Much has already been said about the Eels vs Broncos game in Darwin.
The game itself was filled with obstacles to winning, and the Eels weren’t good enough to overcome them.
First and foremost was the self inflicted obstacle. Our Parra players were passive in defence, especially in the first half. In attack, they seemingly looked for the easy option. It was annoying to see miracle passes creep back into our game. I’d written about this before, thinking that the team had moved past this habit. Until the team stops making games difficult for themselves, winning will remain harder to achieve than it should be.
Darwin continues to be another self imposed obstacle. The playing conditions are far removed from CommBank Stadium and the arrangement with the Northern Territory still has years to run. Sixties and Forty railed against taking a home game to Darwin in their Instant Reaction podcast and they have a strong case.
I can only imagine how difficult it is to play in extremely hot and humid conditions and I too question the wisdom in continuing to stage games against Queensland opponents in the tropical north. We all recognise the value of commercial partnerships. Every supporter also acknowledges the importance of the Eels community work up there, and that doesn’t have to end. But surely there is nothing to be gained for our team’s premiership campaign when they are put through such a challenge when it is meant to be a home game.
Lane is swamped by the defence
The next obstacle was the match scheduling. Broadcasters determine the day and time of matches, and so you get what happened on Friday night – a five day turn around into warm and humid conditions in the Northern Territory. All teams face five day turn arounds at some point, but in this instance, the short preparation time was leading into a trip to the Territory.
Now let’s move to the inevitable – the refereeing controversy. Sadly, this obstacle was expected.
Didn’t we all know that there would come a time when a match official would fail to sin bin a player for an obvious hip drop tackle? Of course it would involve our Eels!
Did it become too tough for Friday’s officials to dispatch Haas for ten minutes when his team was already down to 12 men? Are referees themselves uncertain about what constitutes a hip drop? If so, what hope is there for any enforcement of the rules? Maybe it’s a case of witnessing the annual ritual of forgetting rules and “crackdowns” when the heat is on?
Let’s be brutally honest about this. The tackle on RCG was one of the worst that we’ve seen this season, a fact supported by the seriousness of his injury. It was absurd for commentators to debate intent or the way the tackle got out of Haas’ control. No player intends to make a dangerous hip drop tackle. Lack of intent is no excuse in any tackle.
The outcome of the hip drop on Reg
Haas made a hip drop tackle, he’s been charged with it, suspended for it, and he should have been put in the sin bin. End of debate. Our Eels didn’t play well enough to win, and yet the referee still made a decision which might have had an influence on the outcome.
Every team faces obstacles each season. Some they can control, some they can’t. Injuries are universal, though the severities may vary. The successful teams overcome such challenges. Hopefully our club looks to minimise the self inflicted ones.
As supporters we can’t control decisions about when and where our team plays. We can’t control whether match officials will make decisions expected of them. We can’t control how the players perform. But we can control whether we embrace our team in tougher times, and 2023 is showing all the hallmarks of an up and down season.
On Friday night the Eels face the Newcastle Knights. Even in poor seasons, Knights fans are unbelievable for their support. Their resilience is incredible and it’s something that I admire greatly.
Parra’s fans are also a resilient lot. We buy memberships in ever increasing numbers despite the decades long premiership drought. Attendance averages for Eels home games are the envy of every Sydney club.
However, when the results don’t play out as expected, discussion, criticism and debate sometimes crosses the line into abuse of the players. It helps nobody to turn on those we should be supporting. It only serves to create a divide.
My family has a long journey to get to Eels games, and the 6pm kick off prevents us from attending this week. We’ve ensured that our seats will be filled by friends of ours. They’ll be doing their utmost to cheer our Eels to victory. Let’s hope they have full stands joining them in this endeavour.
Shelley
Fact is the Eels have started the year under done and not evolving with rest of the comp other teams seem to be improving our weak points remain and in some ways worse.
I’m naturally negative and I’ve written off this season.
Tks Shelley. When you think about it, the absence of Lane and Matterson from a thinish roster, Hodgson’s struggle for form, and our lack of grunt from the backfield, have contributed to a really sluggish start to 2023. We just make too many dumb errors to get a winning momentum going, a fatigue factor defrays our defence, we needed a near perfect standard to negate deficiencies and beat Penrith.Is their hope?, we’ve not be streeted and we’ve defended the wide shifts better(mmm…where’s Souths?) and we’ve shown that we can play with higher completions/lower errors. I’ll live in hope.
