The fight was in the air before it even began. Two plumes of machine-made mist shot up above the field, clouds of maroon and blue coming together in pretty, hostile colours.
Like Harry Potter’s duel with Voldemort in the cemetery, the glow of each wand seeking to overwhelm the other, with the threat of sudden death looming for the loser.
Quite who the Dark Lord was on Sunday felt unclear, for this elimination final was a genuine hate-watch. For the neutral viewers outside Accor Stadium who, for one reason or another, loathe both of these clubs.
For the 50,741 mostly Canterbury supporters witnessing their team’s biggest game in recent memory, and for the smattering of Sea Eagles fans hoping to claim a first finals victory over the Bulldogs since 1976 - their only such triumph from six previous post-season matches.
Similar to the sparks of the mini-fireworks flying amid the pre-game smoke show, much of the pre-game chat danced on the fumes of Manly’s 34-22 win two weeks ago. The Sea Eagles had the blueprint for how to beat the Bulldogs; all they had to do was repeat it. Get the forward pack charging through the middle and generate quick play-the-balls. Make this about power over lightness of foot and big, brute force over shrewd short stuff.
Except that, as Reed Mahoney told Nine’s broadcast coverage at half-time, “both teams came with baseball bats”. As possibly the smallest one out there, Mahoney would know what it means to try and physically dominate a more physically dominant side. Yet dominate they did, for the good part of 70 minutes, pinning the Sea Eagles to their own end until they inexplicably ill-disciplined themselves out of their own fairytale season.
Some will say this late capitulation is the fallout from a distracting week of headlines surrounding Josh Addo-Carr’s positive drug test.
Matt Burton after missing a match-turning field goal just before full-time.Credit: Getty Images
But Addo-Carr had nothing to do with the mass confusion when, two minutes from full-time with two points in it, the hosts seemed to miscount their tackles, before realising they were on their last and Matt Burton tried to turn a botched set-up into a field goal that fell short of the crossbar. And crucially, Addo-Carr was not present when Burton went for and missed another in the dying seconds under off-putting winds of up to 60km/h.