Eels 22 defeat Storm 6
Crowd: 13, 593
It wasn’t a bad win, nor was it a great win but we got the 2 points and again we raise the bar for ourselves just that little bit higher. The Storm were extremely defiant and I have to profess considerable admiration to them for giving us such a hard fought game. The future certainly does look bright for the Storm. (Dammit).
A dominant opening 20 minutes for the Eels ultimately set up the win. Again unfortunately, a bit of complacency set in beyond that and left the door ajar for the young Melbourne outfit.
The Storm deserve credit for clawing their way back into the contest after it looked like the Eels were en route to a blow out. In fact, both teams can hold their heads up high for the effort and grit displayed on Saturday. The Storm threw everything they could at the Eels, whereas Parramatta showed some steely resolve in defense in a traditionally luckless arena. In the end it proved to be enough to seal a rare win in Melbourne and the two competition points keeps the Eels safely buffered from the chasers in the pack below them.
In a night where our backs starred, our forwards started off on the back foot when they were left a man down a man early in the piece with Tim Mannah succumbing to yet another concussion. Mannah’s run of head knocks is getting concerning, especially on a personal level given what we have witnessed with fellow Eel Isaac De Gois in 2017.
Just a heads up – you will see a bit of a difference in today’s Stat Attack. Something new.
Score Flow
| Parramatta Eels | ||||
| H | Minute | Name | Event | Score |
| 1 | 4 | B.French | TRY | 0 – 4 |
| 1 | 5 | C.Gutherson | CONVERSION MISS | 0 – 4 |
| 1 | 16 | M.Moses | TRY | 0 – 8 |
| 1 | 17 | C.Gutherson | CONVERSION | 0 – 10 |
| 1 | 21 | S.Radradra | TRY | 0 – 14 |
| 1 | 22 | C.Gutherson | CONVERSION | 0 – 16 |
| 1 | 36 | J.Hughes | TRY | 4 – 16 |
| 1 | 37 | J.Stimson | CONVERSION | 6 – 16 |
| 2 | 69 | C.Gutherson | TRY | 6 – 20 |
| 2 | 71 | C.Gutherson | CONVERSION | 6 – 22 |
We finally won in the 60 – 80 min period.
Full Time Stats
| MEL | Team Stats | PAR |
| 47 | Possession (%) |
53 |
|
26/35 (74) |
Complete/Total Sets (%) | 31/35 (89) |
| 37:24 | Time – Opposition Half |
43:18 |
|
8:49 |
Time – Opposition 20 | 13:17 |
| 1920 | Metres Gained |
2337 |
|
4 |
Scrum Win | 7 |
| 3 | Goal Line Dropout |
2 |
|
4 |
Penalty Conceded | 7 |
| 0 | Forty Twenty |
1 |
The Eels dominated in every facet of the game. A great completion rate set up the victory. Both Norman and Moses produced efforts that were of a high standard and this pair is fast becoming one of the best play-making combinations in the NRL.
1st Half
| MEL | Team Stats | PAR |
| 45 | Possession (%) |
55 |
|
12/15 (80) |
Complete/Total Sets (%) | 13/16 (81) |
| 26:33 | Time – Opposition Half |
13:46 |
|
6:36 |
Time – Opposition 20 | 5:08 |
| 786 | Metres Gained |
1118 |
|
2 |
Scrum Win | 4 |
| 2 | Goal Line Dropout |
1 |
|
2 |
Penalty Conceded | 3 |
| 0 | Forty Twenty |
0 |
This first half was a microcosm of the popular sporting adage ‘a game of two halves’. Parramatta flew out the blocks and had a commanding lead after 20mins but then the Storm hit back and started to inch their way into the contest. Finally, in the shadow of half time they came up with a try to get back in the contest.
Semi and Bevan were on fire to start the game. The score looked like it was going to be anything until the Storm battened down the hatches (pun intended) and quickly slowed the Eels down.
2nd Half
| MEL | Team Stats | PAR |
| 48 | Possession (%) |
52 |
|
14/20 (70) |
Complete/Total Sets (%) | 18/19 (95) |
| 10:51 | Time – Opposition Half |
29:32 |
|
2:13 |
Time – Opposition 20 | 8:09 |
| 1134 | Metres Gained |
1219 |
|
2 |
Scrum Win | 3 |
| 1 | Goal Line Dropout |
1 |
|
2 |
Penalty Conceded | 4 |
| 0 | Forty Twenty |
1 |
Again the Eels dominated this half and the Storm had no real answer. A second half completion rate of 95% is absolutely something for the Eels to be proud of. The numbers make for more good reading from there. More time in opposition half, more time in their red zone and more metres gained. The only real issue if you had any was that given all that possession and territorial advantage – why didn’t we add more points?
