STAT ATTACK REVIEW:
ROUND 1
EELS – 14 (Tries: Hoffman 2, Norman. Goals: Moses 1 from 2, Norman 0 from 1)
defeated by
PANTHERS – 24 (Tries: Blake 2, Kikau. Goals: Cleary 6 from 6)
PANTHERS STADIUM
Crowd: 21,500
Lets wrap up Round 1 and put it in the annuls of time. No doubt all people involved in the club are disappointed with this loss. You can take a positive from that, as long as we learn from such a poor game, look forward and fix what needs to be done.
There were no excuses from players and coach. We owned our performance. The fact is that we were just out enthused and when they stepped up, we didn’t go with them.
So let’s look at the numbers from this game and look forward to a much improved performance against Manly at Lottoland this coming Sunday.
FULL TIME STATS
|
Panthers |
Team Stats |
Eels |
|
47 |
Possession (%) |
53 |
|
26/39 (67) |
Complete/Total Sets (%) |
22/33 (67) |
|
41:25 |
Time – Opposition Half |
38:54 |
|
15:47 |
Time – Opposition 20 |
12:52 |
|
1993 |
Metres Gained |
1847 |
|
7 |
Scrum Win |
6 |
|
1 |
Goal Line Dropout |
0 |
|
8 |
Penalty Conceded |
10 |
| 0 | Forty Twenty |
0 |
With the stats showing a fairly even contest at the end, its interesting that the Panthers with 47% possession completed four extra sets than the Eels.
Watching the match, it was obviously a game of two halves. An examination of the stats in each half of football supports what we witnessed.
FIRST HALF STATS
|
Panthers |
Team Stats |
Eels |
| 42 |
Possession (%) |
58 |
| 11/19 (58) |
Complete/Total Sets (%) |
14/20 (70) |
|
11:26 |
Time – Opposition Half |
28:40 |
|
4:53 |
Time – Opposition 20 |
8:45 |
|
798 |
Metres Gained |
1111 |
|
3 |
Scrum Win | 2 |
|
1 |
Goal Line Dropout |
0 |
|
7 |
Penalty Conceded |
5 |
| 0 | Forty Twenty |
0 |
SECOND HALF STATS
|
Panthers |
Team Stats |
Eels |
|
52 |
Possession (%) | 48 |
|
15/20 (75) |
Complete/Total Sets (%) |
8/13 (62) |
|
29:59 |
Time – Opposition Half |
10:14 |
|
10:54 |
Time – Opposition 20 |
4:07 |
| 1196 | Metres Gained |
736 |
|
4 |
Scrum Win |
4 |
|
0 |
Goal Line Dropout |
0 |
|
1 |
Penalty Conceded |
5 |
| 0 | Forty Twenty |
0 |
Could each half of footy be any different! What a massive shift in momentum.
Penrith couldn’t hold onto the ball in the first 20 minutes of the match, whereas we saw Parramatta with the electric start that took up from where they left off in their Newcastle trial. It was the start that everyone associated with the Eels would have been looking for.
For mine, our first forward rotation marked the onset of the momentum shift.
Mannah and Alvaro were brilliant in the hot conditions. Our bench wasn’t effective and failed to match the impact of their Panthers counterparts.
Players such as Will Smith and Kenny Edwards didn’t play any football over the weekend and each could make a case to be included in this week’s top 17. We should expect that selection decisions in and around the bench would come up for consideration this week.
Attack:
In total, 6 Eels carried the ball for more than 100 metres against the Panthers 8.
|
Nathan Brown – 141m off 18 carries |
|
Tim Mannah – 137m off 14 carries |
|
Daniel Alvaro – 122m off 16 carries |
|
Kirisome Auva’a – 107m off 15 runs |
|
Tepai Moeroa – 106m off 10 carries |
|
Jarryd Hayne – 102m off 11 runs |
Nathan Brown started up where he left off last season with an Eels game high of 141m run off 18 carries. Browny also came up with 4 offloads, this being all the offloads in the Eels game. Penrith had a total of 6 offloads from 5 different players.
There were the usual social media criticisms questioning Mannah’s contribution to this game, and once again his stats tell a far different story. The Eels captain averaged nearly 10m per run in the hot conditions and kept the ruck tight during his time on the field.
Total Run Metres
Eels – 1306 metres off 149 runs
Panthers – 1484 metres off 140 runs
Linebreaks finished at 5 a piece.
Defence:
Parramatta’s defence wasn’t too bad in these summer conditions. Most observers were concerned with a spate of missed tackles, but these occurred during broken play. When the Eels line was set, it functioned effectively.
The early Penrith mistakes made life more difficult for them but the scoreboard does show they came through that early defensive onslaught to win the game. The Panthers made an extra 36 tackles to the Eels. It was unfortunate that the Eels couldn’t use those extra sets to put the game to bed earlier.
Tackles Made
Eels – 302 (26 missed/10 ineffective tackles)
Panthers – 338 (19 missed/6 ineffective tackles)
Now we will look at a new stat called Effective Contact.
Effective Contact is a percentage stat for the defence. Its calculated from Tackles made divided by tackles attempted. Par score is 90%.
Eels – 89%
Panthers – 93%
In hellish conditions in Penrith yesterday, both teams defence was sensational.
