Grand Final
| Melbourne Storm | Position | Parramatta Eels |
|---|---|---|
| Billy Slater | FB | Jarryd Hayne |
| Steve Turner | WG | Luke Burt |
| Will Chambers | CE | Krisnan Inu |
| Greg Inglis | CE | Joel Reddy |
| Dane Nielsen | WG | Eric Grothe |
| Brett Finch | FE | Daniel Mortimer |
| Cooper Cronk | HB | Jeff Robson |
| Aiden Tolman | PR | Nathan Cayless (c) |
| Cameron Smith (c) | HK | Matt Keating |
| Brett White | PR | Fuifui Moimoi |
| Adam Blair | SR | Ben Smith |
| Ryan Hoffman | SR | Nathan Hindmarsh |
| Dallas Johnson | LK | Todd Lowrie |
| Ryan Hinchcliffe | Bench | Kevin Kingston |
| Jeff Lima | Bench | Feleti Mateo |
| Ryan Tandy | Bench | Joe Galuvao |
| Scott Anderson | Bench | Tim Mannah |
| Craig Bellamy | Coach | Daniel Anderson |
The Melbourne Storm were playing in their fourth consecutive Grand Final, with a team later deemed illegal due to massive over spending on the salary cap and were up against the Parramatta Eels who were playing in their first Grand Final since 2001. Parramatta were first team since the McIntyre Finals System was introduced in 1999 to make the Grand Final from 8th spot.
First Half: Melbourne's Ryan Hoffman broke the Eels' line to scored the first try of the game in the fifth minute to make the score 6–0. Parramatta was looking shaky in the first half, and Melbourne capitalised with a try to Adam Blair in the 24th minute, set up by a Cooper Cronk line-break, to make the score 10–0.
Second Half: Parramatta scored early in the second half, with Eric Grothe, Jr., scoring in the 45th minute to bring the scoreline to 10–6. Melbourne responded quickly, with tries to Greg Inglis off a bomb kick in the 49th minute and Billy Slater from a line break in the 56th minute, to open a handy 22–6 lead heading into the final quarter of the game. Parramatta attacked through the final quarter of the game, then broke through for two tries: one to Joel Reddy off a bomb kick in the 70th minute, then a barnstorming run from Fuifui Moimoi off an off-load in the 72nd minute; only the former of these tries was converted, bringing the score to 22–16. In the 76th minute, with Melbourne attacking from their own half, Billy Slater dropped the ball as he tried to play it, but referee Tony Archer ruled that Parramatta's Fuifui Moimoi had held Slater down in the tackle, and awarded a penalty to the Storm; Greg Inglis scored a field goal in the ensuing set-of-six, extending the margin to 23–16 in the 78th minute. Melbourne would hold on to win by that score.
Read more about this topic: 2009 NRL Season
Famous quotes containing the words grand and/or final:
“One of my playmates, who was apprenticed to a printer, and was somewhat of a wag, asked his master one afternoon if he might go a-fishing, and his master consented. He was gone three months. When he came back, he said that he had been to the Grand Banks, and went to setting type again as if only an afternoon had intervened.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The white man regards the universe as a gigantic machine hurtling through time and space to its final destruction: individuals in it are but tiny organisms with private lives that lead to private deaths: personal power, success and fame are the absolute measures of values, the things to live for. This outlook on life divides the universe into a host of individual little entities which cannot help being in constant conflict thereby hastening the approach of the hour of their final destruction.”
—Policy statement, 1944, of the Youth League of the African National Congress. pt. 2, ch. 4, Fatima Meer, Higher than Hope (1988)