WHAT, exactly, is boring football? And is it possible to play boring football and still be - when the entire viewing experience is assessed - exciting?

On Good Friday at Etihad Stadium, we will see one team that has made an art form of coating a mud pie with Lindt chocolate – the Melbourne Storm – playing their first home game for the year.

And in the red corner, also weighing in at three wins and no defeats, are the St George Illawarra Dragons – pretenders not just for the NRL premiership but for every other title, mantle and morsel of respect the Storm have.

Melbourne are boring because they play with complete control, underpinning their game with ruthless efficiency in defence.

With the ball, they stick to the centre of the field until they have drawn their opponents in. If they can’t do this, they just kick to the corners and you can return to the previous paragraph for what comes next.

But they are still exhilarating to watch because when the ball does find itself anywhere near the sidelines, or when they prise open a passage in centre-field, it’s Billy Slater or Greg Inglis who loom.

Slater has said he watches AFL games at Docklands closely enough to know where the ground is hard, so he knows exactly when to push the button marked “afterburner” and add to his imposing try tally at the venue.

Inglis is yet to give us a glimpse of his best this season but the scene is set.

Storm fans can completely overlook the gruelling trench warfare their team engages in for 95 per cent of each game because the other five per cent of every victory allows them go home with a warm glow.

Their joint-venture visitors, under new coach Wayne Bennett, last year started off with a similar, simple, dull template.

But they built up to such an extent that by late in the ’09 regular season they would string together a dozen passes and make the likes of the Storm appear pedestrian. Unfortunately, they were like a kid in an adult’s body, unable to control their strength, abilities and strange impulses..

When things started to go wrong, they lacked the maturity to control themselves.

St George Illawarra couldn’t get away with being boring because they didn’t have footballing adults with enough wattage to light up the other five per cent of each contest.

This year, if the last three weeks are anything to go by, they just might be generating enough electricity.

Winger Brett Morris has scored five tries in the last two games, roaring into tackles and sliding through them by taking much of the impact with his chest.

Fullback Darius Boyd chimes (don’t you love old-school lingo like that?) into the backline and beats players one-on-one, with a regularity that is approaching that of Slater.

And five-eighth Jamie Soward is also finding consistency in his brilliance; he may even be the tiebreaker between Friday’s combatants.

Historian Sean Fagan tells us that the first Good Friday game was proposed in 1964 – and rejected by church leaders. Three decades later, South Sydney and the Roosters played on the opening day of the Easter long weekend at the Sydney Football Stadium.

There were 26,433 people there. It was one of the only places in town to get a drink. The Roosters-Brisbane tradition started the following year but, after their respective performances last week, the beer could be free this Friday night and the crowd still wouldn’t be too big.

So on a day bereft of professional sport in Melbourne, the Storm are hoping Saints and fish will make a fitting Easter combination for years to come.

The 2.10pm kick-off is intended to appease locals who revere the Royal Children’s Hospital telethon but Fagan argues: “I don't think the RCH is running Victoria.

“Anyway, I can't recall any outcry from the public or the RCH when the Storm played the Northern Eagles at Docklands on Good Friday 2001.

“It seems to only be an issue about sacred holidays and a charity telethon now because the Storm have a much larger profile in Melbourne - and the codes are at war.”

That they are - and for once the AFL fortress has been left unmanned.

Whether that makes the war holy or unholy depends on your perspective – just like how bored you are depends on who wins.