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A morning after edition of the reaction podcast sees Sixties and Forty20 dissecting a rather water saturated loss to the South Sydney Rabbitohs. Parramatta’s woes continued with a 32-16 defeat that was starkly punctuated by sloppy errors and frankly poor footy IQ.
The boys look at the costly mistakes and lapses in judgement as increasingly it is apparent that the Eels are discovering means to lose game as much as their opposition are finding ways to win.
Believe it or not, there was something to salvage from the loss with good debuts from both Charlie Guymer and Jake Tago. Guymer came off the bench and delivered a firebrand effort filled with controlled venom and aggression while Tago worked hard out of the backfield and flashed a bit of explosive playmaking ability in the limited chances he got down the left edge. Sixties and Forty20 chat about their impact and the other players who kept the Eels somewhat competitive last night.
The episode concludes with the recording of the Pre-Game Show where the wonderful David Liddiard joined the boys to discuss footy, his career and the lasting impact he has made off the field. Phil Malligan, District Inspector of Moree, shares a moment to talk about his relationship with David and their involvement in both the Gumaali Project and the NRL driven Project Pathfinders.
I couldn’t agree more with your thoughts on Gutherson.
He is a future Parramatta immortal that deserves to be spoken in the same breadth as all the 80s greats and more recent stalwarts like Hindmarsh.
I hope that in time people will start to appreciate more what he’s offered the club in his tenure.
One of the best of all time and I think he’d be great to have around the club in any context over the coming decades.
Agree re Gutho. He’s a legend and deserves nothing but respect. If he had 2 fully functioning knees, I reckon he would be comfortably the best player in the comp. And yet he’s still up there.
Absolutely.
Also I spelled ‘breath’ as ‘breadth’ and can’t figure out how to edit it, to my eternal shame.
Mick, let’s not forget he was the subject of controversial judging when he ran second in the Dally M during Covid, and he was running second when he injured his knee in late 2017.
There’s a bit of criticism of Gutho or calls for him to retire. I think he’ll be smart enough to stop playing if injuries get the better of him. He’s been such a warhorse for Parra and deserves respect.
Where’s the big announcement?
Director of Football- Brian Smith
Coach Josh Hannay
Expect at 5pm today
I could live with that.
Pete still nothing from what I’ve seen but that would sound good to me 👍
Not sure what the hold up is?
The formalities I believe (paperwork, contracts etc).
I was always of the understanding that the announcement would come early next week. Doesn’t stop me from hoping it gets out today (Sunday).
A dimension that I saw with Guymers play that I haven’t seen with our other forwards was a fundamental skill of backing up another forward when taking a hit up. I swear RCG saw him running beside and didn’t know whether to pass it or not. He wasn’t use to being supported like that.
Agree, we run one out way too often
A/H, Charlie’s greatest strength was his energy and effort plays. He immediately looked like he belonged.
Charlie was great.
So was Tago.
It’s still the same problem. No change on the outside defensive structure.
The short dropout is still the dumbest play in league.
Gutho made the tackle of the season.
I say we start with the 5 rookies and Moretti next game.
As the lads said, we need mobile forwards.
They were great but it’s a real bugbear for me that players are out of position.
How does Sean Russell maintain a centre spot when you have both Talagi and Tago that you can put there.
Surely Tago should have been the centre and if you really wanted to play Russell, put him in the wing.
Even put Talagi in the centre which would necessitate Tago to the wing as Talagi is just wasted on the wing.
Those guys aren’t very good defensively either and Tago has been playing on wing at cup I believe. I get what you mean tho Sean R is not a good defender and to be fair it’s not only him. There’s systemic issues through the whole team and not to mention lack of energy and low confidence. Worst defensive record the last 10 years in Eels history. Something must be deeply wrong, lol
Sorry to confuse I was replying to sparks msg with the comment
I can’t believe Gutho made that tackle.I needed to watch the replay on the big screen to check out how he managed it.
South’s first three tries were all the result of abysmal play by the Eels: Cartwright’s moment of madness offload in heavy traffic on a wet night; Russell’s horrible midfield miss; then the offload with 15 seconds left in the half. O my. What team can win with those errors. Then add Russell’s under 10’s mistake from a short drop out.
But some good stuff. Talagi, Guymer, Tago. Matterson toiled hard all night. So too did Reg.
They aren’t throwing in the towel but mistakes mistakes mistakes. They are killing the team.
It’s fundamentals which makes it extra frustrating.
Thanks for the podcast gents. Genuinely therapeutic in an awful year.
I totally agree with the sentiment on needing to take some recruitment gambles. The Dolphins built a whole team and between the Tigers, Dragons and Dogs they’ve scooped up almost every other relevant signing over the last 24 months. I’m sure the R&R committee isn’t sitting on their hands, but the results sure look like it. There are a number of players that are “has-beens” in our squad who I genuinely think would be valuable to other teams. Leaving Parra would be a win, win, so the club needs to get on with that activity and we should be looking at players that are surplus to requirements elsewhere.
Mick, there will be tough calls to make. However, surely the riskiest call was to sack BA so if we could do that then players would be much easier.
Mate, well said about Gutho. You captured it perfectly. Cheers
Cheers Richard
100% on Gutho. I just read Roy Masters talking about a ‘sea wall’ defence to win grand finals and also watched Penrith v Broncos…we are just not at those standards. All the reasons are buried in comments on TCT and my brain just melts thinking about summarising them. This is before Bronson Xerri got outed, say 2019, he stepped back inside and went through a yawning gap to score, replay showed 2 Parra forwards moving across in cover, unfortunately jogging slowly with no awareness or urgency. One is still in our team. Who could forget Waqa Blake gliding through us from 30 mtrs out after a loose ball hit the deck on the half time bell and only one player re acted (Jennings)’the rest just watched. The weird thing is we signed Waqa after that based on his athleticism, his defence not an issue. We ve never got defence right…both attitude and aptitude. Sure, there exceptions but it takes 13 on the park to do it well.
Defence really is attitudinal. We’ve had different defence coaches over recent years.The systems across the NRL are very similar. The results – not so much