word. The most gifted support player of his generation, a man who could finish chances other players wouldn’t or couldn’t get near, Stewart never overtook Slater, his ever-present rival, but he always kept it close.
From 2004 to 2008 Stewart ripped off 92 tries in 111 games, a strike rate that had him on track to break Ken Irvine’s record (212 tries in 236 games), the only mark that he and Slater, the two greatest tryscorers of the NRL era, could never reach.
Then came the knee injuries that changed his career and the court case that changed his life. Only Stewart knows how the case changed him off the field but on the field he had to remodel after playing six matches in 2009-10. And in a sign of his true greatness, Stewart did just that. He was no longer the quicksilver flyer who was all over the park running his guts out and running some more whenever there was the slightest of chances — his knees couldn’t take that kind of punishment anymore. He became a savvier ball-player, a more cunning operator, able to pick his spots to go like the blazes and thus prolong his career despite having knees held together by strapping tape and positive thoughts.
Brett Stewart was great in every sense of the word.
But those knees did get him in the end. He was good in 2015 but in 2016, at the age of just 31, the injuries finally got him. He played 11 matches, scored one try, looked nothing like the player of old as Tom Trbojevic loomed on the wing and looked every bit the Sea Eagles future. At some point in the 2016-17 off-season, Stewart just faded from view. He was finished at 32, something that seemed unthinkable as recently as 2015.
As Stewart’s career wound down it seemed that Slater’s would go the same way. In two seasons he played seven matches at an age where one injury can change a player beyond repair. There was a widespread belief that if he did ever come back, he could never be the same. How could he, at 34, be anything close to his glory days after two years on the sidelines.
And yet, Slater has roared back to life in glorious, unrelenting fashion. He hasn’t just returned to the Slater of years past he has reshaped his play, just like Stewart did. Slater still has the speed that made him famous, but only when he really needs it. He’s now a better distributor of the ball, capable of slotting into first receiver whenever he’s needed, and has even showcased a sharp little kicking game nobody outside the Storm ever knew he had.
Billy Slater has returned to sizzling form for the Storm..
Melbourne continue what seems to be an inevitable, unstoppable run towards the title, a run that is still built around the core of Slater, Smith and Cronk
But the last heroes of the first Sea Eagles title, the ones who were cruelly whooped by the Storm in 2007 and took their vicious revenge 12 months later will be doing a farewell lap at Lottoland on Saturday.
Stewart and Steve Matai, like so many of that Manly team, have faded from view so gradually you could be forgiven for forgetting how it happened.
Jamie Lyon departed as we always knew Jamie Lyon would, vanishing into the general population to shoot pigs and never be heard from again. Matt Ballin was ravaged by injury and barely played a match for the Tigers before he retired earlier this season.
Anthony Watmough went to the Eels and looked like a shadow of his former self before vanishing. Glenn Stewart spent an awkward year with Souths before exiling himself to the Super League wilderness.
Injuries finally got to Brett Stewart, who played his last game for Manly in 2016.
Matt Orford split town after 2009, bobbed up two years later with Canberra for a stint that backfired so badly Raiders fans still roll their eyes whenever he’s mentioned.
There was no closure or definitive end to the Manly-Melbourne rivalry. The Storm continued as they always have under Bellamy, with their core remaining untouched while the edges are chipped away until you blink and all of a sudden there’s 14 new faces to the team you started with.
They have grown and reshaped and reformed and been reborn in 2017 as perhaps the finest legal team Bellamy has ever coached.
We’re approaching the day that seemed like it could never come, the day that the first of the big three leaves. It seems certain that Cooper Cronk will be leaving with a riotous, possibly premiership-winning bang that makes the whimper of those veteran Sea Eagles seem even meeker by comparison.
Manly were rebuilt on the fly as well, and the combination of veterans and new parts pulled them to two more grand finals and one more win, but for such a glorious era for the club the end has been rather subdued.
Brett Stewart flies high for the ball against Billy Slater.
Stewart, Matai and Ballin will be given the farewell they richly deserve this weekend against Penrith but as the club reformed around Daly Cherry-Evans, the Trbojevic brothers and Martin Taupau the heroes of the 2008 premiership that held on for the 2011 triumph were cast aside in brutal, cold fashion.
Cherry-Evans is the only player left from the 2011 premiership and amid all those rumors about a falling out with the senior players that dogged the star halfback for years, he was the future and he is the man on whom the club staked the next decade.
While Melbourne reformed, Manly rebuilt. Now the matches between Melbourne and Manly are just like any other. The great showdowns of the past will always be mentioned but the games can’t have the same fire, the same stakes, as they did in the past. How could they? Almost all the players who made it that way are gone.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...y/news-story/c44e71c290e49ebfac0c5cc237f02c4a
