STAT ATTACK REVIEW:

ROUND 2:

EELS – 0

defeated by

SEA EAGLES – 54 (Tries: Sironen 2, Cherry-Evans, Koroisau, Fonua-Blake, Croker, Perrett, Taufua, J. Trbojevic. Goals: Cherry-Evans 9 from 10)

Lottoland

Crowd: 10,502

Spoiler alert – this is going to be ugly.

Let’s treat it like that sticky band-aid – rip it off and get it over with!

 

Full Time Stats

Sea Eagles	Team Stats	Eels
61	Possession (%)	39
35/39 (90)	Complete/Total Sets (%)	18/26 (69)
42:23	Time – Opposition Half	38:02
22:44	Time – Opposition 20	10:50
2027	Metres Gained	1165
7	Scrum Win	4
3	Goal Line Dropout	4
10	Penalty Conceded	12
1	Forty Twenty	0

 

Lets move along. Nothing to see here – apart from the Sea Eagles just about doubling metres gained and time in the opposition 20. Uggh!

1^st Half Stats

Sea Eagles	Team Stats	Eels
61	Possession (%)	39
19/23 (83)	Complete/Total Sets (%)	9/13 (69)
31:11	Time – Opposition Half	9:05
14:42	Time – Opposition 20	3:04
1054	Metres Gained	565
4	Scrum Win	2
0	Goal Line Dropout	2
6	Penalty Conceded	6
1	Forty Twenty	0

 

For me this was the longest half I can ever remember sitting through. When it reached 30 nil I had to remind myself that this was still the first half.

Actually I said a few more words than that but I need to keep this a PG rated piece.

Let that 39% possession and 69% completion rate sink in for a moment.

What’s that?

Oh you already had!

2^nd Half Stats

Sea Eagles	Team Stats	Eels
61	Possession (%)	39
16/16 (100)	Complete/Total Sets (%)	9/13 (69)
11:12	Time – Opposition Half	28:57
8:02	Time – Opposition 20	7:46
972	Metres Gained	599
3	Scrum Win	2
3	Goal Line Dropout	2
4	Penalty Conceded	6
0	Forty Twenty	0

 

That possession and completion rate looks eerily familiar.

Now, check out Manly’s completion rate. Perfect football in the second half by Manly. Congrats to them.

That said, they had little pressure on them when they had the footy. We certainly helped them to turn in such a performance.

 

Attack:

What is this thing they call ‘Attack’????

Nobody hit 100 running metres for the Eels. In contrast, 9 Manly players hit this benchmark.

Incredibly, the whole Parramatta team didn’t even crack 1000 running metres. There was not even a single line break all game.

It must be asked – How often do you see such numbers in the modern game?

Run Metres:

Eels – 995m

Sea Eagles – 1573m

 

Defence:

The Eels made an astonishing 115 more tackles than Manly. That’s equivalent to almost an additional 20 sets of six. Parramatta had a combined missed tackle count of 67 – 33 missed tackles and 34 ineffective tackles. We could not shut the offload down all day and the Sea Eagles just ran riot.

Again Alvaro dug deep and showed a bit of pride in his blue and gold jersey with a match high 43 tackles. Browny again tried hard in defence with 37 tackles. To put this in perspective Manly’s leading tackler was Api Koroisau with 25 tackles.

Will Smith and Jarryd Hayne had a missed tackle/ineffective tackle count with 7 (2/5 and 5/2 respectively).

Kane Evans had a total of 8 missed tackles/ineffective tackles (3/5) and every player bar Josh Hoffman recorded a missed tackle.

Tackles

Eels – 320

Sea Eagles – 205

Missed Tackles/Ineffective Tackles

Eels – 33 missed tackles / 34 ineffective tackles

Sea Eagles – 13 missed tackles / 20 ineffective tackles

Effective Contact:

Eels – 82.7%

Sea Eagles – 86.1%

 

I am just going to show a couple of heat maps from yesterdays game which actually makes things look a lot worse for the Eels.

First up I will show our set starts for the whole game. Now remember with the heat maps it is always showing teams attack right to left. There is no first half second half swap with these.

When you see this you would think, wow look at all those set starts in the opposition 20. The Eels must of put on heaps of tries. All we did was force 3 drop outs, all in the second half and come up with nothing. Actually sorry, we came up with errors!

Now Manly’s set starts:

They had 5 sets starts in our 20 and still piled on 9 tries. The red zone just shows all the kick off’s they received.

Now will look at hit ups.

Parramatta first:

With all the set starts deep in Manly’s danger zone, they held strong with great line defence. We could not beak their line at all. Also shows that the forwards didn’t create anything midfield for Norman or Moses.

Manly’s hit up map:

Manly’s forwards dug in and laid brilliant platform of Cherry-Evans to do his work. This would be a heat map coaches would show as to why you need forwards laying ground work for the halves to do their jobs.

Errors and Discipline:

Penalties:

Eels – 12 conceded

Sea Eagles – 10 conceded

Errors:

Eels – 12

Sea Eagles – 6

 

 

Don’t need to say much more about this game. Everyone has and will say their piece on it so I am not going to delve into it anymore.

All we can hope for now is a much improved performance against the Sharks on Saturday night to hopefully kick start our season and get some points on the board.

The massive question for this week for the Eels is what does Brad Arthur do with team selection.

Does Jarryd got to fullback, Bev to the wing and Auva’a to centre?

Do the forwards need a reshuffle? Will Kenny Edwards be fit to come into the side?

Will we see Gutho before Round 8?

Has a massive summer slog actually been detrimental to our season start?

Are the players actually all a bunch of vampires who hate the sun?

It’s crazy to think that things are going pear shaped even at this early stage of the season.

That’s one perspective – get rid of these poor performances early and charge through the rest of the year. It is early stages and we are only 1 win out of the 8 (yes, I am looking to put in one more ‘advantage’ to the opening of the season).

Stay strong Blue & Gold Army. Lets get behind the boys and turn up in force to our first home game of the year at ANZ on Saturday night.

 

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