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Any concerns over a repeat of the slow start from last year were quickly thrown aside as the Parramatta Eels comfortably accounted for the Canterbury Bulldogs on a scorching Saturday at CommBank Stadium.
Bryce Cartwright starred for the Blue & Gold as he bagged a double and tormented the visitors throughout the contest. Sixties and Forty20 look at the rise and rise of Parramatta’s weapon in the backrow.
The boys look at how the forwards controlled the flow of the game and whether Junior Paulo’s new role had anything to do with it. In the backline Morgan Harper made a strong club debut as Forty20 puts out a mea culpa.
All of the other results on a massive schedule get reviewed with an assortment of wins and losses spread across the day.
Great stuff guys. Good win to start the season. Looked clinical and patient for almost the full 80 mins. Hopefully the lads can stick to the grind all year.
Thought it was Juniors best game in a long time. I’ve been critical of him, but perhaps the last 12+ months have been too much fatigue and some injury niggles holding him back.
The only concern (and it’s mild at this stage) is our inability to defend mistakes. We only gave the dogs 2 sniffs and they crossed both times. Would have been good to see more resilience. But it’s a minor gripe at this stage.
Optimistic about 2024 after that. Let’s put the Panthers 0-2 next week!
Agreed re: flimsy edge defence esp on our left with the new combos. But in my opinion, Dylan and Shaun lane need to get up faster on that edge. They sort of lumber up and wait to make reads which gave bulldogs time and they looked threatening every time they went to their right in our half. Moses on other hand is much quicker off line and makes players sometimes turn back inside as they get spooked. We really need our half and backrower to work hard if we are going to fix the edge defence issues.
Other than that area of improvement was a controlled performance even with Moses hobbled. Hopefully we bring the same fire but better attack next week against Penrith.
Not much you cant solve ron !
Round one Ron, let’s enjoy the win. Also, I’m very comfortable with Dylan Brown’s defence. He’s just about the best defensive half in the comp, not just his physicality but his reads and anticipation often shut down breaks before they can happen.
Agree with all of that re: one on one defence with Dylan. He is elite but in my opinion he and lane need to be better with spacing and urgency off the line from the inside. I can’t blame Harper and Simonsson on the Wilson try when Dylan plants his feet to try make a call and gives dogs a century to make a play. As I said Moses rushes faster, as does Adam Reynolds and as does Queensland when they frustrate Cleary in origin and make him turn back inside. Not saying that will work for a whole game but more urgency will help protect the edges.
It’s a minor gripe when we make only two mistakes (which was abnormal), but a massive gripe when we make 10 (which we’ve come to expect)
Hey mate. It was a very controlled game. The high completion along with physicality of the forward play building defensive fatigue reminded me of the Storm grinding an opponent into the ground.
I’m happy to keep it optimistic Mick. A first round win in which the forwards brutalised their opponents is better than the close loss to the Storm that we had last year. A 2-0 start for us would be ideal.
The most patient performance of eels for along time. Joey Lusica and Morgan Harper played extremely well.
Patient and mature and those two contributed big time. I’ve stated that Harper is a complete professional. He can play a very similar role to Tom Opacic
Good result. I thought our first contact was better today, as was our speed in defence. Cartwright was great, small issue B.A use of our bench Hopgood was gassed at times today, he leaves him on too long. Overall good result
If you look at the minutes played by the middles, the rotation was quite evenly spread. Hopgood only played 51 minutes, which for a lock isn’t extraordinary. It was a very warm day, so I reckon they all felt it.
Very pleasing start to the season. Bulldogs were very physical, and the boys stood up. Fingers crossed on Moses getting over his injury for next week.
Early news on Moses is promising
After watching the nsw cup and Flegg yesterday via tha app – I am very perplexed by the state of our outside back depth. Not much outside back talent that sticks out at all in those grades (don’t be fooled by the touch footy match in cup yesterday. I don’t get what our plan is with outside backs in the modern game. I saw a stat the other day that said parra have the least line breaks and tackle breaks by players 1 on 1. ie we rely on offloads to break the line as we don’t have athleticism really to break it first up. Surely a back with some athleticism would be a priority. There’s so many in reserve grade that offer more than what we have for “depth”
Seems to be a lot you “don’t get” Ron.
The amount of commentary from those who do understand as well as those who pretend to about our depth in outside backs is pretty well documented.
I think too many forget that there’s an extra team in existence that has contributed to the a reduction in available players hence the increasing power shift in favour of players and their agents. Add the lingering COVID impact to development of players and the amount of footy they missed out on.
Too many people seem to think the club has chosen to be where they are as opposed to realising the more likely situation is that they are largely playing the cards they’ve been dealt.
A solid amount of copium there. So covid only hit us did it? That’s news to me. Other teams are thriving and have developed their players very well in the intervening period. We have had the problem since Jennings got popped and even before it when takarangai was playing makeshift centre. The club has had ample time to recruit and get the backs in shape but have made mistakes left right and centre (I’m not going to rehearse the amount of young outside backs they have given top 30 spots that haven’t amounted to anything). Other teams have been creative in their pursuit of backs (storm with warbrick from union, knights with dom young from England for example). Instead what I saw yesterday was a nsw cup backline that was very very ordinary indeed and a worry that we still haven’t seemed to get our talent id in outside backs right
Ron, you saw a NSW Cup backline in the NRL? I’m not blind to the need to add backs to improve the depth, and finding a star signing would be brilliant. But to write off the Eels backline as NSW Cup is an extreme comment.
No, I was talking about what I saw in nsw cup as very very ordinary in the outside backs (per my original message that started this chain). To grace it as nsw cup standard is even being generous for some that don’t need to be named.
