Parramatta Eels 4 – Brisbane Broncos 17
The Good: |
It’s funny to say about a loss, but the scoreline. Losing both your halves and then losing to maybe the best team in the comp by 13? It could have been much worse. For the most part, kudos to our resilience in defence. |
The Bad: |
Even considering the above loss of halves, our attack didn’t ask a lot of questions of the Broncos until pretty late in the game when we started to throw the ball around. I think BA would be disappointed with the lack of support play too. |
The X-Factor: |
Corey Parker’s goalkicking. If everyone makes their kicks I put the score at 23-6. Ouch. |
The MVP: |
Nathan Peats. 57 tackles without a miss is a good game no matter how you slice it. A couple of quality darts from dummy half throw in too. |
The Starters
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1- Michael GordonFullback, Parramatta Eels It’s hard to play fullback with a roll of Elastoplast around your head, but thought he was there in defence when he was needed, particularly in the tryless second half. Found himself beaten for speed when he was briefly on the wing in the Broncos third try, but otherwise a pretty good game. |
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2- Semi RadradraLeft Wing, Parramatta Eels Although the stat sheet showed 3 errors, I thought he had a good outing. Constantly went looking for the ball, and made some much needed metres out of trouble. Ran a ludicrous 17 times for a team high 149 metres. Semi’s the new guy who lifts the crowd every time he touches the ball, taking said mantle from some bloke called Jarryd. |
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3- Michael JenningsLeft Centre, Parramatta Eels Needs to get his hands on the ball more. A lot more. Outside of the double movement try (I think the Bunker got it right), he was a ghost. Will be better. Needs to be better. |
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4- Brad TakairangiRight Centre, Parramatta Eels A couple of good in and aways on his man created space, and was again the last pass for a Parra try. Hoping he and Guthers can work out their defensive combination sooner rather than later, however. |
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5- Clinton GuthersonRight Wing, Parramatta Eels I thought he looked more sure of himself as the game went on. Still working out how to defend on the wing and was caught in the blue and gold winger trademark no-man’s land for the Broncos’ first try. He’ll be better than this. |
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6- Corey NormanFive Eighth, Parramatta Eels Was our best in the first half, and did an amazing job to hold onto the ball as he tripped over Taka. We were pretty useless in attack without him. I’m just glad he can walk after that fall. |
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19- Luke KellyHalfback, Parramatta Eels People were referring to this game as a “now or never” game for Kelly. At times it felt like a car accident in football shorts. If you watched the game, you know it wasn’t his night. Uninspiring kicking options mixed with poorly timed passes isn’t a recipe for success. |
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8- Junior PauloProp, Parramatta Eels It pains me how good he was tonight, on both sides of the ball. Still not worth what Ricky paid for him, though. No NRL prop is, to be honest. |
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9- Nathan PeatsHooker, Parramatta Eels A monster effort, ended up 3 tackles shy of 60 – that’s crazy. Nearest was McCullough with 44. BA referred to him during the week as the fittest player at the club and it showed tonight. Huge game in difficult circumstances. |
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10- Tim MannahProp, Parramatta Eels He was like the blue and gold Where’s Wally tonight. Hardly sighted, but looked good when involved. 11 runs for over 100 metres is a good night’s work, mind you. |
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11- Manu MauBack Row, Parramatta Eels Manu’s so mean he could make an onion cry. Feel free to make your own blog and give him less than an A. Let me know how it goes. In all seriousness, he was excellent tonight – 12 runs for 130 is outstanding; the 3 errors not so much. |
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12- Beau Scott (c)Back Row, Parramatta Eels Aggressive in defence and tradesman-like in attack. When that fight started at halftime, you just knew he’d be the reason. A good Captain’s knock with 10 runs and 35 tackles. |
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13- Tepai MoreoaLock, Parramatta Eels The straighter he plays, the better he looks. Thought he tried to push wide a number of times tonight when we just needed him to punch through the line. A team high 3 missed tackles is less than ideal too. |
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Interchange
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18- Kaysa PritchardInterchange, Parramatta Eels Did a lot of good things in limited time, but it’s hard to give a higher grade to a bloke who played 15 minutes. Thought he would have come on earlier once we lost Corey. Both pecs currently in tact, so that’s a bonus. |
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15- Peni TerepoInterchange, Parramatta Eels Another game without a handling error. 11 runs for 114 metres? Keep doing what you’re doing Peni. |
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16- Daniel AlvaroInterchange, Parramatta Eels Still looks excited just to be out there. Made a couple of good runs, but the Broncos defence made it difficult for all our forwards, Danny included. |
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17- Kenny EdwardsInterchange, Parramatta Eels Despite passing it to Ben Hunt late in the game, I thought his impact was once again terrific. 6 runs for 58 metres is an encouraging stat too for a bloke who also made a lot of good passes. Currently holding the mantle of my favourite player of 2016. |
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Photos courtesy of the Parramatta Eels.
