STAT ATTACK REVIEW: ROUND 4
EELS – 20 (Tries: Smith, G.Jennings, Hoffman, Auva’a. Goals: Moses 2 from 4)
Defeated by
TIGERS – 30 (Tries: Thompson 2, Rochow, Naiqama, Eisenhuth. Goals: Lolohea 5 from 6)
ANZ Stadium
Crowd: 30,420
It’s not too tough to wrap this up quickly.
Unfortunately, for a long period in this game we were poor and a team who couldn’t score tries looked like the best attacking team for a significant portion of the match.
All too late, possession came the Eels way and we finished strong and actually scored some points in the second half – for the first time this season.
Lets hope the Eels can springboard their last 20 minutes of this match into the next round against the Panthers.
Full Time Stats
| TIGERS | Team Stats | EELS |
| 55 | Possession (%) | 45 |
| 33/39 (85) | Complete/Total Sets (%) | 21/29 (72) |
| 40:45 | Time – Opposition Half | 39:43 |
| 17:36 | Time – Opposition 20 | 14:27 |
| 2231 | Metres Gained | 2000 |
| 4 | Scrum Win | 6 |
| 2 | Goal Line Dropout | 2 |
| 3 | Penalty Conceded | 8 |
| 1 | Forty Twenty | 0 |
The late second half surge levelled up the time with the ball and also made possession look a little better.
The statistic that can’t be ignored is the completed sets. It’s very poor and sits significantly below that of the Tigers. Any team must complete at least 75% of their sets to put themselves in the contest in this competition.
1st Half Stats:
| TIGERS | Team Stats | EELS |
| 62 | Possession (%) | 38 |
| 19/21 (90) | Complete/Total Sets (%) | 9/12 (75) |
| 27:27 | Time – Opposition Half | 12:42 |
| 10:42 | Time – Opposition 20 | 6:29 |
| 1196 | Metres Gained | 777 |
| 2 | Scrum Win | 2 |
| 1 | Goal Line Dropout | 2 |
| 2 | Penalty Conceded | 6 |
| 0 | Forty Twenty | 0 |
The Tigers have provided the blueprint of how to win matches in these great first half statistics.
Consider the high number of sets and the associated high completion rate. This saw them wrap this game up by half time.
In contrast, apart from a solid opening ten minutes, the Eels never gave themselves a look in. The rest of the half went to …. well you know where it went!
2nd Half Stats:
| TIGERS | Team Stats | EELS |
| 48 | Possession (%) | 52 |
| 14/18 (78) | Complete/Total Sets (%) | 12/17 (71) |
| 13:18 | Time – Opposition Half | 27:01 |
| 6:54 | Time – Opposition 20 | 7:58 |
| 1034 | Metres Gained | 1223 |
| 2 | Scrum Win | 4 |
| 1 | Goal Line Dropout | 0 |
| 1 | Penalty Conceded | 2 |
| 1 | Forty Twenty | 0 |
On the back of a strong last quarter of the match, the number of sets levelled up but it was still not enough to build much pressure. The late surge made the overall numbers look better but you really cant go past the how completion rate or the 1st half possession rate determined the result of this clash.
If you can’t hold the ball, you cant win footy games.
It is that simple!
Attack:
It was a much better attacking game (in parts) in this game than the previous 3 opening games. This game equalled our try tally from the previous 240 minutes of football. Hopefully this is something to build on.
George Jennings made a great club debut with a team high 156 metres made from 15 runs. Add in a try and 2 line breaks and you have a really good opening performance from George.
Six Eels ran for more than 100 metres. Big praise must be given to Tony Williams. In T-Rex’s return in the Blue and Gold, he ran for 115 metres from 9 carries that included a line break. This was an encouraging welcome back for Tony Williams – one which literally inspired Parramatta’s late surge.
Run Metres:
Eels – 1342 metres from 143 runs
Tigers – 1538 metres from 164 runs
Defence:
I could literally just copy and paste this section.
Penalties and errors again gave our opposition too much ball. Again we had to make a hell of a lot more tackles than our opposition. And again this nullified our attack. No matter how fit you are from all the off season training, giving the opposition just on 11 more sets kills your energy levels and makes the slog even more harder.
The Eels made 65 more tackles than the Tigers. This is a poor stat which seems to be repeated on a weekly basis.
Tepai Moeroa topped the games tackle count with 43 closesly followed by the player I believe has been the Eels best so far this season in Daniel Alvaro on 40 tackles.
Our forwards (including bench) made 287 tackles in total. The Tigers pack (including bench) made 231 tackles.
Now in seeing these figures, is this a major reason why our forwards have been so ineffective in attack?
They are just defending too much. By the time we do get the ball, they are too gassed to work it up the middle to gain quality metres.
Tackles:
Eels – 361
Tigers – 296
Missed Tackles/Ineffective Tackles:
Eels – 23 missed / 18 ineffective
Tigers – 30 missed / 14 ineffective
Effective Contact:
Eels – 89.8%
Tigers – 87.1%
Penalties and Errors:
Penalties Conceded:
Eels – 8
Tigers – 3
Errors:
Eels – 9
Tigers – 4
No point in going into penalties and errors. All Eels fans just want to see less of both of these.
Heat Maps:
Hit Ups:
This looks a bit better than previous weeks. We got a bit of a foot hold in our opposition territory. Something to work on.
Set Starts:
As per Stat Attack Preview for this game, the Tigers played their kicking game and executed it very well. They didn’t allow the Eels to get much attack going in their own territory. As you can see, the Eels only had one set restart in the Tigers 20 metre zone with the majority of restarts deep in our own territory.
Final Thoughts
One thing that has impressed me is that there hasn’t been any excuses. The players know they are playing poorly and need to have a good hard look in the mirror at themselves.
Also kudos goes to Brad Arthur for calling out his players and giving them a kick up backside for all the errors and penalties. Players should be taking responsibility for their own game and we also needed to hear Brad Arthur say that if players keep giving away these silly penalties we will see them dropped.
The opening 10 minutes and final 20 minutes showed that the Eels can play quality footy and with ample ball can cause havoc to any team in this competition.
Rugby League is a simple game. We need to get back to basics. If that means boring footy then so be it. If tucking the ball under the arm and just hitting it hard up the middle is what we need, then so be it! Once we can hold onto the ball and gain momentum then we can start to play a bit fancy.
No doubt this would be a message BA would be instilling into the boys and things need to improve very quickly especially against a side like the Panthers who played brilliantly against the Cowboys.
Stick strong Blue and Gold Army. The good times are coming.
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
Colmac, thanks for the report, its sort of like and old spaghetti western, The good, the bad and the ugly.
Seems also that the old aspect of being able to play for around 20-30 minutes still haunt the team, and that keeps them us behind the 8 ball ball big time.
The big stat that has to be shown to the players and rammed home to them is the aspect that comes from Possession, without that there is no hope.
Here’s hopping for a good win against the panthers..
Cheers Colmac. It would be great to complete as many sets as the opposition, especially in the first half when a fatigue disadvantage can affect you for the rest of the game.
I think the stats point to the fact that if we can be more disciplined, we will get more ball in attack, and will have to defend less. I agree with your point about our forwards being too tired to do much in attack. In fact you could see after we scored the first try and took the ball up to the opposition 20 again, we turned the ball over and reverted to defensive mode. This is something that has been killing us for at least 3 years now. We just can’t afford to give away so many penalties and dropped ball because we don’t have the explosive players to get us out of that mess. Agree that we need to play simple footy and build our attack. Brad needs to set a precedent now that he has made threats. The players need to know that complacency won’t be tolerated.