I would say this would be something Brad Arthur would be working with his young spine about remedying.
Attack
| Top 5 Runs | ||
| Name | R | |
| PAR | N.Brown | 22 |
| PAR | K.Edwards | 17 |
| PAR | S.Vave | 16 |
| PAR | C.Gutherson | 15 |
| PAR | S.Matagi | 14 |
| Top 5 Run Metres | ||
| Name | RM | |
| PAR | S.Radradra | 206 |
| PAR | N.Brown | 175 |
| MEL | J.Bromwich | 172 |
| PAR | C.Gutherson | 163 |
| MEL | J.Hughes | 161 |
Great to see all Parra players in the Top 5 Runs. The work load was shared across the board and that shows great team management along with the boys working for each other. Once more we saw classy performances in attack from Semi, Gutherson and Browny.
8 Eels ran for 100 or more metres. And one other for 90 plus. Outstanding effort.
| Semi Radradra | 206m |
| Nathan Brown | 175m |
| Clint Gutherson | 163m |
| Siosaia Vave | 146m |
| Kenny Edwards | 134m |
| Bevan French | 123m |
| Suaia Matagi | 114m |
| Daniel Alvaro | 103m |
- David Gower 91m
Eels made 8 line breaks to 4.
Eels – 1629 run metres
Storm – 1399 run metres
[Editor’s Note – Forty20] At TCT we are always striving to be bigger, better and if it were legally and physically an option – have lots of crazy explosions. In lieu of that and care of Colmac, we have the next best thing; heat maps!
So as previously stated lets look at something new!
Set Starts
Eels
In this picture it shows where the Eels started their sets during the game. All of these heat maps are as if the teams are running left to right. So the red areas are where most of the sets started and it fades out to where less starts happen. This map shows that the Storm wanted us to start deep in our territory and gain their advantage that way. Don’t forget we had two extra kick off receives as well. A great way to look at this one is that even though our attack started deep in our own half the majority of the time we still were able to gain great territory.
Storm
Here are the Storm set starts. A couple of hand overs in the middle part of the field gave the Storm a bit of a leg up territory wise. I would say that if the ‘Big 3’ were playing they would’ve been far more likely to capitalise on this type of field position.
Tries
With these maps, will show the lead up to tries scored.
French (4th Minute)
Moses (16th Minute)
Radrada (21st Minute)
Gutherson (69th Minute)
Hit Ups
Eels
Storm
Very similar from both sides with their forwards getting out of their own territory up the middle. To be fair, that is to to be expected. The Eels utilised their big men to hit the ball up more effectively in the Storm’s red zone then the Storm comparatively did in our red zone.
Lets compare two front rowers. One, a young up and coming prop forward up against – arguably – in the ‘experts minds’ the world’s best front rower.
Prop 1.
Prop 2.
OK, so we are looking at Daniel Alvaro and Jesse Bromwich above. Can you pick which one is which?
Prop 2 made his runs mainly up the middle and between the two 30 metre lines but was sparsely used elsewhere. Prop 1 on the other hand played all over the park and he knew when his team needed a hand to gain valuable metres.
Prop 1 is Daniel Alvaro. Prop 2 Jesse Bromwich.
Alvaro ran 11 times while Bromwich ran 13. Alvaro made 103 metres. Bromwich 172m with his line break. Alvaro 34 mins. Bromwich 60 mins.
All in all you could make a genuine argument that Daniel Alvaro played all over Jesse Bromwich in this game. Outstanding effort from Polar. The heat maps really do tell a story!
Kicks
Last week had an enquiry about kicks. So lets see where we used our kicking game against the Storm.
The Eels kicked for a total of 708 metres.
Corey Norman
Corey kicked 13 times for 477 metres.
Mitchell Moses
Mitch kicked 5 times for 107 metres.
It would seem that Corey is our preferred long range kicker while Mitch was our go-to man with his short kicking game this week.
In an era of left and right halves, Corey distinctly uses the left side and Mitch the right.
Round 18 contrasts heavily with the ultra defensive slug-fest againt the Bulldogs where both Corey and Mitch both kicked for over 400 metres each. This week we could tactically use Norman and Moses to their individual strengths.
Finally, Kingy’s 40/20. I just had to put this in. What a great kick. (Ok Ok I drew the line in.)
