Round 13 Drink Of Choice – Dimple 12YO

We now resume your regular scheduled blogging. With a particularly brutal head cold behind me it is time to finally crack the fingers and bang out a belated addition to the annals of Whisky Musings. It is a timely return to health for myself as well, coinciding beautifully with a much needed return to form for the Parramatta Eels. Their 40-4 victory over the Newcastle Knights was the rugby league equivalent of the Black Knight fight from Monty Python & The Holy Grail as the painfully undermanned Newcastle squad was taken apart limb by limb.

While the performance from the Eels is commendable it shouldn’t be lost that the Knights were without Kalyn Ponga, Tyson Frizzel, David Klemmer and Daniel Saifiti. So with some degree of tempered praise, let’s jump into the musings.

Eels rise to coach’s challenge

Brad Arthur set the tone for Sunday’s clash against the Knights way back on Tuesday when Blake Ferguson fell upon the vaunted sword of selection. Ferguson paid the price for Parramatta’s issues down the right edge and the youthful Haze Dunster was entrusted with the seemingly herculean burden of manning the right flank in his place.

Newcastle, especially sans Ponga, are far from an offensive juggernaut but the pairing of Dunster and Tom Opacic proved to be sound defensively against the Novocastrians. Dunster’s effective tackle rate of 60% is hardly inspiring at first glance but it comes from an extremely small sample size (3 tackles, 1 missed, 1 ineffective) and belies the greater consistency of the right edge in general. Haze did well to follow Opacic’s cues throughout the course of the game and played a really solid all round game which was capped beautifully early on with his maiden NRL try.

Parramatta’s response to Arthur’s challenge extended beyond just the right edge. Sixties and myself have prattled on at length over the last fortnight about the Eels’ inability to win collisions through the middle against Manly and South Sydney and here too did we see a big return to form. Reagan Campbell-Gillard spearheaded the battle through the middle early on but it really must be said that both Shaun Lane and Oregon Kaufusi brought the heat from the bench.

Lane is a fully fledged middle forward at this point in time and he dominated Newcastle through that channel. The Knights could barely bring him down over the course of the game with the rangy prop chewing out 175m from 18 carries. Impressively, 78m came after initial contact. Lane even added a cheeky little try assist to Bryce Cartwright with an admittedly fortuitous around-the-corner offload that deflected perfectly off a defender.

While the Knights were certainly undermanned, given the decade of recent history between the two clubs, it is easy to see why Parramatta could have stumbled and bumbled through this game. Instead, they answered the questions asked of them by their coach and posted the most significant victory against Newcastle in a long, long time.

Dylan’s triumphant return

It would have been a long three weeks on the sidelines for Dylan Brown. While the Eels secured their first ever Magic Round win with a 34-18 result over the New Zealand Warriors, the following consecutive defeats were both matters compounded by his absence. He owed the Eels a big performance and he delivered on that in spades this weekend with a sparkling effort that was comfortably his best game of the season.

Dylan’s 195m from 21 carries is the sort of stuff almost never seen from halves. He is clearly a strong runner of the ball but he was in his element on Sunday and rarely tucked the ball under his arm as a last resort. He ran with purpose and great effect and looked as comfortable as he has all year. What was probably the most encouraging though was the depth to his long kicking game against Newcastle. Brown’s ability to clear the ball has been one of the weaker aspects to his game since entering the NRL and Round 13 might have been his finest moment in that regard. Doubly so when you consider that he took over the reins from Mitchell Moses when his halfback left the game early as a precaution.

Equally important was Dylan’s value to the right edge in defence. An outlier across the entire competition for his prodigious defence, Dylan instantly shored up the inner shadings of the right and his continued presence there will be a huge boon for the Eels.

The moment the season flashed in front of all our eyes

If there wasn’t enough trepidation caused by Mitchell Moses departing the game early as a preventative measure for his troublesome calves, seeing Reed Mahoney left strewn on the field clutching at his left shoulder starting the sirens blaring and klaxons flashing.

Mahoney was only able to take part in Round 13 on account of narrowly missing out on selection for the QLD Maroons and he took to the task with relish. He ran a meticulous program through the middle for the Eels, accentuating both Moses and Brown with a number of deft clearing kicks and putting Tom Opacic over with a clever face ball on the goal line.

Ironically, it was a rare blemish on his game that led to the injury as he dropped an offload from Shaun Lane on a wrap around play. Mahoney tried to rectify his drop by immediately cutting down the Knight who recovered the ball by momentum had carried him too far past the ideal point of contact and he only managed to injury himself.

There was immediately legitimate concerns about a torn pectoral muscle or torn bicep, both of which can carry long recovery windows. Thankfully, while we are still waiting on an official statement, it looks to be a minor dislocation of the shoulder. The recovery window for such an injury can range from as little as zero games up until perhaps a month. Had the Eels lost Mahoney for the remainder of the season it would have been a hammerblow to their premiership aspirations and for now it looks like they have dodged that particular bullet.

The Final Word

A rather brief musings this week but it was the sort of game that you don’t want to get too carried away by. The Knights were wounded and there to be beaten and that is exactly what Parramatta did. The forward pack as a whole played really well while it was nice to see Waqa Blake unwind a bit with some early ball. Clinton Gutherson snapped the minor slump he had been in with a classy performance while Maika Sivo was at his bruising best down the left sideline.

At the end of the day it was simply just nice to be able to sit back and enjoy the game after the tensions of the last two rounds. Now the Eels need to navigate their run to the bye with favourable matchups against the Tigers and Bulldogs before a massive clash with the Panthers gatekeeps their week off.

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