10^TH JUNE 2017

TIO STADIUM, DARWIN,

NORTHERN TERRITORY

We now officially head into the second half of the 2017 NRL Competition and the Eels sit in 8^th place. This week Parramatta faces the Cowboys for a second time this season. The Eels will undoubtedly be buoyed by their comprehensive 26 – 6 win in Round 9, and will face a Cowboys outfit that sit one place above them.

Last 10 Games

The past ten games between these teams sees the Cowboys holding a 7 – 3 advantage over the Eels. These matches provide us with the following numbers:

Score Aggregate:        Eels – 170        Cowboys – 290

Score Average:            Eels – 17          Cowboys – 29

The Eels and Cowboys have now locked horns 36 times with the Eels holding a 19 – 16 win record.

The Eels have played 3 times at TIO Stadium and hold a 100% win record, but this will be the first time that they’ve taken on the Cowboys at this venue. The Cowboys have actually played a match at this venue and walked away with a win.

This season, the Eels sit on a 7 – 6 win loss record whilst the Cowboys are at 7 – 5 having already received the first of their two byes.

The 2017 points averages sees the Eels 19.4 (for) and 21.2 (against) whereas the Cowboys come in at 19.4 (for) and 19.2 (against). With both teams holding similar attacking records, it may well be that the team that turns up ready to defend will put themselves in the driver’s seat.

By Quarters

The Eels need to start strong again this week. The Cowboys start slow but finish strong. With the Eels last quarter remaining an area of concern, a strong start is imperative. The Cowboys have won 3 games after being down at half time, while the Eels have won 6 games after leading at half time.

Attack:

*Average per game (Rank)

Defence:

*Average per game (Rank)

Discipline:

*Average per game (Rank)

With these stats you can see why the Cowboys are slight favourites for this game. But the Cowboys do not respond well to errors and this is a part of the game where the Eels can capitalise. As we saw in the Round 9, with the errors the Cowboys made, their heads dropped and they became frustrated and this generated more errors.

Again the Eels will need to stick with the game plan that saw them triumph in Round 9. Keeping Jason Taumalolo quiet will be a priority. The Round 9 success was based on keeping his metres to a minimum. He ranks 6^th in the competition with 2008 run metres so far this year.

No Cowboys rank in the Top 10 for Line Breaks with Parramatta having both Clint Gutherson (2^nd) and Semi Radradra (8^th).

Kyle Feldt ranks high in the error department with 20 errors ranking him 3^rd in the league. So there is an opportunity to kick to him and force some mistakes to get good territorial possession.

Michael Morgan leads the Cowboys try assists with 9. The Eels will be hoping Corey Norman is good to go as he is the Eels leading Try Assist merchant with 7.

This should be a great match up with both teams desperate to maintain a winning run. The Eels are quietly doing their job and flying under the radar, but pressure will mount on the Cowboys if they endure another loss – even if Thurston does play.

In their final game under the current contract with the NT government, the Eels would love to walk away with a 4 – 0 win record for their four years taking a home game to the Top End.

Colmac

Stats courtesy of Champion Data. All these stats and more can be viewed on our match centre at http://mc.championdata.com/nrl/ including live game stats.

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