Thanks Shelley- some poignant comments and particularly the five day turn around heading up there.
Look, Klein has been poor for yrs and the RCG was another example but for me the first half was v poor. Too many defence issues and errors.
Second half was fine and tough but we have to start this way; and we must use the ball better and be less predictable.
I’m a fan of Hodgson but he looks a little slow / fatigued and needs to be used before and after halftime. Hope he comes good.
D Brown needs to take some pressure off the spine. Period.
And we seem to have a gap between back up props putting pressure on the main pack.
Our edge defence again is an issue
I hate to be negative but that’s my view.
I also would love to know if the team has watched the GF replay as a squad and learnt from this individually? I would hope we have.
It has been a bit of doom and gloom the past week, a lot of it way over the top notwithstanding valid criticism of areas where the team needs to improve. Even without RCG, I’m quietly confident that Parra can the next few games and keep moving up the ladder.
Thank you Shelly, your comments are as usual spot on. Our Parra boys are no doubt struggling at the moment, but when you have been a Parra supporter for as long as I have, there is always hope, and we will be in the stand cheering on our boys most definitely on Friday night.
Yes, Haas should have been binned under the rediculous edicts set forth by the NRL and in all seriousness, Hopgood should have stayed on the field
Yes, the Darwin arrangement isn’t great.
Yes, Matto should have taken the fine
But but but ….
I reckon as rabid fans we are just trolling for excuses.
The team just hasn’t come up to par this season. That’s the fact.
Why?
It’s probably a combination of poor play by the team, poor coaching around our defensive structures and poor roster management.
We lose 10% because of the above factors, we go from GF contenders to also rans and make no mistake, there is no sugar coating it – we are also rans.
Yes, we will pull out a damn good performance every once on a while but we are nowhere good enough to challenge for the title.
I swear and curse when the opposition team kicks a ball overhead and it does a 360 and results in a try but we are the authors of our own demise.
We drift in and out of games and that is coaching – pure and simple.
Our Cup performance on the weekend was a shambles – again a coaching problem.
These kids know how to play football and Wayne Bennett would die to have our roster up there in Brisbane instead of the rejects that he has moulded into a cohesive Dolphins unit.
This isn’t a bash on BA but the coaching unit needs a big kick up the bum especially our strength and conditioning unit.
The team is massively unfit both physically and mentally which translates into fatigue which then leads to decisions that are detrimental to the results.
The team is mollycoddled and until they decide to at least work the team as hard as an organisation like the Storm or Penrith , especially in the pre season, then they can bitch and moan as long as they want and will always find excuses but they mean fruck all at the end of the day.
I’ve seen them train in pre-season, have you seen them train? Just asking.
Sorry meant, I’ve Not seen them
No I haven’t. But .. that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
“Inadequate defence comes from mental fatigue which comes from inadequate physical fitness”
-Kelvin Giles
( look him up – I think he knows what he’s talking about )
I heard him say this at footy training one day.
He always said that if you saw a team struggling defensively it’s a sure sign they arnt fit enough.
The eels have struggled defensively for years.
Gutho and a couple of the others are very fit but the rest are not up to the required standard.
Maybe , just maybe the penny may drop out there … or they can continue to bumble along.
Spark 100% on fitness and fatigue as Giles said. Defence and poor decisions/errors are directly related to fatigue. We are not fit and we have too many not keeping up with the effort on effort on effort plays. Our wingers/centres look the other way when they should be playing like middle forwards coming out of our end.
Spark I know who he is, he was with Brisbane yrs ago.
Parra has had some defence issues particularly out wide but I also say particularly last season we did seem to finish games well. To me it’s technical.
The club also has a decent wrestle / defence coach a while ago, Sixties would know his name and I’m sure he went to Penrith. Think it was around the cap issue time.
Attitude also comes to mind.
Milo that’s an interesting point but one would think at this stage of their career they would know how to tackle effectively ?
Antonelli our defence coach from Souths has some pretty good runs on the board but we look like we have regressed in the defensive department. We went into the final series last year as the worst defensive side and made the GF !
