I was at this game and it's one of my favourite semi final wins. With Super league coming and the 2 competitions I felt like this might be the last time that I cared this much about a game of footy. It was a fierce battle. Canberra were, thankfully, missing Ricky Stuart as we never got within cooee of them when he was playing. I said to my godkids that Bartrim would kick the goal and with Canberra's last ditch attack, I told them we would survive that too! Unusual for me to be that confident at critical points. Even rarer for me to be right. Broken clock theory of course. Having lost the cliffhanger the season before (our semi with Canterbury ended with us putting a bomb as the siren sounded in a 2 point loss) it was just such an exhilarating moment to win a knockout semi in such dramatic fashion at the tailend of an awful couple of years where my love for the game had taken a real battering, one that it ultimately never recovered from. Manly were the overwhelming premiership favourites and I knew we couldn't beat them, but I fancied us to beat the Roosters the next week which made him even keener to win this one. We'd given Canterbury an almighty fright in one of the best semis I've ever seen in 1995 before the Dogs proceeded to brutalise Brisbane, Canberra and Manly to snatch of the more unexpected premierships in the modern era so I knew we still had something to offer in semi finals. While we'd hardly set the competition alight during the season we'd won 8 of our last 9 to make the semis, giving that sense that we were a little underrated at 7th and quite capable of a run in the knockout games. The Roosters lost a war with Manly the next day and didn't come up as well the next week. The win over Norths, who had a strong side that year, was unexpected and all the better for it. While we failed to threaten Manly, it was a wonderful run to a grand final and I still look back very fondly on those 3 wins. The Saints teams of the 90's really traded on their consistency, discipline, organisation and all round competitiveness and this semi final series exemplified that. Mundine playing his heart out before his move to the Broncos didn't hurt either. As I suspected at the time, Super League was the turning point between the rugby league obsession of my youth and the more detached approach I took to the game in later years. Of all our grand final runs, this was my favourite. It helped teach me that it's better to go close to winning than not to be in the picture at all. The last 12 years have been a total disaster as a Dragons fan, barely a memorable win to be had anywhere. Give me losing grand final campaigns any time. There's so many great memories from those seasons, even if we didn't quite cap them off.
I was at this game and it's one of my favourite semi final wins. With Super league coming and the 2 competitions I felt like this might be the last time that I cared this much about a game of footy. It was a fierce battle. Canberra were, thankfully, missing Ricky Stuart as we never got within cooee of them when he was playing. I said to my godkids that Bartrim would kick the goal and with Canberra's last ditch attack, I told them we would survive that too! Unusual for me to be that confident at critical points. Even rarer for me to be right. Broken clock theory of course. Having lost the cliffhanger the season before (our semi with Canterbury ended with us putting a bomb as the siren sounded in a 2 point loss) it was just such an exhilarating moment to win a knockout semi in such dramatic fashion at the tailend of an awful couple of years where my love for the game had taken a real battering, one that it ultimately never recovered from.
Manly were the overwhelming premiership favourites and I knew we couldn't beat them, but I fancied us to beat the Roosters the next week which made him even keener to win this one. We'd given Canterbury an almighty fright in one of the best semis I've ever seen in 1995 before the Dogs proceeded to brutalise Brisbane, Canberra and Manly to snatch of the more unexpected premierships in the modern era so I knew we still had something to offer in semi finals. While we'd hardly set the competition alight during the season we'd won 8 of our last 9 to make the semis, giving that sense that we were a little underrated at 7th and quite capable of a run in the knockout games.
The Roosters lost a war with Manly the next day and didn't come up as well the next week. The win over Norths, who had a strong side that year, was unexpected and all the better for it. While we failed to threaten Manly, it was a wonderful run to a grand final and I still look back very fondly on those 3 wins. The Saints teams of the 90's really traded on their consistency, discipline, organisation and all round competitiveness and this semi final series exemplified that. Mundine playing his heart out before his move to the Broncos didn't hurt either.
As I suspected at the time, Super League was the turning point between the rugby league obsession of my youth and the more detached approach I took to the game in later years. Of all our grand final runs, this was my favourite. It helped teach me that it's better to go close to winning than not to be in the picture at all. The last 12 years have been a total disaster as a Dragons fan, barely a memorable win to be had anywhere. Give me losing grand final campaigns any time. There's so many great memories from those seasons, even if we didn't quite cap them off.
It's Andrew 'Vossy' Voss calling this 1996 NRL finals match for Channel 9 instead of Ray 'Rabs' Warren!
Mundine the "Hog" again
For mine