Taumalolo held to season-low
Of all the goals the Melbourne Storm achieved in 2017, this was by far the hardest one: Stopping the freight train that is Jason Taumalolo.
Much of the NRL’s grand final week centred on how the Storm were going to bring down the North Queensland Cowboys star many have labelled the best forward in the game.
His historic statistics were sung bible and verse. The 2016 Dally M winner averaged almost 200 metres a game during the regular season, which he somehow upped to almost
235 during their finals charge. He needed just 54 metres to become just the second player ever to crack
5000 in a year.
Taumalolo reached the 5000m mark in Sunday’s 34-6 grand final loss to the Storm, but managed just
101m in total as the Cowboys lock was put in a box by the Storm’s suffocating defence. His previous lowest this year was 120m against Parramatta in round five.
Storm coach Craig Bellamy admitted it would be impossible to stop the Kiwi juggernaut entirely, but revealed how they aimed to dent his overall.
‘‘Obviously we defended well against him.,’’ Bellamy said. ’’I don’t want to give away too many secrets here, [but] our little target was, if he wanted to run 250 metres tonight, he wanted to have 25 runs.’’
Taumalolo took over 18 runs a game to get close to a doublecentury through the year, meaning close to almost 12m a carry.
Bellamy asked his players to limit him to 10m on Sunday, and they went one better - the hulking No.13 went for 101m in 12 carries.
‘‘We thought if Jason Taumalolo’s playing out there and he’s going under 10 metres per run, or around 10 metres per run, that’s as good as you’re going to get,’’ he said.
‘‘I think we done better than that tonight. But that was our target and I just thought of all of our players were really urgent when Jason got the ball because we all seen what he can do and what he’s been doing the last 3-4 weeks.
‘‘We thought that was really important for us. That was our little target.’’
The history books will show the Cowboys finished runners-up, however, that won’t detract from their sensational NRL season.