One may assume that we made the GF despite our frailties in our defence and wonder what we may have achieved if we had addressed this ?
Whether it’s attitude, technical or fitness it has to be addressed and we just can’t continue to be passive in defence.
We didn’t deserve to win but if the ball bounced the other way….? and Klein wasn’t there… lol. But, no excuses Broncos made their luck by being in the fight. We were ‘dipping the toe’ in before each play. More on that later.
It’s always hard after a loss. Going through the stages of grief; anger, denial, bargaining…We see it here in the various posts. Lol.
After a win we suddenly feel good again. That’s the dopamine we all crave and become greedy for every week. But we cannot expect a win to just happen.
Our defence has been an issue for many years. It’s not just the attitude or the system in defence we cant get right. It’s basic tackling technique that is missing. Ray Stone was an aberration. As he’s the only player we developed that can tackle. We just grab high and are pushed off to easily. When you watch that time and time again in games it’s demoralising as a fan. Then we play Penrith and suddenly we improve..
Our attitude as BA has identified and says quite often; “We just dip our toe in” These are the games we are checking the water temperature and its too cold to jump in today… You’ve all seen your uncle not wanting to go in so he’s standing on the edge arms folded “its too cold”. Then you bomb dive splashing everyone and end up havingagreat time…. The Broncos all bomb dived in splashing our guys making them cold. But our guys need the conditions to be perfect before they “jump in”.
That’s not what we want. You have to “jump in” no matter what it feels like. That’s where the problem lies. We “dip the toe” instead of bomb diving everyone.
Fix our defence and mindset and we can still make a run to top 4. But if we keep repeating the same mistakes and “dipping the toe” it’s going to be a long off season.
Go Eels !!
Well said mate I’d love our defense to be consistent every week and with some venom
The defence is where it all starts. Sort this consistently and we will be fine.
100% Milo
I think BA, only plays one way. Dylbags mentioned boring footy in an interview, a coach is also a motivator, if your half time speech is always the same “Front load effort”, “Play hard, work for the right to attack”, its hardly motivational. Im only surmising but it looks to me BA, doesnt utilise different strategies for different teams, players although highly paid need to continually learn and be challenged, in their footy nous. I see little of that occuring. All cudos to BA in what he has achieved so far, but if your not learning, improving, being challenged as a player or coach, then its a dead end road.
As a Darwin based Eels fan who was there on Friday and has been to 7 of the 9 games in Darwin – of which we’ve won 6 I want to say 3 things:
1. Why they play in April is beyond me. It’s still the wet season. If they play in June or July they will be playing in cool and dry conditions.
2. The NRL obviously figured out that to get a sellout crowd they bring in a QLD team which makes it impossible to be the crowd majority. Originally they marketed it as the “Territory Eels”, it’s nothing like that now. I wish we could have some say in the opposition eg. When we played Canberra -and won- we were the majority, the atmosphere was electric and it was truly a home game.
3. Last season I visited Sydney and went to Bankwest and watched us get belted by Souths and the atmosphere was still better in Darwin on Friday night than it was at Bankwest that night.
Cheers
Interesting stuff NTeel
Haven’t heard that perspective before, what do we need to do to get the locals to support us, geographically Qld maybe closer but alliances are not built on that alone surely……it seems that we are not building any following and that is surprising when you have the same team going for 9 years, maybe we just dont have the name players?
Thanks for your reply Poppa. They do great work with the kids when they are in town and maybe that will translate to support in the future. Up here if you’re not from NSW then you go for QLD so it’s always going to be hard for us against a QLD team. Honestly, if we played in June/July against a non QLD team it would be a different story.
We can no longer dismiss the bleeding obvious fact. Referees by the actions determine the outcome of a game. It’s either negative or positive. Depends whether you win or lose.
One in escapable fact – certain top teams get the rub of the green which invariably allows them a win. The Storm against the Warriors – that try. Parra against the Broncos – that tackle. Parra were getting ball and an overlap was the natural outcome. Klien not sending Haas off stop Parra from gaining the ascendency. Did we deserve to win? Probably not but we didn’t deserve to RCG for twelve weeks.
For that Haas gets a week. Justice is seriously declining in the NRL.