Stats courtesy of Champion Data via the Sportsfan site.
Is Paulo definitely gone ? I must say I love reading a proper review of the game and players without all the carry on from dickheads. Keep it going mate
you wait until the price comes out mate. ludicrous.
Like what ?
Tapine is envious of it!
and thank you. glad you’re enjoying the site.
Some very generous grades there mitch, id down grade them all except Manu and Scott, we were poor tonight in everything but defence.
Mitch how about grading the players 1-10, lol, this A+ A A- B+ B B-C+ C C- Etc is all very american high school, can we have some grades that really reflect a score we are used to?
Who uses system this to grade RL players performances in games lol?
My first TCT request is we do away with this ABCDEFGHIJK system 🙂
This is from me, name didnt show up automatically for some reason, cheers
Yeah the letter grades ain’t the go, Numbers would be better. Think some of the grades are generous. We were shocking Brisbane took the foot of the pedal very early on. Not sure about our fitness either.
you’re a harsher marker than me Max. keeping the best/2nd best team in the comp tryless in the second half after losing the ability to build pressure ourselves is Bs and Cs for mine.
In the second half, they potted a penalty goal and a field goal for princely total of three points. It was still a vastly improved effort in defence in the second stanza though.
We came out of it all looking promising but raw, which makes a lot of sense given that we were missing first Foran and then Norman – seeing as your halves are meant to tune that raw effort into a polished product.
No time to waste for our boys though, the Cowboys await us. This one will be an interesting match up. I feel that Brisbane are stouter in defence than the Cowboys but also a bit more conservative in attack. We are a better chance to beat the blokes from North Queensland (even without factoring in the returns of our first choice halves) but also more likely to suffer a heavier loss at the same time.
Thanks for the feedback. The telegraph is apparently doing the number system this year, but I’ll be sticking with letters.
Although I do look forward to giving out your so called K grade.
Miatch think again, you are trying to communicate with yoir audience
I’m good, thanks.
Mitch can you at least explain the grades, how many is there?
See with 1-10 you either have 10 or 20 possible ratings or levels if you score .5’s.
Whats the structure of this system and how is the average punter who reads this meant to determined what a good game and a bad game is, this is a bit like when the teacher doesnt want to give any scores that look bad out of 10 like 2’s or 3’s so instead they give the student a C lol.
Let me understand this, theres 3 levels of A games, 3 levels of C grades and so on, how many actual grades are there?
Is there 12 actual levels of your scoring with the D’s included?
Is a D- the lowest score you can give like you have given luke kelly tonight?
Where does it start and end and how many grades do you have? whats a good game and a bad game?
Is an A- an A and A+ the equivalent of an 8,9 and 10/10 game?
Sorry as ive never been involved in anything in Australia that involves this type of scoring ive just genuinely struggling to really understand what it represents as far as sports scoring goes.
American is not always better.
cheers
Ha this is so weird, it’s not confusing. I’ve had a lot of people speak to me about these blogs, yet you’re the only one confused by it.
It’s also not American. A lettered grading system is used by the Board of Studies, and thus is used in every K-10 subject by every primary and secondary school in NSW.
The highest is A+, then A then down to A- etc, D- is the second lowest, the lowest score is F.
What about E ?
If D- is the second lowest and F is the lowest whats happened to E?
LOL So let me get this straight, you have 12 levels of grading plus the F being the lowest grade but F is after D?
Is this all fairly recent stuff in Schools?, we never had ABC’s, we had marks, as in a number, things must be really changing, instead of marking it how children get marked in schools, how about giving it scores like adults do who discus RL instead of introducing a school scoring system?
Wouldnt it be a lot more easy to understand for your readers?, i recon if you took a poll 9/10 would easily rather a numbers system for a whole host of logical reasons, thats why they use it in the paper and just about every other ratings, because its common sense, but carry on with this convoluted TCT scoring system, its all about being different on the TCT 😉
You must be just doing this to be different because there is no logical reason why anybody would choose to score a RL match in this fashion, its ridiculous lol
Just giving you lads some feedback 😉
Hey mate. Here’s my interpretation of the grading system.
A – performance that would get you noticed for rep selection
B – high quality 1st grade performance
C – a pass mark for first grade
D – not first grade standard – take care, you’d be on notice
F – (self explanatory) – no excuses – major fail – should be dropped
The + and – are performances just above or below these bench marks.
It’s meant as a bit of a different way of reviewing the performance. A mixture of fun and reality.
Based on my interpretation of the grading system, I would have given two different grades for our halfback, one for each half. First half would have been a C. The second half would not have been a kind grade.
agreed mate – I want good things for Kelly, but I think the second half was almost as bad as it gets.
Rust, rust and more rust. Unfortunately we had more rust than the Broncos, went close a few times and may even have scored 1 or 2 more trys but last pass invariably hit the dirt. Right side still a work in progress particularly in D and Gutherson looked lost a few times as winger.
