Round 10 Drink of choice – Old Crow Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey (full bottle – cheap and nasty)

Apologies for the belated blog, a hectic Mother’s Day in tandem with the 4:00PM kickoff meant I was desperately short of spare time. So without any further ado, let’s see just what went wrong (spoilers – just about everything) in the Mother’s Day carnage yesterday.

The game began simply enough with both teams trading their opening sets. The Rooster led off after receiving the kickoff and Parramatta replied with set completed by an early kick from Corey Norman. That prior possession would prove to be the only set the Eels would scrounge up for the next 13min or so in a passage of play that saw the Roosters rack up a lopsided possession spread as well as a commanding 14 point lead.

We are going to mix things up slightly this week and focus extensively on these crucial opening exchanges rather than approaching the game with our usual broader brush. Let me know in the comments how you like the mix-up!

The rot started following a strong carry from Mitchell Aubusson on the fourth tackle that isolated Kaysa Pritchard through the middle and led to both a big gain and a quick play-the-ball (PTB) for the home team. The Roosters went two passes wide to their right and picked up a highly contentious (especially considering what was missed on Parramatta players later in the game) penalty late in the tackle count for a high shot from Michael Jennings.

From the resultant set the Roosters crossed for first points on the last play of the set when Latrell Mitchell beat Kirisome Auva’a in a clean 1-on-1. As the GIF below will highlight, and as I am sure everyone picked up live, Auva’a was caught way too far inside Mitchell (possibly anticipating a grubber) on the goal line and a sharp pass cutout from Luke Keary gave his young centre all the time and space he needed to convert the opportunity into points.

Roosters lead 6-0

The poor positional play from Auva’a is frustrating in its own right but he still had a chance to make a defensive play. His inability to win the hands battle and get his left arm inside the right arm of Latrell Mitchell means that he is easily fended away. The only recourse Hoffman was left with was to make a play on the ball itself but given the unkind angle he had on Latrell it was never a feasible option.

Auva’a’s lateral struggles are an obvious compromise that comes with running a power centre. Kirisome has made several excellent defensive plays in recent weeks on the back of aggressive reads and decisive actions but a moment’s hesitation in conjunction with sub-par positioning mean the he can exploited badly like above.

Frustratingly, this initial error from eventually Auva’a leads to an over-correction through the latter parts of the game as he lines up squarer and at times starts working from outside shoulder in. Latrell Mitchell would go on to regularly beat him on the inside in reply as Auva’a over-committed early and often to his outside whenever the Roosters went wide and ultimately it played out as a painfully one-sided battle.

The Roosters would go on to make in back-to-back points in the following set as they added a penalty goal following a dreadful piece of misfortune for the Eels.

On the back of a reasonable defensive set from the Eels the Roosters look to set up for a midfield bomb down their left edge. Will Smith backs up from tackling Boyd Cordner on the previous play to show plenty of hustle from marker and apply immense pressure on Mitchell Pearce. In fact he arguably does too well and catches a huge chunk of the kick to affect a charge down. While the ball seemingly takes a Parramatta favoured skew, Latrell Mitchell is able to out-muscle Josh Hoffman in the ensuing contest and give the Roosters their second consecutive series of well…consecutive sets. Bad luck is no excuse for the loss yesterday but we certainly had plenty of it up against a red hot Roosters’ outfit.

The scrambling Parramatta ruck defenders are caught offside on the next play and the Roosters elect to secure at two-score lead via a penalty goal.

Roosters lead 8-0

If you keeping track of the possession flow the Roosters have enjoyed five sets to Parramatta’s one and are about to get stuck into their sixth set following the kickoff.

At this point the Roosters become quite willing to chance their arms – and can you blame them? Everything is working for them in the opening exchanges. Daniel Tupou makes a half-break down our right edge and throws a low percentage offload back infield as he wildly flings the ball to his right. Boyd Cordner scoops it up and throws a far more measured offload to Mitchell Pearce who is then brought down by Suaia Matagi and Nathan Brown but the free-wheeling football has put the Eels firmly on the back foot – meaning he gets off a rapid PTB.

The typically defensive sound Tim Mannah is guilty on two counts in the above play as he is caught out on the fourth and fifth tackles. In the first GIF he has a prime opportunity to punish Jared Waerea-Hargreaves as the Roosters’ bookend shows Mannah his back while throwing an awkward reverse grip dummy to his right. Like Auva’a before him, Mannah’s hesitation allows his rival player to make the bust to the outside as Hargreaves readjusts and brushes off a weak attempted tackle. The run from Hargeaves end up stretching Parramatta’s red zone defensive structure desperately thin as he forces our left edge to converge on him.

