By Nick Campton, ABC News
Photo: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images
Samoa might have fallen short of making history in the Pacific Championship final, but their showdown with New Zealand should be a look at rugby league's future.
If you could bottle what happened at Parramatta Stadium during the Kiwis' 36-14 victory, you would be as rich as whoever is flogging Samoan flags.
The 80 minutes, and especially the first half, was the best kind of football - brutal and beautiful, emotional and emotive, life-affirming and death-defying. It kickstarted the heart.
But this is not news, at least not to anyone who has watched any combination of Samoa, Tonga and New Zealand face off in recent years, or even just in recent weeks.
Throw any two of them together and you are damn near guaranteed something that gets the heart racing.
The final margin might make it seem like the Kiwis walked it in, but it took plenty of hard work to make it look so easy on paper.
After wobbling under the power of a few Samoan haymakers in the first half, New Zealand
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