Loosing one half was bad enough but two at half time disastrous. Attack needs to gel quickly, we lacked cohesion with Jennings hardly involved and Semi, can’t remember if he even got the ball in an attacking move. Forwards need to be more creative, Gower better prospect imo than Terepo or Alvaro as natural offloader. Broncos appeared to go to sleep in second half otherwise score could have been embarrassing. My team score, attack C-, defence B. Parra MOM Ma’u by country mile
Very generous grade for Luke Kelly. He had many opportunities in attack to prove himself, but spilt his beans every single time!
D-, we dont know if thats generous or not phatz? im just as confused as you and everybody reading this, mitch is a teacher so he understands these American style grades, and i think he might be expecting everybody else to?
He’s not confused. Phatz and I sit together at games. He understands the grading system, told me last night he thought Kelly deserved an F (an F is bad), hence his comment.
Again, it’s not American mate, see above.
I understand the grades fine Serpent. If I was marking it would have definitely been an F. Sure he was ok in the first half when Norman was on, and he probably would have escaped criticism if Norman stayed on in the second. But when it came to crunch time he proved just how useless he was. Yes he was only there as back up, but we should still expect better than what he produced.
get over it Serp- hes explained grades- not that he needed to! its fine how it is.
loving the TCT boys- keep up the great work! go parra
Only two points of the competition lead so no time to panic, they were playing a team that came within a tackle of being premiers, but dear oh dear.
Paulo will be a huge loss and I’d think that I’d either start either he or Mannah off the bench so that there is one of them on the field at all times. I thought Peni was good, Manu great and Beau Scott was better than solid.
I got the same feeling with Gutherson as I got with Hoppa last year. Opposition will kick to him because he (on this outing) poses no threat in the kick return. The right side defence was appalling. Speaking of which Luke Kelly, if he is the best backup half then heaven help us as another off season has only reduced his limited skill set. He made a couple of good defensive plays but that was it and he’d get an F if I was marking his papers.
Semi, well there’s been so many highs that I’ll forgive him for last night but I think the rating was based on that and not the one game as he was much worse than a B-.
Fundamentally the broncos play the ball speed and kicking game is where they won the game.
Next week to look forward to now.
I actually originally had him at a C+, but he did have 17 touches, despite the Broncos only kicking it to him once, maybe twice. He just constantly went looking for work. But agreed, it wasn’t his best game. Maybe I subconsciously gave him bonus points for lighting up the crowd just by touching the ball.
All of our forwards did well. Some missed tackles at times though; this I believe was from not controlling the ruck.
Jennings was not given the ball early….that was my issue with the game; along with the bombs….and Taka running sideways too much; and too many slow inside balls from Kelly. We had ONE good deep backline play and almost scored…..I don’t know why we didn’t grubber for Jennings…..Cannot fault our forwards. If we have Foran and Norman we will beat Brisbane. They are not as good as I thought. One try from a forward pass, and another because our winger rushed in, and one from a poor read in numbers on the blind.
Yeah, I thought there were some encouraging signs, and I rarely say that after a loss. What is this feeling?
I was unhappy we did not win but thought we had more penetration 2nd half. Edwards and (pleasantly) Pritchard surprised me. I was always taught as a half / 5/8 to go forward first then go sideways..maybe I am too harsh..
It was hard to tell from my seat, but I read this this morning – was Pritchard brought on to play in the halves? Or was it Edwards? I haven’t had a chance to re-watch it yet.
Miatch, I thought Edwards was playing 5/8, and Pritchard as an extra forward…hard to tell but I admired our tenacity and the forwards will be ok after this. Just need backs to sort right side (Foran would have made it vastly different). Edwards was superb I thought. He and Mau need runners off their hip.
Was pleased with the defence, particularly Peats, Scott and Gordon.
Not too disappointed with the loss. Tough season opener. Same match last year Broncos would have put 40 on em..
Alvaro, Mau, Edwards looked good as well….Tough one next start..Gets tougher before it gets easier..Tough times are best for the Club…A fit Foran and Norman will make a HUGE difference….One down, 25 to go….
I don’t remember the last time I’ve felt so okay with a loss.
Miatch I have often felt ok when my lady has given me a little cuddle after a loss…..
This individual assessment method is a great way of prompting thought and discussion about performances. My only question surrounds the comparative grading of Junior vs Terepo, Avaro, Mau and Edwards. I thought that they had him covered, especially Mau and Edwards (albeit different positions).
Maybe I’m just dirty about his departure. Didn’t expect him to follow Ricky.
I’d follow Ricky anywhere for that sort of money. ridiculous.
disappointed, but don’t really blame him.
I think you are being a little generous to both wingers, semi worked hard but had an off night imo and Gutho looked very shakey particularly under the high ball.
Mannah went missing alright, both our starting props were on for a couple of minutes too long for the first stint and mannah was off for too long when he was off.