Mannah’s second guilty charge comes when he elects to split right from marker. From that point it is his job to shadow Jake Friend but he falls off as soon as Friend passes left to Pearce. Nathan Brown, Tepai Moeroa and Suaia Matagi make (in my opinion) the correct calls to collapse on Pearce and his outside decoy runner Sio Taukeiaho. You could potentially make a case for Brown aligning himself against Friend but that would have left a significant gap between himself and Moeroa, thus leaving Moeroa potentially vulnerable to a left foot step and fend from Pearce.

If it played out correctly in the game, Mannah trailing Friend allows the Eels to potentially win the resultant ruck from Pearce or Taukeiaho running the ball while also maintaining the integrity of their right edge with Kaysa Pritchard spying on Michael Gordon as the sweeper option. Mannah’s momentary lapse allows the quick-witted Pearce (perhaps the only time I will ever utter those words) to turn the ball back inside to Friend who streaks through to score under the posts.

Roosters lead 14-0

Clinton Gutherson gets a pass mark at fullback for mine on this play. He is forced to readjust to his left after his initial read (and the most reasonable one in my opinion) leads to him committing to the Taukeiaho option. As the fullback you need to generally be tracking parallel to the ball and he was positioned extremely well to bring down a potentially rampaging Taukeiaho or any second phase play that could result from Pearce using him as the option.

It isn’t pleasant to level all the blame at one individual player for these things but I believe Tim Mannah wears the full brunt of my grumblings here following his initial misplay on Hargreaves along with his subsequent lackadaisical marker shadowing. To see one such defensive error from Tim is rare, let alone two such consecutive mistakes at a crucial juncture in the game.

With that said the tape in general from this Sunday horror show will sting for the remainder of the season for the vast majority of the seventeen that took to the field. It may not be pleasant viewing for the squad but hopefully they ingrain the results of their numerous errors and drop-offs in effort so as to not repeat them again for a long, long time.

So at the end of the first ten minutes the Roosters lead 14-0 following six sets of possession (including five consecutive sets and counting) to one. They go on the make it eight sets total and seven consecutive when Kirisome Auva’a is pinged in the kickoff set for holding down Latrell Mitchell. Scratch that. Make it eight consecutive sets as Nathan Brown is desperately unlucky to get a hand on a late pass from Dylan Napa as Parra’s best on the day unloaded a monstrous hit on his opposite forward. It was just that sort of day.

The first half concluded with the Roosters completing 20 of a possible 21 sets while the Eels managed just 5 from 8. You are never going to win a game in which a genuine Top 4 team has 72% possession for an entire half and the amount of defence the Eels did (even as poor as it was at times) coupled with the early 14 point lead meant the game was never in doubt for the Roosters. Throw in a decidedly inept performance from the officials, HIA checks for Manu Ma’u and Clinton Gutherson along with a medial ligament injury to Corey Norman and you truly get the perfect shit-storm of a game for 2017.

Ultimately, the Roosters were far too good for the Eels on this particular day and how Parramatta respond will be telling. They meet the Canberra Raiders in Round 11, who suffered an equally humiliating blow to their pride in Round 10 after capitulating to the Newcastle Knights. The team sheet news for the Eels is mixed heading into Round 11 and just how they shape up against Ricky Stuart’s men could go quite a few ways depending on news out of tomorrow.

The rumour mill kicked into overdrive today following speculation that Mitchell Moses will finally be released on Tuesday while the Eels should also be reinforced by the return of Bevan French. This of course comes as Corey Norman is expected to ride the pine for anywhere between 4-6 weeks if the speculated grade 2 medial ligament tear is confirmed.

The Eels did a reasonable job adjusting to life without Norman in 2016 following his lengthy suspension…can Brad Arthur and Clinton Gutherson (and perhaps Mitch Moses) reach deep into their bag of tricks to stage an encore effort to last year’s show?

As I mentioned earlier, I changed things up with the format this week so let me know how it came across. I’m still of the mind to keep Whiskey Musings as they have been through the previous nine rounds (a more light-hearted and conversational piece) and split this more analytical take into a separate midweek article. Any thoughts and insights will be greatly appreciated and heck, the odd comment on Sunday’s brutal loss wouldn’t go astray either!

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