StormFans.club

According to that tired old hack Booze Drossfield in today's Telegraph!

Should provide a bit of pre-season motivation help for Bellyache & Smithy!

Who cares what Buzz says, really?

Some perspective though. Last season we had one more win than the team who came 8th. We came second because Smith went full GOAT mode through origin and refused to lose games. We've lost Slater and Glasby from our GF team, as well as Hoffman. We haven't signed anyone to replace them at all.

Could also include how out of form a lot of our players ended the season and how young our spine still is outside of the captain.

I give as much weight to Buzz's opinion as I do any other barely coherent drunk...

That is true, we only had one more win than the team that came 8th. We were also 8 points clear of 9th position... The top 8 was the closest I can remember ever seeing.

We have no new signings and instead have invested in the youth from our squad. They need to grow in 2019 if we are to continue to be a title contender in the competition. 9th is a ridiculous tip though.

People have been tipping the Storm to fall for about 10 years now. Every year a so called “league expert” from the media predicts the Storm to miss the 8. Nothing new here

I have gone back over our painful 2018 season and noted a couple of things:

1. We were consistently inconsistent
Not a trait we have come to expect from our club but 2018 saw varied Storm performances with less confidence each week that as a fan, you knew which Storm team was going to show up.

Results Stats
18 Wins
9 Losses

12 Wins by 13+
5 Wins by 2 points or less (4 games by a single point)
3 Losses by 13+
3 Losses by 3 points or less

Between Rounds 12-20 we won 8 games straight. Outside of that streak, we were hot and cold all year - win one or two, lose one.

2. We seemed complacent after big wins...
Beat the Cowboys by 16... Next week, lose to the Sharks by 10
Smash the Warriors by 40... Next week, lose to the Dragons by 20
Beat the Titans by 14... Next week, lose to the Sea Eagles by 20
Smash the Raiders by 34... Next week, lose to the Rabbitohs by 10

3. We struggled against the other Top 4 teams
This one was obvious and readily noticed throughout the year. With the exception of the Prelim Final win over the Sharks, these were the results in 2018;

Vs Sharks in Syd - Lost by 10
Vs Roosters in Adl - Won by 1
Vs Rabbitohs in Syd - Lost by 10
Vs Sharks in Mel - Lost by 4
Vs Souths in Mel - Won by 1

Two 1 point wins and three losses.

Deadpool wrote:People have been tipping the Storm to fall for about 10 years now. Every year a so called “league expert” from the media predicts the Storm to miss the 8. Nothing new here

Exactly. Sterlo has been touting it almost every year for a decade. Buzz and his DT cronies have had multiple attempts in the past. They get it wrong each and every time but everyone forgets predicitions made in January.

Watch the one year someone gets it right and they get praised as some kind of RL Nostradamus

In hindsight, picking a team with the best spine of all time in it to finally miss the 8 was a bad decision.

The good news for those folk is we only have one of those players left and he's 36 next season.

blazza18 wrote:

The good news for those folk is we only have one of those players left and he's 36 next season.

He's playing on, with us?

Just expanding on my post above RE 2018, particulalry how we fared against the better teams in the comp...

We played 11 games against Top 8 teams (for 6 wins - 55%)
We played 13 games against Bottom 8 teams (for 10 wins - 77%)


Storm Combined Margins - against each team:

Sydney Roosters (-14)
South Sydney Rabbitohs (-9)
Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks (+3)
Penrith Panthers (-6)
Brisbane Broncos (+30)
St. George Illawarra Dragons (+2)
New Zealand Warriors (+46)

Wests Tigers (-3)
Canberra Raiders (+34)
Newcastle Knights (+44)
Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs (+18)
North Queensland Cowboys (+17)
Gold Coast Titans (+16)
Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles (-19)
Parramatta Eels (+16)

---

For comparison:

The Roosters and the Bunnies each played 11 games against Top 8 teams (for 5 wins - 46%)
The Roosters and the Bunnies played 13 games against Top 8 teams (for 11 wins - 85%)

So the Roosters and Bunnies performed slightly worse against Top 8 teams throughout the year and slightly better against Bottom 8 teams... The competition was that close in 2018 (esp in Top 8 ) that the data means not a whole lot and simply whichever team showed up with more intent, was probably going to win.

We simply sh*t the bed on the biggest day of the year.

Most observers last year would have noted that while Storm were nowhere near their best it just showed how bad the rest were. My only disappointed was the way they handled the GF. I wasn't bothered about losing so much as the way Storm lost it!
Still its blindsided the Sydney hacks into thinking the Chooks can do back to back!

Buzz blocked me on Twitter last year. I'm proud of that.

LESStar58 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 12, 2019 1:19 pm Buzz blocked me on Twitter last year. I'm proud of that.

Don't be too proud. It's more likely he was just very drunk and mashing the keyboard, blocking you by accident...

In my opinion Rothfield is paid to make both opinions and click bait. I'm sure there's nothing in his contract to make well thought out, incisive or reasoned out opinions, just something that will fill web or print space and generate a response to the salivating Sydney throng a.k.a anything but Melbourne.

LESStar58 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 12, 2019 1:19 pm Buzz blocked me on Twitter last year. I'm proud of that.

I'm proud of you too then. Worthy achievement.

Bump