BY STAFF WRITERS

Under siege Channel Nine commentator Phil Gould has hit back at the large contingent of critics that ripped apart his expert analysis of the grand final on Sunday night.

Gould, the former Panthers GM of Football, was adamant in speaking to 2GB on Monday that he called the game down the middle.

The long list on Twitter that hammered Gould included the likes of AFL legends Shane Crawford and Brendan Fevola and several media types including Rohan Connolly, Steve Zemek and Lee Gaskin.

Punters were ruthless.

The Courier-Mail’s Travis Meyn posted: “Phil Gould Pro Panther commentary. Wow. Between Gould’s commentary and ‘Freddy Cam’ I may struggle to make it to full-time.”

At one stage with the Panthers down by several tries and yet to trouble the scorers, Gould raved how they were in fact the team on top.

“The run of the play I feel like they’re doing better than the Melbourne Storm but the Storm have been able to keep the scoreboard kicking with penalty try and penalty goal and now [the] intercept,” Gould said in commentary.

Gould also argued against the video referee awarding Melbourne a penalty try which opened the scoring (it was the correct decision from the video referee).

Funnily enough, many at the game live that didn’t hear Nine’s coverage had a different angle on the game.

The81stminute.com’s Curtis Woodward was at ANZ Stadium and thought the Panthers were terrible in the first half.

“They haven’t played that badly in a long time,” he said.

“Cleary’s kicking was way off and there was a lot of pedestrian attack.

“I thought the officials had a good night and made some tough but correct decisions.”

The right team won.

Congratulations Melbourne!