“There was that one on [Zac] Lomax, that penalty led to a little bit of them having field position, and then it was just footy smarts with putting pressure on [Nathan] Cleary when we had a short defensive line – in hindsight I probably wouldn’t do that.
“But that’s part of it when you’re in the game, and you’re touching the ball first so you have to make those decisions pretty quickly. I have a few I would like to change, but … the want is definitely there from the group, the pride and the passion, but we’ve just got to execute that.”
Grant had just returned from a hamstring injury in the lead-up to the game-one camp, his 55 minutes against Cronulla his only game time since the Storm’s round-six triumph of the Warriors.
“Like many of our players, Harry wasn’t at his best tonight, but he wasn’t on his own.”
Maroons coach Billy Slater
But the 27-year-old dismissed the notion that played a factor in his performance, while affirming he should be fit from his head gash to line up for Melbourne against the Gold Coast on Saturday.
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“No [the hamstring didn’t play a role], I think you bring a group together for the week, and you really have to capitalise on every moment you get throughout the week and transfer that into the game, and I just don’t think we transferred our game plan from training to the footy field,” Grant said.
“There are parts of the game I would have loved to have back and that I’m definitely not happy or content with, but I can’t change that.
“Once you play a game like that, and you don’t perform, the first thing you want to do is go out there and play footy.”
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