Defence
| Top 5 Tackles | ||
| Name | TAK | |
| MEL | S.Griffin | 46 |
| PAR | N.Brown | 43 |
| MEL | D.Finucane | 40 |
| PAR | T.Moeroa | 36 |
| PAR | D.Alvaro | 33 |
| Top 5 Missed Tackles | ||
| Name | MT | |
| MEL | J.Bromwich | 4 |
| MEL | N.Myles | 3 |
| MEL | S.Vunivalu | 3 |
| PAR | C.King | 3 |
| MEL | B.Croft | 3 |
Again Nathan Brown tops our tackle count with 43. Closing in on buy of the year. I’ve read elsewhere that there should be a trophy for buy of the year and I honestly second that motion. If he doesn’t win Dally M Lock of the year then it is rigged. On current form he wouldn’t be out of place in a Blues jersey either!
5 Eels made 20 or more tackles. Again Alvaro puts J. Bromwich to shame with his 33 tackles and 0 misses to Bromwich 25 tackles with 4 misses.
| Tackles | Missed Tackles | Ineffective Tackles | |
| Eels | 309 | 18 | 17 |
| Storm | 354 | 26 | 4 |
Discipline
So this shows where we gave away our penalties. We conceded 7 penalties to the 4 from the Storm. On the bright side we finally got a 2nd half penalty – 2 in fact!
Errors went 10 from Storm 7 from Parra.
All the experts are saying that Storm were without their stars and blah, blah, blah. This isn’t Parra’s fault. It’s the NRL’s with their poor scheduling. Any team would love to beat a full strength Storm but you can only play who is in front of you. Parra did exactly that and got the job done where the Cowboys couldn’t and did a far more convincing job than the Roosters.
Now we have a week off and again our players can rest all the little niggles that build up through the season. After the break we should get a few more players back from injury with Frank Pritchard and Peni Terepo in the mix for a possible early return to bolster our forward pack. A fine little head ache for Brad Arthur over the next few weeks.
Hope you have liked the new heat maps added in!
A massive thanks to my boss for giving me access to heat maps to use for the site in order to give the readers a more in depth look at how the game panned out.
STAT ATTACK PLAYER OF THE WEEK
CLINT GUTHERSON
Nothing really needs to be said that already hasn’t. I’ll let his stats and his heat map do the talking this week.
Wow. What. A. Player.
| Tries | 1 |
| Conversions | 3 from 4 |
| Points | 10 |
| Runs | 15 |
| Run Metres | 163 metres |
| Line Breaks | 2 |
| Line Break Assists | 2 |
| Try Saves | 1 |
| Tackle Breaks | 4 |
| Minutes Played | 80 |
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.
Champion Data
Follow @championdatanrl
mc.championdata.com/nrl/
Great report. We’ll Done.
Colmac
Its interesting once again with the eels getting out to an early handy lead, and then it all closed up until the try late in the 2nd half, meaning it seemed more like a slug fest as the storm were blitzed by out backs with the storm then closing down the plays, even though, unlike the eels they did not slow down the play the balls.
Not sure if I am correct or not but would like to know one way or another. The eels go out early and get good leads, then a slow down and often there is a 20 spot where they seem to lose there way. Did the change happen when or around the time that Mannah went off is one question.
The second is in regard to the eels game play, did they lock up shop even with all the possession and tried to play it tight rather than the more attacking style when the first three tries were scored?
Storm are excellent at controlling a game, and without seeing the game they would have been hurt by those tries so by them becoming more controlling with their defence it seemed the eels had no answers in trying to keep the expansive options open, and go with the slogg fest????
Impressive review from Colmac. Those heat maps really provide a great insight.
Colin, I thought that Parra looked like they were doing a Storm on the Storm through controlling the ball.
100% spot on mate , game management !!!!
Col I thought that the Eels got a lift after Vave came back on. that may be my imagination but I am going to look t the game again to be sure.
We need his impact John, and he was able to get some decent game time under his belt recently with Wenty. His 40 metre try at Ringrose (or was it 95m?) was a beauty.
When he retells the story in the future it will be 95 metres for sure
Being realistic everything we were trying to do they were trying to stop , at some stage you have to give credit to the opposition col, that was still a great pack of forwards trying to dominate us and they still had vunivali and avacado on the end of some really enthusiastic next generation storm reps , i actually saw the 2nd half as the best game management weve produced in a long time and storm kept coming .
Mate I have said here (I think) and over on the other site about the quality players that ran out for the eels in this game, both Bromwich brothers have played for NZ just as starters. Several others are experienced first graders as well which, in fact the whole of the run on pack have got a fair amount of experience at top level.
