Round 10 Drink Of Choice – Fireball Hot Chocolate

They slipped and they spluttered last week against the Newcastle Knights but a steely resolve in defence carried the day. This week we found out what happens when the Blue & Gold bulwark gets left on the team bus for half an hour.

Spoilers, it was not fun.

Parramatta’s 18-22 defeat against the Manly Sea Eagles was an exercise in the purest strains of frustration. Somehow the Eels turned last week’s clumsiness and shoddy execution into a full-blown disregard for possession this on Saturday night and it eventuated into the Manly getting spotted a whopping 16-points directly from three mind-numbing Parramatta errors within the first quarter of play.

The Eels were battle weary no doubt. A brutal 6-game stretch against a cavalcade of the competition’s best in conjunction with an escalating injury toll left them at the very limits of their resources before kickoff. Ryan Matterson (fractured finger) and Blake Ferguson (knee fluid) were massive omissions on the back of an injury ward featuring Mitchell Moses, Kane Evans, Oregon Kaufusi, Ray Stone and Peni Terepo.

Yet that doesn’t excuse the fundamental issues present yesterday and Brad Arthur acknowledged as much in his post-match press conference. Parramatta’s commander-in-chief pointed out that the Eels trained the entire week with the knowledge that Manly would be fired up as they attempted to arrest a 3-game losing streak and for whatever reason they just couldn’t bring the mustard to Brookvale.

It simply wasn’t good enough and a repeat performance can not be afforded this season. On that sombre note, let’s break it all down in this weeks musings.

Time for Moses to descend from the mountain injury ward

Dylan Brown was brilliant against the Canberra Raiders, Clinton Gutherson other-worldly against the North Queensland Cowboys while Reed Mahoney was a menace against the Newcastle Knights. Up until this game, each of these three senior members of the spine had taken turns in stepping up to the plate to cover for the absent Mitchell Moses. In the last two games though a lack of composure has crept into the team, exactly the sort of issue that Moses has done so well in stamping out at times this season.

I have no doubts that Dylan will climb into the elite echelon of play-makers in the NRL in the coming years, he is already so poised and talented, but his last two games have shown how much room there still is to grow. While he may have posted gaudy running numbers against Manly (15 runs for 167m), our attack was stilted and worse – listless – far too often as Brown ignored his outside men in favour of digging back into a set ruck defence. Tack on an inconsistent kicking game and you have a big part of the reason why the Eels struggled to work their way into the game.

It certainly didn’t help Dylan that Mahoney was well off his best as well and the two young men should have a deeply reinforced respect for the fundamental principles of the game given their recent tribulations. It goes without saying that Mitchell Moses will be a huge inclusion next week if he is ready to go.

George Jennings should not wear the blame

Yes he coughed up the ball on our very first possession. Yes I cussed him out quite audibly when it happened. Yes it gifted the Sea Eagles the opportunity to make a dream start. Yet despite all that George Jennings shouldn’t be strung and quartered for his game last night. Parramatta had the focus and desire to repel a better team in similar circumstances last week when Shaun Lane was incorrectly adjudged to have stepped on the line from the opening kickoff. Last night they simply lacked the fire and gumption to thwart the wiles of Daly Cherry-Evans and Dany Levi.

From that inauspicious start, George rebounded to produce 213m from 24 carries on the ground and would go on to score a last minute try that gave the Eels the most unlikely of opportunities to steal a win. For a bloke coming into the NRL ice-cold, it was a more than reasonable performance. With that said, I am interested to see what Haze Dunster can bring to the table if a future opportunity on the wing props up, although that comes from the filter of roster succession.

Plain Lane

Some players relish the chance to visit an old stomping ground and remind a former employer what they are missing out on. Shaun Lane, as outstanding as he has been for the Eels since joining them in 2019, does not seem to be one of those players. His two visits to Brookvale as an Eel have resulted in rather dire efforts (2019 been the game he played with a badly lacerated hand after he was mugged by avocado wielding a knife) with his complete non-effort on Daly Cherry-Evans’ try earning my ire in particular.

With Ryan Matterson ruled out Brad Arthur needed his lanky left-edge leviathan to step up and Lane did not oblige. 9 runs for a paltry 77m along with 33 tackles (4 missed) underscored Lane’s poor night at the office. I lay part of the blame at Dylan Brown’s feet, after all I already touched on Dylan’s tendency to dig back into the ruck too often, but there is no excusing the flimsy defence.

Davey holds his own

It is no secret that Brad Arthur tends to ease rookies into the NRL via a gradual process. Stefano Utoikamanu got on the field for a single carry last weekend and before him both Oregon Kaufusi and Ray Stone were initiated into first-grade by way of short ~10-minute bursts. He broke all the rules for Andrew Davey though with the senior rookie entrusted with a comparability mammoth 27-minutes on debut.

Davey didn’t shred the Sea Eagles as he worked in relief for Brad Takairangi and that sort of expectation is horribly unfair but his 45m from 6 runs and 18 tackles (1 missed) were everything the coaches would have asked of him. He played a crucial part in Parramatta’s last gasp try to George Jennings and was right in the thick of things in the lead-up to a near try to Reagan Campbell-Gillard when he deftly flipped an offload to Waqa Blake down the right-edge.

Like George Jennings, Davey came into this game with essentially zero match fitness and feel and he showed more than enough to suggest he could be a handy presence on the bench down the stretch.

Not quite the green light but Brown & Sivo look to be okay

The Eels were considerably undermanned coming into this game and it quickly got worse midway through proceedings when Nathan Brown departed the game with a corked hip. It then went from ‘oh shit’ to ‘are you freaking kidding me?’ when Maika Sivo seemingly blew out his right knee in a Brad Parker tackle in the last minute of play.

Thankfully Sivo was cleared of any structural damage (ACL, MCL, PCL etc) to his knee and is looking at bone bruising. Both men now face a race with the clock in order to be fit for Thursday night’s clash with the Wests Tigers but it is a huge blessing that neither sustained long-term injuries.

Iron Man

The rise and rise of Reagan Campbell-Gillard seemingly never ends. With Junior Paulo somewhat under-tuned this week as he manages a bout of back spasms, ‘RCG’ carried his bat footy for the full 80-minutes in a herculean performance. He rumbled along for 272m from 28 carries and threw in a measly 47 tackles (3 missed) to just barely miss the mythical 200m/50 tackle benchmark again.

He wasn’t perfect though. He let a huge opportunity to turn the game on its head late in the affair when he couldn’t quite ground a probing grubber kick from Reed Mahoney. I certainly won’t be levying the result against him for that one moment given the mountain of other critical moments in the game.

The Fully Loaded Man has made me an unabashed fan.

The Final Word

There isn’t much more to say here. There were some odd moments in the game for both teams with Manly profiteering hugely from a bizarre 6-again call in the dying moments of the first half while the Eels clawed their way back into the game on the back of a contentious no-strip call. I actually look forward to what the official review of the Waqa Blake incident says tomorrow morning because it is a genuinely fascinating incident.

The Eels did end up keeping the Sea Eagles scoreless in the second half in a faded silver-lining but make no mistakes about it – they can not afford a repeat performance against the Wests Tigers.

If you liked this article, you might consider supporting The Cumberland Throw.