Round 12 – Sunday 2nd August, 2020 @ ANZ Stadium
18
defeat
16
It wasn’t the most impressive victory of our season, but a win’s a win. The big positive is that we take another 2 points home and move onto Round 13.
The Eels came out and looked like to be putting on a scoring clinic. With some wonderful touches in offloads, kicking and support play, the Eels quickly put on 18 points and the score looked like it could have been anything. But after 28 minutes, that was it for the Eels.
Were the Eels guilty of complacency? Did they think that they had it in the bag, or did the Bulldogs click into gear and put it to the Eels?
Whichever way it went it gave the Eels one hell of a fright.
The first half saw the Eels achieve a 54% possession rate and 18 complete sets from 21 (86%). But the second half was a different story with the Eels only having 38% of the ball and completing at 75%. It was a massive swing to the struggling Bulldogs which nearly gave them the win. If it wasn’t for late scrambling Eels defence and some wrong attacking options, the Bulldogs would have sealed a memorable victory.
The Eels scramble would have to be one of the best in the comp, but you shouldn’t rely on this style of defence after being 18 points ahead against the bottom placed team.
Hit Ups
The more colour in the opponents half the better, and by looking at this graphic you would have thought that the Eels forwards dominated and put the Dogs to the sword.
Of course, the forwards did lay a great platform. RCG ran for 190 metres, Junior 196 metres, and Nathan Brown compiled 143 run metres.
However, despite the superb efforts of the pack, the Eels just could not get that last play right.
As the match progressed, the halves seemed to lose their way, which is a little baffling considering how they started the match.
Dylan Brown was very quiet today with only 40 run metres. Despite his 44 possessions, Dylan passed on 38 occasions – not unusual for a half, but conservative by his standards. Perhaps the Dogs took him out of his usual game as they ran a lot of traffic his way, forcing him to make 28 tackles.
Moses started on fire, with scoring first up and some astute kicking to put Gutherson over, but being at the game, he looked a little frustrated at how some of the plays went away from him once he marched us up field.
Mitchell’s kicking game was on song with him kicking for 657 metres which nearly was more than the Bulldogs combined as they kicked for 684 metres in total.
Set Restarts
As you can see here, he Bulldogs did make us work hard for the win. There weren’t many restarts in the Bulldogs red zone which meant the Eels couldn’t pile on much pressure at all.
Just a quick mention/thoughts on Reed Mahoney. Reed is a quality hooker and I see him as the Eels long term hooker into the future. Today he made 64 tackles and missed two. Outstanding effort. But is this nullifying his attacking game?
Some of his service has been a bit lacking of late. Could this be because of his high defensive work. Does he need a break during the second half? Could he be benefit from a small spell and come back with 15 or 20 to go?
The Eels backs were a bit of a mixed bag.
Focussing on the back five, Clint Gutherson was outstanding and scored a deserved meat pie. He also ran for 164 metres and a line break assist.
Blake Ferguson is chomping at the bit for his first try of 2020. As we see here, he runs a very anorexic blind side to catch out the Bulldogs attack. But ended up over the sideline.
Fergy ran for 124 metres with his efforts putting the Eels on the front foot to get us out of trouble.
Waqa Blake showed he is growing in confidence and was hard running today. Waqa ran for 111 metres with 5 tackle busts from 12 runs.
Michael Jennings just keeps going on. His 148 running metres maintains his status as one of the competitions in form centres.
Maika Sivo was very, very quiet today. Maika ran 9 times for just 58 metres. With 12 possessions and 2 errors to boot, Sivo just wasn’t on his game today.
After attending ANZ Stadium today, I started thinking about how vital a bye is in the modern game.
I’ve briefly noted a few players over the last few weeks who look a little, if not flustered, then definitely in need of a week to freshen up, regroup and come back firing.
I had thought that the 10 day break after the Tigers game was as close to a bye as you can get this year. The first 30 minutes did show that extended break looked like it did wonders, but the last 50 minutes was hard to watch.
Of course, as mentioned, a win is a win and the Eels remain equal 2nd, just one point adrift from the ladder leading Panthers. There’s probably 13 other clubs who’d gladly trade places.
Yours in Blue and Gold
Colmac
Have been a big fan of Reed but I do feel he is tiring due to his massive defensive load and that teams are targeting him for that exact reason. It slows down quite obviously the quality of his passing game. I think a break either side of halftime of a total 15-20 (Plus the HT break) would freshen him up for the last 25-30 minutes of the game. Ray Stone was ear marked for that role early on and his defence is certainly above adequate.
I also believe Reed is in need of a freshen up, but I wonder whether he would benefit from a week’s break. Of course, how do you replace him is another matter.
Our missed tackles were sub 20, a small ray of light given the 2nd half stats overall, but we look untidy in redzone defence(moreso the right). The team on the bottom looked like they had a much better grip on this, could we study them? Sivo’s one handed carry into a hit up and Reed’s ‘here knock my wrist’ were 2 poor errors that can make a difference in a close game, fortunately we won.
It was a game where errors were immediately punished BDon – and that applies to both teams.
There was a moment, second half i think.Guth gets the ball off a kick and drifts across towards Sivo , who had nobody infront of him and had he stayed wide Guth would have put him away but Sivo came in and Guth was forced to take the tackle.Was a poor read by Maika.But we won , just.So alls well.
Interesting analysis as always Comac. Your discussion about Reed Mahoney and the need to freshen up seem to be on the money. However how BA accommodates this is another thing because giving players a week off risks introducing complacency into the mix. Trent Robinson has ‘dropped’ Kyle Flanagan to work on his game – maybe that’s code for having a break. It may be that Reed and DBrown could do with a week to work on their game with Joey.