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Sixties and Forty20 unload following Parramatta’s heart-breaking 8-point loss to the Penrith Panthers in Round 2. A torrential run of injuries, bad luck and bad calls hamstrung the Blue & Gold throughout a frenetic and physical clash as the reigning premiers finished the second half too strong for the Eels.
In lieu of the classic post-game analysis, the boys tee off on the officials and the inconsistency of the application of new rules. The injury outlook of Bailey Simonsson and Kelma Tuilagi puts the Eels in a bind for Round 3 as Sixties and Forty20 have a short discussion about how the team shapes up moving forwards.
Great podcast guys. I agree with what you said about the bad calls and the bad luck, but the big takeaway from this is that the Eels are in the right frame of mind for this year. Big props to the Eels and BA for showing true grit and guts. Very proud of the team.
The only issue, and unfortunately it is a big issue, is that the depth recruitment has been atrocious. Coaches can’t train talent and unfortuantely the recruitment panel has failed BA and the coaching staff for two seasons now.
Your last line kenny , 1000% thats the problem !!!
There will be those out there who will blame the coaching staff for the loss. That would be a clueless response.
Lussick was gassed yet left there until the 77th min. Hands should have come on earlier and our defence improved when Kelma left the field with injury yet our coach stubbornly left him there. No the coaching didn’t lose us the game but the adjustment to the backline was the wrong call yet BA persisted.
The thing I regret from the podcast is not focussing enough on the positives of the performance. It’s probably something that the commentary was also guilty of in terms of the Eels performance. You’re right. The mindset is there this year.
In many respects a fairly even game. The only major different stat was metres gained where the Panthers were dominant and earned the win.
But man, some officiating blunders which allowed the Panthers to avoid the blow torch. The Gutherson knock on from his ankle, the facial on Carty were 2 cut and dried wrong calls under high quality technology. The false leap, and there was also a leg lift, the Lane pass and so on.Hopgood got penalised for a ruck infringement where he thought quicker than Kenny but I reckon Klein just went ‘geez what happened there, he’s lost the ball, better blow the whistle’. FisherHarris never got his leading arm into the RCG collision, he sort of waves it upwards after being knocked backwards. Enough duds to make a difference I’d say
Officiating of the most inconsistent and incompetent standards but annesly will give them well done approval pat .
Without question that will be the outcome. Or of course “we got that wrong”. But apologies or admissions don’t change the outcome or the fate of the match officials.
BDon, the Panthers don’t need those leg ups, but man they get them when this bloke controls our games against them. To be brutally honest, he just straight out misses calls and many other supporters of other clubs feel similarly. It becomes a matter of which teams play a brand of football that benefit from his interpretations. We aren’t talking a deliberate bias. We’re talking who he is as an official.
So being new to site can anyone outline the junior recruitment for me , im aware oniell is recruiting manager at nrl level but whose head of junior recruiting now nathan browns left ,its an obvious mess with virtually zero potential nrl quality backs in our ranks outside of sanders and talagi , there also seems to be a complete lack of speed within our junior programs and recruitment , whos at the top that obviously needs the chop??
I can answer that rocky ,ISSAC MOSES runs the juniors , slowly destroying club like he did tigers .
Great game by two good teams. So proud of the effort, commitment and some good signs going forward. My gut feel is that the Panthers were marginally the better team but they did have many calls go their way.
The elephant in the room for us is backline depth which is made worse by the absence of a genuine utility for the bench. Kelma is no Marata. Whoever is in charge of ‘ finding’ people to recruit and bringing their name to the recruitment committee needs to be held to account. The problem is we have all rightly said this going into our third year straight and nothing has been done. Harper replaced Waqa we still did nothing about our shocking genuine first grade depth over the off season. It is at the point that I feel people need to be sacked. They have had enough time. If the person in charge won’t sack them then he should be sacked as well. Enough is enough. It is not good enough to have two outside backs unavailable and then to have no genuine strong options to fill in for a few weeks.
A big test for a few people coming up. Our recruitment guy and Graham Annesley.
How will the nrl and Graham Annesley handle the fallout? Or will the media do as they did last night and bury it? ( I look forward to our game this year, as we have one each year, that the media spend the entire post match focussing on us ‘ winning’ a game from a missed forward pass) Last night post game crickets. We lost a man to a high shot, a swinging arm, no sin bin plus the two tries scored from referee/ match officials errors. Post game nothing but praise for Penrith. It is hard to have any respect for the footy media when they are so overtly bias.
