It's easier to imagine what you have already seen. By 9.30pm on Sunday, history will be made or, more imaginably, repeated. For the Sharks, it is a greater leap to believe in what has never happened: players in black, white and blue holding up the premiership trophy. For the Storm, to believe in it is only to remember it.
Cameron Smith showing off his armpits as he raises another prize on another podium. A tub of electrolyte drink poured over Craig Bellamy, dissolving that craggy mug to reveal the joy and laughter lurking beneath. Cooper Cronk attempting to say something profoundly intellectual and not quite nailing it, but in rugby league's land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. A rueful Paul Gallen and Michael Ennis holding it together as they press their noses against the window of someone else's celebration. Origin IV, seen it before.
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NRL Grand Final: What to expect
The Sydney Morning Herald's rugby league writers give their take on what to expect from this year's NRL grand final.
Picturing it will count for more than deserving it. The Sharks deserve sympathy and sentiment, but does a 50-season drought mean they deserve it in 2016? No more than a coin deserves to land heads after 50 tails. The team that deserves it will be the team that plays better on the night, the referees permitting. A solid case can be mounted that the Storm 'deserve' it more, on the basis of their super defensive effort over the season, their minor premiership after losing Billy Slater, and their ability to win week after week when not at their best. Against the Storm in the past month, Cronulla, North Queensland and Canberra have all been primed to win but have suffered stage fright. Who can say that the Storm had nothing to do with causing it?
Seven of the eight NRL semi-finals this year have gone the way of the seedings. If that trend continues on Sunday and the Storm win, there is one part of the celebration that is hard to imagine. This heavily AFL-inflected club has cherry-picked techniques and rituals from the rival code; will their players, in victory, do the Hawthorn thing of holding up fingers to show how many premierships they have won? And if so, how many fingers will Smith and Cronk hold up? Two or four? Do they claim this as their second premiership, or do they go on claiming the 2007 and 2009 ones as well?
![Tainted title: The Storm celebrate after winning the 2009 grand final.](/web/20161002045127im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/r/i/1/m/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grrhx3.png/1475231452772.jpg)
Oh, leave it alone! To many, the Storm's salary cap cheating is ancient history, dead and buried. But it is the Storm who continue to raise it, with 2007 and 2009 players still called premiership winners and wearing their rings. It is the Storm who raise the issue of personal morality, contrasting themselves with that motley of misfits and miscreants from the Shire. A phrase you hear a lot from Melbourne is 'what this club is all about'. To their great credit, that club is all about discipline, following its systems to the letter, and bringing out above-average performances from players who, at previous clubs, have been distinctly average. But if a club is going to show pride in its culture, distinguishing it from some of the rabbles in NSW and Queensland, then it is also exposing itself to charges of hypocrisy when it is not perfect.
If the Storm want to project strength of character as well as strength of a football department, some large gestures would win respect from the rugby league world. Not everybody's, but it's not about winning everybody over. When the cap scandal broke, Bellamy choreographed a parade of defiance and unity, to dissociate the players from the rogue management elements who did the cheating. It would be nice to see a similarly orchestrated show of contrition to the game that the Storm – the whole club – defrauded for four years. The Parramatta club are still aggrieved about 2009, but it is not only the grand finalists who lost out. Over those stained finals series, Brisbane, Manly, Cronulla and Parramatta were all dumped out by the rorting Storm, and when you change one piece, you change the whole. For those seasons, the entire competition was defrauded.
Yet there has been no concession from the Storm players. It was all the back office's fault. The NRL punished the players too severely. Contrast this with Cronulla, whose players were also let down by their club during the Dank supplements program. The players were banned and called drug cheats, the coach and his staff suspended. The Storm football department, on the other hand, dissociated themselves from the bad eggs and kept their premiership rings. The NRL has not asked for them back. Nor has the NRL asked Kieran Foran to stop seeing Eddie Hayson. Sometimes it doesn't need to be asked, it's just the right thing to do.
Smith, Slater and presumably Cronk will write end-of-career books soon, and let's hope for an honest accounting of what they knew and a measured acceptance of responsibility. As a serial Storm-baiter, I expect to receive more of the ritual flogging that follows any criticism. But I have also written defending Slater against some truly vile abuse from fans, and received reams of hate mail pointing out how deplorable Slater was, how I knew nothing about this grub, how I was a Storm apologist. That pile of Storm-hating mail was a mountain compared to the pro-Storm molehill. I'm still working my way through it. That's rugby league.
If the Storm do win their second premiership as a cleaned-up club, it would be a great thing for their senior players to make a gesture to the rugby league world by handing back their rings from 2007 and 2009; or, if not, accepting that their successful era was built on a foundation of four years of fraud; or at least have the humility to spare us a four-fingered salute. Win or lose, they have done enough since 2010 to be magnanimous now. To offer a sign of acceptance that the whole club benefited from the cheating would showcase those hallmark Storm characteristics of discipline and moral strength and, even more than winning another comp, earn the respect that they feel they have not been given.
Or, the Sharks can make the whole question academic by going out and winning the damn thing.
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