Friday 7th May, 2021
Bankwest Stadium
EELS 31 defeat ROOSTERS 18
Half time: Eels 18 – 12
Attendance: 25,118
Eels Scorers:
Tries: B. Cartwright x 2, B. Ferguson, T. Opacic, D. Brown
Goals: M. Moses 5 from 5
Field Goals: M. Moses 1 from 1
This was a cracking game all round, from opening whistle to closing siren.
The Roosters did play very well considering their squad decimating injury list, but in saying that everyone knows that whatever tram the Roosters get on the field, its going to be a tough game.
Unfortunately, a couple of unsavoury incidents marred this game and have since been the central talking points. This is a shame as it’s taking away from a cracking game.
The Roosters plan all night was to slow the ruck down. The Roosters conceded 6 set restarts and it should have been at least double that.
Serial offender Angus Crichton was decidedly lucky not to be penalised for his numerous spoiling tactics. He was laying in the ruck, taking his sweet time releasing and also stepping into the ruck and not to the side. How he escaped punishment had a lot of people scratching their heads and no doubt Brad Arthur would have been one of them.
The Eels dominated every major stat in this game.
With 57% possession, completing 85% (41 from 48 sets), and a tick over 51 minutes, with the ball and half that time in the Roosters 20 metre area, the Eels strangled the life out of the Eastern Suburbs outfit.
Attack
The Eels gained 2306 metres with the ball against the Roosters 1580 – a pretty fair result with the amount of extra ball the Eels had.
In running metres the Eels made 1543 metres to the Roosters 1109 metres.
Post Contact Metres saw the Eels with 586 to 391. Isaiah Papali’i delivered the Eels high of 68 PCMs
The Eels inspirational skipper Clint Gutheron headed the list with 172 running metres, closely followed by Isaiah Papali’i (164m), Junior Paulo (160m) and Reagan Campball-Gillard (153m).
Whilst scoring 5 tries, the Eels could only muster 2 line breaks. Is this a concern to Brad Arthur and his staff? Given the Roosters tactics, it is perhaps more credit that the Eels found other ways to score their tries.
A certain former coach on Fox commentary last night thought this wasn’t good for the Eels. But I bet if his beloved Sharkies where scoring in any manner he would be ok with it.
There is patience and composure involved in getting into the field position to create scoring opportunities. Tries don’t always involve line breaks. For games against the best teams, that is the bigger picture.
What could be a concern to Brad Arthur is the involvement of Maika Sivo. The big Fijian floats in and out of games. His 9 runs for 62 metres was not a great contribution from Maika, especially in a game such as this.
As shown, our forwards were doing a lot of work up the middle and needed a break. Maika should have come in for a few extra runs to help out his team mates. We need more appearances from the 2019 Maika not the 2020 Maika.
Runs Heat Map
Now this is how our running maps should always look like. Copy this one and put it on the fridge. Enough said.
Set Starts Heat Map
Pressure, pressure, pressure. Lots of set starts in the Roosters end to help the Eels in this encounter. I believe we played with more patience than in previous games. A measure of this is the Eels forced 4 line drop outs to build pressure. The pressure eventually showed on the Roosters in their game.
Defence
Parramatta completed 265 tackles, with 28 missed tackles and 5 ineffective, giving an efficiency rating of 89%.
Our missed tackle numbers while be highlighted this week. It was a relatively low number of tackles to complete, and having 10% of attempted tackles missed was not ideal. Brad Arthur might just have some extra tackling drills imposed in this week’s training schedule.
Ryan Matterson was the Eels top tackler with 37 tackles.
With the loss of Reed Mahoney mid-way through the first half, the Eels had to compensate for his loss in defence.
It helped that the Eels held the ball for longer periods than the Roosters, minimising the tackles that needed to be made. The players who shared out the defensive load were Shaun Lane (24), Isaiah Papali’i (28), and Dylan Brown (27).
Discipline
The Eels conceded 4 penalties and just 1 set restart. But of major concerns are the 2 players on report in Marata Niukore and Dylan Brown. Both are looking at multiple weeks off from footy.
Final Thoughts
As I have touched on during this post, a few incidents have marred a great quality rugby league game.
Did these incidents have an impact on the game? Ill leave that for you to decide.
Unfortunately in todays media they want to focus on the bad of the game instead of the other 79:55 minutes of a terrific game.
The Eels should be applauded for how they played in what was a gritty win. Not many teams can say they but 30+ points on the Bondi boys no matter how those points came.
Reed Mahoney’s unfortunate head knock did see a significant decline in the service from dummy half, even up to the pass for Moses’ field goal.
Brad Arthur will now need to think about whether the Eels will carry a better dummy half on the bench rather than a winger.
Final shout out to Keegan Hipgrave who has maintained a 100% win rate in his NRL appearances this year.
Stat Player of the Week
There are a few players in contention this week but I am going with Junior Paulo. Junior just out pips his front row partner RCG to claim the award.
Junior’s stats
- 160 running metres
- 61 post contact metres
- 4 offloads
- 24 tackles
Great effort from Junior.
Yours in Blue and Gold
Colmac
The Rooster seemed to be offside all night but good to see the Eels handle this unlike when Saints played the same tactic. The super fast line speed explains the lack of line breaks. Eels dominated the metres as the stats confirm – great stuff. It’s interesting to see the media consistently discount the Eels – probably does us a favour because the Eels aren’t great front runners. Junior was my MoM – such big minutes. Will be interested to see how BA balances his workload.
The fact that Parra dominated the game for 80 minutes, or close to it despite having our dummy half out of action for the majority of the game is great to see. Make no mistake, having Mahoney off strangled our attacking structures, especially whilst Brown was serving at dummy half. Service from dummy half also reduced somewhat, but we still managed to pile of pressure. BA has always told his players to play to the game plan, build pressure and points will come. That’s exactly what happened on Friday night. It’s great to see the game plan coming to fruition regardless of what else if going on around the team.