My guess is the NRL will muddy the waters trying to say the downtown try and the winger jumping early and not going for the ball are the correct calls. Annesley will focus in on one word and do mental gymnastics with it. Confusing everyone. Think the obstruction, high shot, hip drop ‘ crack downs’ ‘ not crack downs’ debacles from the past few years. Only for the NRL to back down when games were ruined because match officials as well as fans had no way to make sense of the mass contradiction coming from the NRL via Mr Annesley.
My prediction is in two weeks time there will be mass confusion and growing frustration amongst teams and fans because they will not want to admit that big calls that were seen by all and judgement made on them, on the showcase game for the week, were wrong. Admitting error which gave Penrith two tries and kept 13 on 13 despite a swinging arm that took a player from the game and therefore gave Penrith victory would mean they have to drop Klein and Atkins, if you follow past trends such as Todd Smith last year in the Storm/ Roosters game , and they won’t do that. You can demote Todd Smith but Annesley and Co will never do that to Klein and Atkins. Never
Fair calls Shelley. And you’re right. Minimal interest from the media moving forward. Now, it’s up to our team to put it behind them and focus on the next job. Should we as fans do the same? The players and coaches have no choice. They can’t dwell on the past. But we can do that as much as we want. Maintain the rage!
Tough circumstances with injuries and Ashley kliens general incompetence but we kept fighting which was heartwarming. Now we need to continue that mindset and resilience next week. Really important we aim up against sea eagles and build on the type of resilience we showed tonight as as tommy turbo/manly have embarrassed our edges a few times in past and it’s time we got one back.
As for our outside backs, if anyone watched reserve grade you’ll know how much of a shambles it is. All I can say is I hope Bailey recovers well
No Outside backs in reggies , its lot worse than that ron , flegg zero , ball zero , maybe 1 in matts 4 years away , our junior recruitment is no better than four seasons ago , wheres the problem , it always starts at the top ron .
I agree. It’s very concerning that we haven’t been able to get talent id or recruitment in that area right for many years now whilst other teams like panthers, storm, cowboys, broncos hell even tigers produce the modern/athletic outside back for fun.
I almost fell off my chair when mark O’Neil rocked up on TCT and had the nerve to mention that they club couldn’t have really predicted the dunster slow recovery from that horrific injury. He is part of a committee but O’Neil should fall on his sword if this year isn’t a relative success. Note also 3/6 recruits from last year have been cut already. Shows how pathetic recruitment really was.
Tough one to see – we played tough which was great and needed a try second half and some calls. Same issues with the same team and ref.
As Ron said we must aim up again next wk against Manly as this is one we can’t afford to lose.
Hope Simmo is back soon.
He’s effectively been put out for two games. The Riff game and Manly. But as Ivan said, they got lucky.
Thanks guys.
Where I felt Penrith truly dominated us was defensive line speed. It was just next level. We did our best to combat it, but in comparison, our line speed wasn’t even close. Without knowing the exact numbers that must explain the yardage difference.
The lads did dig deep and despite being overrun and gassed, prevented it from being a cricket score hammering. So as a fan you have to be happy with that. If I had a non-officiating complaint, there were a number of moments where we lacked the extra 1% of effort. Some examples:
1. The chip bomb to Lane – he didn’t appear to really go after the ball.
2. The Edward’s grubber try – I think it was Brown who took the easy way out and just tried to block Edward’s rather than chase the ball.
3. The Leota try came off the back of some very ordinary defensive efforts.
4. The Yeo kick – I don’t know why Morgan Harper didn’t contest the ball. He was never preventing a try via a tackle.
I also have 2 questions if someone can explain – I’d appreciate it…..
1. Why didn’t 18th man get enacted? I thought that came into effect if you have someone ruled out on HIA from foul play? Or do you need 2 blokes to be down? Either way, the rule is dumb.
2. What’s the “downtown” thing?
Paulo another fantastic week. Reg great too I thought, particularly seeing him steam roll over Fisher Harris. Gutho also unsurprisingly resilient, he’s such a competitor.
Overall still happy with the start to the season. Can’t be too fussed losing to Penrith like that. If we play them in finals, I’d rather see us win then.
Only get a replacement if the player is binned, which adds further insult to injury here. Mind you, the 18th man was another middle forward so it wouldn’t have helped a great deal with us getting shredded down the left hand side.
We’d have almost certainly won that game if we hadn’t lost Simmo – they made about 400 metres in line breaks and semi line breaks down that side and it meant they were often getting 20-30m extra a set and always on the front foot.
I am pissed BA didn’t utilise Brendan Hands. It blows the mind he could leave an interchange up his sleeve for the 77th minute when we were down to 2 men on the bench with 25 to go
Thanks Adam….. that is indeed outrageous. Cop a swinging arm to the melon, get rubbed out of the game and neither the ref or bunker intervene. Especially only being a few minutes into the game.