Ron is the all seeing and knowing eye jon boy , as ever he’s the ultimate pessimist.
Indeed JonBoy. Without question the club will be trying to fill available spots with a back or two. And if you look across all clubs, there are plenty of spaces that still need to be filled but not too many available players. You are also spot on about the impact of Covid. Look no further than the ages of rep teams and Flegg being changed to understand how much it impacted player development.
The Eels depth chart was impacted by the suspension of Sivo and injuries to Penisini and Miller-Stephen. And hopefully Ethyn Martin is available this coming week. But the lack of depth due to injuries won’t go away. And there is a dearth around the Flegg and Ball teams. Adding outside backs would have to be a priority. What the answers are I wish I could say.
I’m not going to argue about the need to recruit outside backs. The loss of Penisini and Miller-Stephen has been felt at NSW Cup and Flegg level. There are spots that need to be filled
Any thoughts on how likely we will land Lomax? In theory a good signing, but I’d be a bit concerned about attitude (based on the talk out of the Dragons) and how quickly he’d integrate (just a general concern not going through our preseason).
Mick, we’ve all heard the rumours, from straight up signing a disgruntled player to engaging in a player swap with the Dragons. We will sign players to fill roster spots, News who that is has not crept out of Parra.
So many tackles on their goal line we should have scored more points really. Defence was good in the middle but once again as soon as the dogs passed it along the backline we were again short of numbers. Guess no changes in our defensive structures which is hugely disappointing was hoping we might have worked on this with all that time off.
MB, the Eels play at their worst when they play an impatient brand of football. That was a controlled and aggressive win. How is that not the type of round one victory that fans should be pleased with? You build into a season on performances like that.
Dogs defended well and I think in previous years we get frustrated and start playing too sideways. Last night it was a lot more controlled and whilst it didn’t produce a lot of points given how much possession we had, I’d rather be controlled and “only score” 4 tries than be erratic which may lead to more tries but may also lead to more tries conceded.
You are spot on Ham. I’m expecting the Eels to play a patient brand of football this year. We need discipline in how we play to get back near the top of the ladder.
I think there will be games in the future where we chance our arm a little bit more when we’re up. But in round 1 when teams can still be a little bit rusty in attack after no matches for 4 months I was happy for us to keep it simple and play percentages. Even though we had a ridiculous 17 offloads I don’t believe many of them were risky by any means.
Also on the cup game, Arthur and Talagi were easily our best with the ball in hand. There was a noticeable difference when Arthur went off the field, hopefully he can stay on the field. Talagi is still definitely learning how to play fullback defensively but with the ball in hand he is elite in this grade. A bit more size and a bit more learning and what a player he will be.
The skill factor of both is elite, but the other characteristic about them Ham is their toughness. It’s what will make them fine NRL players
I agree with you both. I was frustrated that with the amount of ball and field position we did not cross the line more. But, from my lounge chair, it didn’t seem to lead us into panic and trying miracle passes or plays. That was heartening because in previous seasons I’m not sure I could say that. And I liked how we managed Moses with others taking more responsibility.
We still won by 18 points which I would take every week and would give us a points differential in the high 400s at seasons end.
A bit rusty, but we won and are two comp points to the better than same time last season. It’s good to bank as many as possible as early as possible. I’ll take that and know the team will continue to work on improving throughout the season.
Good win and much needed.
Agreed abt the patience – reminds of Guns n Roses.
In all seriousness we need more patience over the year…this is an ingredient Melbourne and Penrith have
I reckon next week will be a good one for us.
A professional and well constructed win, exactly what you want to see in the opening round. The high completion rate and patience to wear the dogs down was impressive. No NRL side is going to lie down in the opening round, even those expected to finish toward the bottom of the ladder, so the way the eels broke down the dogs methodically was really positive. Are there areas of improvement? Of course there are, but we controlled the game and walk away with 2 points, you’d sign off on that for round 1 every season.
It was a good win against dogged (ahem) opposition. Forwards were great. I was impressed with Russell. His yardage work was excellent. Gutho was sage as the proverbial bank. His catching was elite. We may have had more points of Moses hadn’t been restricted by that groin strain. His speed and vision would have tested a tiring Dogs defence.
Not sure how tired Kikau would’ve been with only 6 runs for 40m and 23 tackle attempts of which 4 were misssed/ineffective. But yes I agree, having a half missing basically the entire game stunted our attack. Only have to look at early in that first half when Moses explored the short side and Penisini made a clean line break, a shame he didn’t look to his outside Russell was in untouched. We never went down a short side for the rest of the game and there were a few times we had the dogs stripped for numbers.
With MM healthy our right side attack with Mitch, Carty, Penisini and Russell is beginning to look really good. Good combinations building.
According to something I read earlier today it does not look like Woody will be back for Panthers game. A bit disappointing for me.
In the trial and first game Russell looks so much more confident. His runs are so much more decisive and strong.
He looks like he feels that he belongs in first grade. I think this could be a really good year for him.
Loved being back at the footy. Loved the atmosphere. The banter between the supporter bases is brilliant. Loved that we learnt from last year. Simple, basic football wins early games. Costly risky plays killed us last year. We put away the miracle risky passes. Our patience early took away the dogs energy.
Loved watching nsw cup. Matty Arthur can read the game wonderfully. He is highly skilled but not robotic.
Blaze lost concentration at crucial times – he needs to experience this to learn but again his skill and insight is evident. His pass selection/execution and offloads are beautiful.
Our depth in the outside backs is very concerning. I hope it is addressed ASAP.
Great day had by all.
Good post Shelley
For me the key this week is repeating last wk but a little better. Be patient against all teams is the key for me and ensure we complete well; def as always needs to be good.
Penrith are there to be beaten.