Daly Cherry-Evans, take a bow. That was brilliant. Warriors, pick up your bottom lips.
This was a performance that should invite more sympathy than scorn.
The Warriors were very, very good for long parts of the match. They clearly put their hearts, souls, minds and shoulders into keeping their season alive in Perth. That they couldn't owed plenty to fate and Manly's remarkably resilience.
Playing dumb has cost the Warriors at least four victories this season.
Saturday night's demise owed more to dumb luck. The Warriors simply couldn't take a trick in the calamitous final 15 minutes.
Had the ball bounced their way from Cherry-Evans' chip, or a pass that fell at Shaun Johnson's feet, or the final cross kick to Manu Vatuvei, the Warriors would have won. Had referee Jared Maxwell not spotted an imaginary Warriors knock on in the build-up to Manly's penultimate try, the Warriors would have won.
They should have won. They deserved to win. But they didn't.
Unless you believe in fairytales, the 2012 campaign is over.
A team that hasn't won more than two matches on the bounce this season now needs to win five in a row.
Feleti Mateo's insistence the club "wouldn't let" Saturday night's defeat be the end of their season was fighting talk, but how much fight can the Warriors have left in them after three such deflating defeats in succession?
Stand-in captain Vatuvei looked a shattered man as his teammates tried to console him at the final whistle.
Elijah Taylor, who produced a whale of game to help subdue the gigantic Tony Williams, looked physically and emotionally crushed.
Hindsight glares harshly at coach Brian McClennan's decision to reintroduce Konrad Hurrell late in the second half.
The limping Hurrell dropped the ball on the first tackle direct from a scrum - an error that invited Manly's late, unstoppable outburst - and was tied in knots by Steve Matai to concede a try.
"Of course now I regret that we put him out there," McClennan said.
"But he had done fitness tests and the doc and physio said he was good to go. We said to Konny 'are you ready to go?' He said 'yep, I'm fine'. So when we put him out there every one of us was thinking 'beauty, this will lift us'. It didn't work out.
"Hindsight is a wonderful gift."
Hurrell had been dragged by the time Cherry-Evans sparked the match winner down the Warriors' collapsing right edge, but there was no stopping Manly as they surged home to leave the Warriors utterly distraught.
"I haven't seen a dressing room like that for a long, long time," McClennan said.
"But they are good. They ended up lifting their heads up and saying let's stick tight together."
As for what went wrong, McClennan felt the Warriors were undone by a familiar failing.
"We stopped attacking. We were protecting the lead and of course they were going to throw everything at us. It is a harsh lesson but it is one we are aware of now. All the boys totally understand where I am coming from. You have got to suck the juice out of them defensively.
"You can look at it and say 'up 18-0 and lost - same as Newcastle'. But it was nowhere near that. The boys had a real dig."
