Well, what a year. After drunken group sex allegations, the usual coach sackings, a couple of CEO sackings/ departures (one involving sex allegations), a footy show sacking (related to afore mentioned group sex), some drunken biffo, drunken nudity antics (by coaches and players), some domestic abuse cases, some drunken pooing incidents and some good footy games (as well as a couple of shockers, mostly involving either Cronulla or the Roosters), we finally get to the GF, the big game to decide who has the right to be crowned the 'benchmark team' for next season. So who will it be - the Storm or the Eels?

A couple of interesting things about this GF. It is the Storm's 4th in a row having won only one of the past 3 (incgetting whalloped last year 40-0 by Manly). The Eels made it after losing their 5/8 at the start of the season to their GF opponent - the Storm (and won't Finchy be pissed if the Storm lose). Amazingly, the star for the Eels (apart from Hayne) has been a bloke by the name of Mortimer and no one would have thought a Mortimer would ever have played for the Eels.

And so to the game preview and my prediction.

Both teams have great defence and have shown over the past few weeks that they can keep out good attacking teams. The key players for the Storm are Slater and Inglis and Smith at hooker. For the Eels it is Mortimer and Hayne and, to a lesser extent, Moi Moi. For me, Inglis and Hayne are pretty close but Inglis has it over him in one area: strength. Where Hayne breaks the line with speed and agility, Inglis can also do it with strength and his palm off is probably the best in the game - ever.. The scary thing about Inglis at the moment is that he has been given licence to chase the ball and this makes him even harder than usual to defend against - expect him to see a lot of it on both sides of the field on Sunday. Slater has lifted in the past few weeks and I don't think there is much between him and Hayne now - both are dangerous whenever they get the ball. Mortimer has some real talent and guts as well - he had to be hurting last week but you would never have known it from his runs. Smith will still be smarting from missing last years GF. He was devestating against Manly 2 years ago in the GF and has been in good form all year. He offers more from dummy half than anything that the Eels have to offer and while I think the majority of his passes are forward, it gives his forwards extra line speed in the hit up. Two other players worth mentioning are Dallas Johnston and Nathan Hindmarsh. Both these guys will tackle all day and probably end up with around 40 tackles each on Sunday. While neither do much brilliant with the ball, they are inspirational in defence. If either is injured in the game, the other team will benefit - neither teams have a player that can fill that workload void.

There is one other thing to throw into the mix and that is grand final's experiennce. The Storm in 06 against the Broncos and Manly in 07 showed it was a factor. Hayne has now started to believe his own hype and when the Storm showed him the respect he deserved by saying that they would have to try and shut him dow, he said "good luck". That sort of ego tends to come undone in spectacular fashion in Grand Finals.

As a Manly fan I have no vested interest and will be watching for the love of the game. It should be a good one but I expect Hayne to be targetted under the bomb, cough it up at least one early on and struggle after that. With that, there go the Eels chances. Storm by at least 2 tries is my tip but given my recent tipping form, I'm not going to back it up at the TAB.

Enjoy the game folks, I expect we are going to see some pretty entertaining footy from both teams.

Oh, and one other thing, regardless of whether the Eels win or lose, I do have to admit that, for the second half of the season, the didn't suck