Sunday 23rd May, 2021
Bankwest Stadium
EELS 6 defeated by SEA EAGLES 28
Half time: Eels 6 – 16
Attendance: 24,411
Eels Scorers:
Tries: C. Gutherson
Goals: M. Moses 1 from 1
Much like the Eels on Sunday, I feel like this week’s Stats that Matta post should be unstructured, and have no shape and no patience.
But, if we enjoy the good times, we must also analyse the not so good.
The Eels were completely out-enthused and put up what can only be described as an inept performance against a soaring Sea Eagles.
Surprisingly, both sides shared the ball with 50% possession each and a completion rate that would displease any coach. The Eels completed at just 70% (31 from 44 sets), while Manly, believe it or not, completed at 74%.
The Eels had a touch more time in the Sea Eagles half at just a tick over 43 minutes with roughly 17 minutes in the oppositions red zone.
Two points stuck out for me in the game with both in the second half.
First was from the Manly side and showed what this game meant to them even as they were heading for a comfortable victory. The Eels made a break on the left edge and nearly scored only for Maika to loose the ball in the tackle.
After the play broke down, Tom Trbojevic absolutely let Taniela Paseka have it with an almighty spray due to his lazy defence to let the line break happen. To me this showed Manly’s commitment to the game and what it meant to them.
The other was when the Eels got a 7 tackle restart, Gutherson raced up for a quick tap with only 4 Manly defenders in front of him. Gutherson tapped and played on looking for his winger who could have streaked away with no one in front of him to bring the Eels back to within a try.
But where was his winger? Still ambling along near the tryline.
Maika Sivo was just standing there, no urgency, no read on the play. Not thinking that his captain was creating an opportunity. Sivo 2020 was on show here.
Those two moments exemplified the mentality of both teams on the day.
Attack
I should use the heading of “offence” because it was offensive to call it attack.
Again, remarkably, the Eels made 1708 running metres, which was 150 metres more than Manly.
However, those running metres only mean something when you can score points from it, or make the opposition work so hard that it blunts their attacking spark.
Sadly, neither was the case.
The Eels couldn’t finish off any attacking play, even after making 4 line breaks.
Gutherson topped our running metres with 209 running metres, followed by Maika Sivo with 193 metres. Nathan Brown was our top forward runner with 160 metres with Papali’i and Junior with 152 metres each.
Hit Up Heat Map
It’s actually not a bad heat map for our runs. As stated above, we built nothing from this platform.
Set Starts
Not as many starts in the Manly half to build much pressure, whilst errors and poor options nullified any attacking raids the Eels had.
Defence
This is not pretty.
Eels completed 331 tackles with 40 missed and 26 ineffective. Thats a tackle efficiency at 83%. That missed and ineffective tackles count of over 16% is a stat that seems to be increasing each week.
Reed Mahoney topped the tackle count with 35, followed by Nathan Brown (32) and Ryan Matterson (30).
I need to give mention to young Jakob Arthur. Manly ran a lot of traffic at him and he made 24 tackles with 5 misses. Considering where he has to defend, and the circumstances of many of his tackles, it was a solid effort. Hopefully he retains confidence in his capacity to defend. Unfortunately this workload may have nullified his attacking game.
Discipline
The Eels made 11 errors to Manly’s 12, and had 2 players on report – Waqa Blake (3 goes at it) and RCG. Both of those players spent time in the naughty corner.
The Eels conceded two set restarts and gave away 8 penalties.
Final Thoughts
This game should be put to bed and not thought of again. Realistically, it’s been a fine start to the season for the Eels with a 9 and 2 record, so we shouldn’t really be whining too much about dropping a game.
That said, most of the negative reactions are probably out of frustration because we know how the Eels can play and they just didn’t bring it this time around. And when it’s a home game, the fans deserve better than what they’ve witnessed on both Sunday afternoons at Bankwest this season.
This week is another week and another chance to show what the Eels can do and get back on the winners podium.
The Eels face a battered and bruised South Sydney side who aren’t currently playing like we expect the Bunnies to play.
The Rabbitohs are coming off two massive hidings in the last 3 weeks and are hurting bad so they will be looking to shore things up in their game.
Stats Player of the Round
Even though I gave him a little serve before, and will continue to, this week’s Stats Player of the Round goes to Maika Sivo.
Sivo’s Tale of the Tape
- 16 runs
- 193 running metres
- 109 Post Contact Metres
- 1 Line break
- 9 Tackle Breaks
It was a statistically impressive game from the big Fijian, but the numbers cover up moments where he needed to be much better.
Stay in the game for eighty minutes, Maika!
Yours in Blue and Gold
Colmac
Tks Colmac. A quick scan of the stats shows a fairly even game. Line breaks is the major exception 9-4 to Manly, which has some correlation to the scoreboard. I don’t recall any line breaks through the middle, so no prizes for pointing to our poor efforts to deal with wide shifts. Run decoy plays at us with speed (2 runners) and trouble looms in our red zone. Back downfield, the decoys are not required, just quick shifts initiated by smart playmakers find us short on numbers.Dylan Brown and Marata were getting this problem under control. We will be crazy to persist with the same back line, the definition of insanity comes to mind.
too bad BA is insane lol
The stats don’t tell the story this week, surprisingly even. I guess where you make your defensive lapse is key. Would like to put a line under that game, detest losing to the eagles
that comment about Maika is interesting. i seen the incident and was frustrated myself. i also saw last week in brisbane (live at the game) when the entire back line had to scream at him repeatedly to come in and take a relieving hit up when we were under pressure. it seems his game awareness could be better? i am no one to talk, mind you, as i struggle to pay attention to anything for more than 5 minutes.