Brisbane 14 Melbourne 16

CAM SMITH kicked a line drop-out so horribly the ball skewed into touch on the full one metre above the grass, and that was it - game over. The Broncos had won a memorable match; with two minutes remaining they simply had to press Melbourne's line and earn a repeat set, wind down the clock and raise their arms in emotional victory.

You could almost hear Brisbane skipper Darren Lockyer talking about his troops' courage under the enormous scrutiny of the past week and how adversity had made them stronger.

But only seconds later Smith stripped the ball from Michael Ennis and Melbourne's flatlined heart rate raised a bump. Fast forward one minute and Broncos back-rower Ashton Sims was working it out from his own half - get to the kick, put it into touch, celebrate.

But the opposition's desperate heart was beating stronger, and Sika Manu laid on a shot that would have knocked the spit out of an elephant.

Sims dropped the ball, and the Broncos - who were all in a flat line ready to chase down the kick - were suddenly caught backpedalling. Two charges up the middle and Brisbane were now standing on their own line. A quick spread found Greg Inglis outside the last man in defence and boom - the champion fighter who was down on all three judges' scorecards had scrapped and clinched then delivered a 12th-round knockout to a game challenger.

The Storm were revived. The coroner pulled the sheet over the face of Brisbane's season, which had grown ugly in the past week in light of sexual assault allegations against three players.

"You can't blame Ashton, that's the way the game goes," Brisbane's Greg Eastwood said.

"He felt he let the boys down but I thought he had a great game…none of us blame him. It was just one incident in the whole game."

Storm coach Craig Bellamy said: "At half-time I wasn't sure if we were going to get out of it. With a few minutes to go, we didn't look like we were quite good enough but we hung in and got a bit lucky."

In that winning-losing moment of Melbourne delirium and Brisbane deflation, the little things were forgotten. Like Smith's rake on his own line. Like Matt Geyer, the retiring Storm servant who would have thought his last contribution on the field would be losing the ball at a crucial late stage, until he kept his career alive by throwing the final pass of the game to Inglis.

Like Geyer and Billy Slater showing the resilience of that never-beaten fighter when they held up Brisbane prop Ben Hannant late in the game when the usually restrained Wayne Bennett leapt off his seat in joy.

Replays showed how hard this Melbourne pair worked to hold out a man twice their size, their fingers stretched, curling and spreading around the ball and Hannant's arms as though he was attempting to push the nuclear button.

In the 50th minute, Brisbane winger Darius Boyd was also held up in similar fashion by opposite Steve Turner.

For the ninth time this season, Melbourne refused to concede a second-half try. In this match they conceded just two points in the final quarter - Corey Parker's penalty in the 61st taking Brisbane to 14-6.

The Storm's try through Slater with Jeff Lima in the sin-bin three minutes after Parker's goal, was the defining moment in the match.

Three defenders, Darren Lockyer, Justin Hodges and Karmichael Hunt, stood and watched Slater fly through, catch a chip and dive over.

"I think they showed how good a team they are by getting [a man] sin-binned and coming back," Lockyer said.

If Melbourne had not been able to bridge the eight-point gap at that stage, it's unlikely they would have had the confidence to score twice in the final 15 minutes, having been repelled so often by a defence growing in belief with each set.

Bennett bowed out after 21 years at the helm, but spoke of disappointment for the team instead of his own career, which continues at St George Illawarra next season.

"Twenty-one years here guys, it was never going to go down to one game. Can you get that into your heads?" he asked the media afterwards.

"I'm more disappointed about losing a game of football here tonight than I am about leaving the place or how it should have been perceived that I should leave."

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, a Brisbane local and Broncos supporter, said: "All of Queensland is in mourning."

Bennett refused to comment on the police investigation.

"I am extremely proud of them. Tonight was about the result, the week's gone. We're here right in the moment."

For Bennett and Brisbane, the moment was awful.