EELS – 6 (Tries: G. Jennings. Goals: M. Moses 1 from 1)

Defeated by

PANTHERS – 12 (Tries: J. Mansour. Goals: J. Maloney 4 from 4)

ANZ Stadium

Crowd: 10,061

Glass half full – we are getting better slowly. Trying to find the little ray of light in amongst all this doom and gloom is hard I know, but in patches of this game we did see what we can do.

With some positives found in this clash, it’s important for the Eels to sustain it and not drop their heads, or the ball, when things don’t work.

Full Time Stats

It is disappointing tohave more possession than the Panthers, but not produce the tries. Even our lone try was from a Panthers error. With plenty of time in Penrith’s red zone, coming up empty time and again sealed our fate.

This match was another game where we scored the same amount of tries as our opposition, but penalties in kicking range were once again our downfall.

Does this mean that we need to take similar opportunities for two points – regardless of the score?

Aside from such questions, a completion rate of 68% is rarely going to help any attack.

First Half Stats

This completion rate just jumps out from the stats. Giving up this much ball just kills any momentum.

When we did hold onto the ball, our attack was far too lateral, with no go forward to punch through a steely Panthers line. The only highlight of this half was Browny firing up after knocking the moustache off RCG.

Second Half Stats

The Eels looked a lot better when just running the ball forward and hard. I am very critical of Kenny Edwards game most of the time, but when he runs hard and straight that’s when he is at his best and that’s what he did in this game. We went back to a basic game plan in this half and things started to happen. The Eels dominated field position and spent a lot of time in the Panthers 20. But again hands let us down at crucial moments.

Attack:

Running hard and straight meant that we began to dominate territory. This was starting to give Moses and Norman something to work with.

However, running across field and not throwing much at the opposition defensive line is repetitive and robotic. Opposition sides are just holding their line and giving nothing away.

Only three Eels topped the 100 metre mark with Nathan Brown again topping the Eels run metres with 149. Manu and Peni both came up with 119m a piece. Alvaro and Josh Hoffman fell just short with 98m and 95m respectively.

In comparison the Panthers had seven players top 100 or more running metres.

Run Metres:

Eels – 1327 metres from 157 runs (8.5 m per run)

Panthers – 1294 metres from 141 runs (9.2m per run)

Defence:

Finally a game were the opposition tackled more than us. It was another brilliant defensive performance from Nathan Brown with an Eels game high of 42 tackles and zero misses. Excellent work. Also Polar Alvaro continued his great form with 38 tackles and only 1 miss and 1 ineffective tackle.

The ineffective tackles, still in double figures, are concerning. We aren’t wrapping the ball up and the opposition are getting offloads away for second phase plays which continue to hurt us.

Tackles:

Eels – 323

Panthers – 344

Missed Tackles/Ineffective Tackles:

Eels – 20 missed / 12 ineffective

Panthers – 36 missed / 6 ineffective

Effective Contact:

Eels – 91%

Panthers – 89.1%

Penalties and Errors:

Penalties Conceded:

Eels – 11

Panthers – 12

Errors:

Eels – 15

Panthers – 13

Again penalties were not our friend. Yes we finally won a penalty count, but its where we conceded our penalties that was a concern. We again we lost a game due to penalty goal kicks. We did have a few penalties in range for us to ‘Take the Two’ and at times I thought we should have as our attack was clunky and lost. Being down 10 – 8 and working away again would’ve proved fruitful instead of going for a try that was never coming. But that’s just my opinion.

Also errors at crucial times in the game was a killer. Josh Hoffman dropping a ball with the line wide open. Peni Terepo’s hands not liking him (again). All these things are just killing the Eels at the moment.

Heat Maps:

Hit Ups:

Definitely our best work rate heat map of the year. Just unfortunate that no points ensued from it.

Set Starts:

We got some quality field position with a lot of set starts in the Panthers 20 zone. But like the Hit Ups, we just couldn’t convert these into points.

This is a game we should have won. We had a fair share of time with the ball, great field position, and our forwards rolling but we did not get the points to show for it.

The harsh reality is that Parra remains anchored to the bottom of the table.

Perhaps this game could have been the springboard for further improvement. Perhaps there’s a bit of light in these dark times.

Stay strong Blue and Gold Army. Hang in there.

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

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