Vanavulu has played RU for Fiji, Blair is first grade standard these days and then Ado-Carr.
When they then complain about refs and the media beats up with so many of their main players out, without mentioning how many we have down, and losing a forward in the first half shows that the eels performed much better than was expected.
My concern though is that 20 minute thing that seems to crop up so consistently and in so many reports and even the reviews of each game. Our first quarter was hot with the backs firing, then a slug fest until the last minutes to score again. What that tells me is that the whole team pulled together possibly the best they have all season for the majority of the game to hold out a very good storm team, and they deserve every credit for it. And, thats the way the rest of the year needs to be at.
What I am trying the look at is that 20 minute period that seems to have a lapse, they got away with it this match but as the heat of the season keeps coming along with the finals, any lapse is a luxury that cannot be afforded.
Colin calm down mate every team has quiet periods during a game but the good teams manage them ,where you say were having a lapse i see us managing the game ,thats something we havent done very well till mitch arrived ,its allright to be under the pump because if you manage it well enough your not under threat your just working really hard waiting your turn to get hold of the pump , dont overthink it colin its just part of all teams games even the best of them ,dont be influenced by media and commenntators opinions they havent got a clue .
Chika, fair enough will never be uttered from my mouth, nor come from my typing fingers again, and cannot even think of trying with my toes though.
I just hope that I do not read it again in any match reviews/games summaries either.
You Probably will read it again col but i give you enough credit to dismiss it and the negativity therin , i actually enjoy your comments colin but dont neccisarily agree with them all but respect your opinion , i attend training a lot and some of your concerns whilst shared are works in progress ,the club has come long way from where it was mate but obviously theres still things not 100% but in footy as you fix one thing another ones creeping up on you ,wish you could get to training just to see how hard the staff and players are working to restore parra to the top
Chika, I would love to get to training full stop. I got down once last year and was good to meet sixties on the day. Problem for me with health is getting down there, at all. If my health was better along with other aspects namely distance you would be hard pressed to keep me away. Worst part is that its not getting any better either.
PS. The thing is in what I was saying is just part of the overall aspect of what I had said, and that simply was pointing out how well the eels played against a so called depleted storm side, along with the number of players they still had of top grade quality. Something almost every report concentrated on, the same as I did over on the other group.
I also would not expect that everything, or much that I say anyone agrees with it, I’m the same and mostly just leave it alone. The best part over here though it doesn’t reach the personal levels and remains an excellent group where even different views are said in conjenial ways.
Agree, hope health improves mate enough for you to get to one session ,sixtys always knows times and days
Wow! Great insights colmac. Really puts Alvaros efforts in a new light, i was a big fan but what a grafter. How impressive is the mistake rate (possession & defence). Thanks
Must say Alvaro’s heat map was a revelation too Dday.
Colmac interesting at how much domination we had with field position in the second half. I guess that is why we won the second half 6 – 0 and gave us our third final Qtr win for the season.
However we still lost the penalty count badly and again we were unable to score big in the second half.
The heat map on Alvaro was outstanding and shows why BA regards him so highly
I have considered that to be an aspect of Parra shutting the Storm out of the contest.
They did shut them out of the contest that is true and they did throw a lot at the Eels in the second half. Both teams had chances to score but the Eels defence was relentless.
Despite the missing players the Storm had there pack was basically complete containing a number of Kiwi I internationals. I think it was a good effort in the second half.
Mate anyway these stats can be shown n 4 quarters ,people seem to be obsessed with the 20 min we go into a lull , me i basically see it as a period of game management not going to sleep , quote ,Warren Ryan ! You dont have to win the game for the full 80 mins ,just manage and stay in it and win the periods that matter , melbourne come to mind , thought we out melbourned them sat night and won both halfs with a well excecuted game plan , me i was impressed !!!!
Great comment Chika – and an astute way of looking at what many might consider to be “quiet” periods in games. I like the Warren Ryan quite because it’s probably pertinent to the games we lost. In those games we lost those key moments. In the Storm game, we didn’t!
Chika
I will see what I can come up with
Your best work yet Col. outstanding and thank you.
Cheers to everyone who has liked this.
Great work Colmac. Thanks for the effort
Good work Colmac…some of those heat maps remind me of the old rain maps weather to. It’s obvious Parra have set area for props where Álvaro has that middle third and maybe Melb seem to have different styles. Anyway it worked….
I keep coming back to this article just to read the headline – Eels defeat Storm 🙂
Maybe another one of those before the year is done…..