Mick B – I can speak to the first part of your reply. The difference between the teams was one was running uphill whilst the other was downhill. We were always under defensive pressure due to the advantage out wide. They made so many more running metres when they went to our left. So the Parra players were always moving backwards at a greater pace and having to cover more metres in defence. It meant the game was always played at Parra’s end. The plays that you mentioned were probably issues of fatigue. There was nothing left in the tank for attack come the second half. The scoreline was a miracle and a testimony to Parra’s resilience.
I haven’t listened to the podcast yet (I like to get my TCT fix in a long walk with my dog). It’s hard to be upset with that performance. It’s obvious our back line stocks are low, but if we’d have had a better back line and still had a winger injured, would the result have changed? I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the refereeing. How Luai was not sent to the bin for the high shot is beyond me! The new rules were brought in to be enforced. Klein must’ve missed the memo. On to next week.
We have plenty to say West Coast
Penrith bombed 5 tries also so the score could have been 40. So the match wasn’t decided by the ref. The match was decided by Brad’s lack of foresight in quality in the backs and development of players in the outside backs
You can’t blame Brad when he isn’t given the tools (players) to work with in outside backs. The club let the team down not the coaching in that regard.
Brad consistently gets scraps and does his best but that model isn’t sustainable and the people in recruitment committee just don’t seem to appreciate that or if they do they haven’t addressed that fact
How many outside backs have come through the system under Brad’s coaching net – hardly anyone. Maybe one good one in a decade with penasini.
That’s Brad’s fault
I do agree with that . Brad isn’t as good at developing backs as he is with fowards. But my point is that it’s not all his fault. Why should he have to develop each one. The recruitment committee need to buy some bloody good ones and let brad focus his energy elsewhere (Where he is more effective).
junior recruitment is an identity and responsibility to itself , its their judgement alone that provide and promote juniors for nrl consideration , you have no idea hat your talking about , also you dont rate dylan brown obviously among others
Back again Chief?
Brad should have put Dylan brown one in to mark the panthers centres. Thats stupidity to put a big back rower out there. Then in attack Dylan plays 6.
Thanks Judy that’s as honest and succinct as it is . Kelma was made to look 2nd rate. It wasn’t his fault. Why wasn’t Hands deployed much earlier, he’s played in the halves many times.
That is yet another change to the defence. How many players do you want out of position Chief? They were already playing two out of position which is the minimum. Now you want three out of position? Hands, Brown and Harper. Defensive systems are all about specific roles as well as the team functioning as unit. Combinations, communication. It is not as simple as shifting a lot of people around like you are suggesting.
What defensive system ? Our left edge has been shit for years.Probably about the time Shaun Lane was put on the left edge.
As always gents, even after a loss the Instant Reaction is welcome. Gallant in defeat with some positives to take away from the game but the lack of depth in the outside backs is exposed again. And I so agree that if a player engages in foul play that removes a player from the game there needs to be proper punishment at the time.
Anyway, on to next week.
We’ve been “kliened” yet again.
I saw two absolutely blatant facials on the field last night. One gained s penalty and the other didn’t.
The guy is completely incompetent.
He’s ruined numerous games of rugby league over the years. He has no feel for the game.
He ruined a perfectly good semi-final last year with a blatant knock on missed in front of him between Melbourne and Sydney roosters.
How they can put him in first grade week after week is a sad indictment of the depths of refereeing ranks in the NRL.
We all know what he did to us in a semi-final a couple of years ago and the Panthers are still celebrating. It’s getting a little too bitter to swallow.
Unfortunately, B A doesn’t have the communication skills all the gravitas to hold these referees accountable and make his point.
The NRL must laugh when he rings up to complain.
You should ring luke , that really would be funny 🤪
The lads are right.The lack of depth in the backs needs to be solved quickly or it will be a heartbreaking year.
I’m not sure that Harper and Simmonsen would have been a lot better defensively anyway.
They haven’t worked out how to combine properly in defence yet anyway. The Dogs game showed that.
I think I’d prefer Asi to Harper. He brings a lot more to the team.
It’s a pity because we have a pack of forwards that could win a competition.
Not looking forward to playing Manly.Saab might be out but Koula is just as fast.
Still, we have a gutsy team.
56 years, Asi had some major defensive issues when he filled in for Dylan last year. I’d like to see him find some form in NSW Cup before he’s considered. Have you watched the NSW Cup this year? If so, I reckon you’d agree.