Discipline:
Penalties Conceded
Eels – 10
Panthers – 8
Errors
Eels – 10
Panthers – 10
Costly penalties killed us in this game.
It was a familiar second half story when it came to penalties. In a repeat of so many matches from 2017, the Eels only received one penalty during the second half whilst conceding five. It’s a real leg up to get additional possession or repeat sets during the second half. With the match finishing at three tries a piece and only goal kicking separating these two teams, those penalties became gold.
A Final Word
Were we expecting too much after the start we had?
Was it the interchange not doing their share after a solid start?
Was it too hot?
As Tim Mannah said in the press conference, it was hotter in Maitland for the Newcastle game and we played really well there.
In all honesty, there can be no excuses. This match was what we made it so there is some work to do. Despite a pre-season spent on an examination of second half starts, the trait of dropping off after half time remains and requires further attention.
Keeping it in perspective, it was only round 1 and supporters shouldn’t be ready to hit the panic button. We can rest assured that the team and the coaching staff would have been extremely disappointed with the result.
We’re still very much looking forward to the rest of this season.
Make sure we get out to Lottoland and back the boys for an improved performance against the Sea Eagles.
Yours in Blue and Gold,
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.
Having a key man like Mitchell Moses off the paddock for 25 minutes, and playing a man down for 10 made a huge impact on the result.
Had chances, but failed to take them..Disappointed with the result, but not the effort. Looked great in opening half, but fell away later when Cleary had an clear run.
“We could see Cleary now Moses had gone”
BTW it has always intrigued me…how are the stats collected?
Good overall observations PP I agree wholeheartedly.
For the first 20 mins, Mitchell was getting all the wraps from every commentator on Fox and ch. 9 and deserved especially considering he had been hit high and late which obviously gave him a stinger. No action against the perpetrator. Isn’t that the type of incident that would have been perfect for a sin-bin?
Mitigating circumstances is a common defense in legal circles and although we have no excuses it should be noted that there were many consequences of Mitch’s 25 mins off the paddock.
1) Taka had to play in the halves. (didn’t do a bad job of it either, but that disrupted us)
2) Each time MM came back on Taka moved to accommodate. more disruption.
3) Tep went off he would usually rotate to the middle, but he didn’t so we had a smaller man there in Taka or Manu. more disruptions.
4) When Matagi came on when a man down, he under stress to lift the team against his former team, had a blood rush to the head and handed over possession under their posts first tackle. more disruption.
5) When Kane Evans and Tungs came out for the 2nd half they put on a planned double barrel hit which Matagi overran by 2mtrs and Evans threw forward by 1.5mtrs.
Go Parra, we couldn’t come up against the old enemy at Lottoland at a more opportune time. We’ll lift and do for ~ 70 minutes what we did against Newcastle and what we started doing against the Riff.
It was certainly very disruptive having Moses off the field for so long. Whilst we had Taka (and Hayne) who could cover this position, it affects the rest of the game. Moses was looking great until he got whacked early in the game. It started to fall apart from there. Let’s hope we can better protect our halves to let them control the game better.
What would you like to know about the stats collection process Pete??
Good summary Colmac, and the stats show some realities but also in many respects a bit of even play between the two teams.
I watched again the first try scored by Penrith, which came as a result of a misdirected kick with the ball going back a fair distance with Black getting the ball and pulling out of tackles and other misses as well. To me the eels player (Auva’a?) that ran for the ball, showed good intent and had it gone the way of him could have been a different result. However, his tackle miss on Blake who got the ball first was bad enough but when others put in ineffective tackles really destroyed out momentum.
My concern prior to the game was an ambush and others said the same. it showed to me that our starting forwards were better than the Penrith bench players who started, but the same in reverse applied when our bench was on the field and needed to contend with the Penrith main players.
A game to reflect on, and now we look to Manly and a change of fortune, unfortunately the weather forecast for Sunday has another stinker coming, unless the brewing cyclone off the coast hits by then. I hope its one from the western suburbs though.
plenty of excuses but we all know BA doesn’t like excuses.
But as mentioned above Moses off the field for 25mins, we were down to 12 for 10mins, one try was scored against us with 11 in the defence line.
We really should have had more points in the first half, 2 missed goals i was a sitter that Norman missed.
If we got into half time up 22-6 do we get run down then?
If no one gets sin binned do they score that try?
Premierships aren’t won in March but they can certainly be lost by April.
We will go much better this week.
I cannot add much to what was said; the loss was avg imo. Good teams should not lose after leading 14-6. There are no easy games and the first month or so of NRL is often up and down and we need to get back up, and fast. Manly will be tough and seeing its an away game the penalty count will be interesting. We received one penalty in the 2nd half last weekend…..
Fair dinkum
One penalty in the second half awarded to Parra
It seems the refereeing hasn’t changed from last year
In my opinion, referees should be sin binned for constant poor decisions
We really need to stop giving away penalties. I think the refs possibly target us because we always give them away. We need to be much more disciplined than we have been for the past few years. You can see whenever we give away field position that the opposition is about to score. It seems every time they score it comes off the back of a penalty.
All good points but Reagan Campbell and that kickau were to much to handle. Bring on vave and trextrex0