Parramatta Eels 12
Bulldogs 30
This wasn’t a loss that will have me walking the streets at night wondering what happened, at least. The Eels stuck tough with a title contender for the first half, but when the golden opportunity was there to really make a game of it, they spent the second half falling over themselves and eventually the scoreboard reflected that.
Efforts like the last two weeks should win most games against similar quality opposition, so it’ll be nice to get some of that similar quality opposition coming up on the draw so we can celebrate some wins rather than noble efforts.
That second half was about as painful a forty minutes of footy I can remember. 10 errors, 59% completions, 6 penalties conceded, 38% possession, out gained by more than 600 metres. After sticking in the arm wrestle despite a lopsided restarts count and having the chance to strike with Kikau in the sin bin, it was a bitter disappointment (and a punishing watch) to see the Eels throw away any chance of victory in the second stanza.
It was very tough going in the middle, but some of the metres totals from the Eels forwards are embarrassing. Only Jack Williams cracked 100 metres, and in heavy conditions the small bench makeup didn’t pan out for Jason Ryles. We’re thin for middles right now, but you can’t have a 14 minute utility and an 18 minute back rower on the bench for a tough slog like this.
Not a lot of standout performances to pick from for MVP, it was just that kind of game. Let’s go with Josh Addo-Carr, I thought he was good under the high ball and tough on his carries, plus any bloke who puts in a strong game like that when getting booed every carry is the kind of guy I want leading our team.
Isaiah Iongi
1 – Fullback
Grades are going to be tough this week; it felt like we lost this one as a team. In the first half I was impressed with a few of the scrambles Iongi made getting into the defensive line then back to cover. He may not have had the chance to learn at the feet of the King, but he’s certainly watched some Gutho tape and implementing that high energy style.
Josh Addo-Carr
5 – Left Wing
When you think of the Fox, you probably aren’t imagining tough yardage carries, but Addo-Carr has seen the way the game is going and is doing a great job with footwork to find his way between defenders on those tough runs. He’s just a guy I love supporting in the team, from searching him out every time there is a half break, hoping he’s in support, to the brilliant finishing, guiding the defenders around him in their decision making and bringing the energy when the team needs it.
Will Penisini
3 – Right Centre
His tackling was good, but Penisini still has a few flashes of ordinary decision making in the line, standing out all the more with the improvements in that area across the rest of the side. Every now and then he makes a run that makes you think he could be anything in the game, but breaks like that are far too infrequent. He needs to get more involved in yardage as well.
Sean Russell
4 – Left Centre
The Sean Russell highlight for me was his fingertip catch on a high ball, incredible given the conditions. He’s working hard in yardage for only moderate results, unable to find seams or force defenders backwards like Lomax and Addo-Carr can do, but taking on the tough stuff all the same.
Zac Lomax
2 – Left Wing
He was a beast with the ball, taking a huge workload in tough conditions and still having it in him for a key intercept that created the Moses try. The kick to Lomax is becoming one of those great anticipation moments of being an Eels fan. Five errors is just too many though, even accounting for his volume of work, and even with Penisini getting caught with lead in his boots he shouldn’t have shot in so strongly on the Bulldogs second try.
Dylan Brown
6 – Five Eighth
Quiet game from Dylan, who was tasked with a lot of the middle distribution as we tried to find ways through the tough Canterbury middle defence, but didn’t take the line on much himself. It wasn’t a Dylan Brown game, all yardage and kicking, few opportunities in the opposing half. Now he’s going to miss a week for running into the referee accidentally. Great.
Mitchell Moses
7 – Halfback
Well nobody is worried about Mitch losing any speed from all of these foot injuries; that was an impressive long sprint for his try. For the rest of his performance, it wasn’t his happiest game. He was under plenty of pressure but his kicking wasn’t up to its usual standards, and there were several times the attack just tripped over itself. Given the platform laid for him by the pack was about as stable as the bouncy castle set up outside the stadium, there was a fairly low ceiling on the performance of the halves today.
Jack Williams
8 – Front Row
He worked hard, but missed too many tackles and made a backbreaking handling error. Given what we’ve seen from him on the edge, the only reason I can see why we persist with him in the middle is because our next option up is letting Nathan Cayless and Sam Moa arm wrestle for a spot in the pack. My money is on Moa.
Ryley Smith
9 – Hooker
Probably should’ve had a better look before throwing the pass on that embarrassing scrum intercept, but the playcall and the execution of the runners was as much to blame as the decision from Ryley. Otherwise he was solid. He defended tough, nearly cracking 60 tackles, but didn’t take any runs. It wasn’t a game for quick darts and dummy half trickery, and a dozen games into his first grade career anybody who doesn’t like what they see with Ryley Smith isn’t watching properly. Can we quit the Reed comparisons though? Kalyn Ponga wears headgear too, how about you compare him to Ponga?
Junior Paulo
10 – Front Row
Huge minutes from Junior Paulo, who must look back on the times he thought Brad Arthur ran him ragged and laugh at the innocence of it all. His effort was good, making tough carries, putting on a try with a beautiful bit of work, and defending stoutly. He’s quietly worked his way up to some of his best form, and while the absolute highs of crazy offloads and bullocking charges aren’t seen so often, he is consistently strong in 2025.
Kelma Tuilagi
15 – Second Row
I think it was Brandy who took a swipe at Kelma on the call, saying he wasn’t known for his defensive abilities, but it was all defence for Tuilagi in this one including the solid tackle that prompted that quip from the commentator. Whether it was the Bulldogs targeting him or an adjustment in strategy to cover the small bench, I don’t think the best version of this Eels team is one where Kelma’s balance is 6 runs but 40 tackles.
Kitione Kautoga
12 – Second Row
It says a lot about the pressure the Bulldogs line speed was putting the Eels under that Kautoga made 12 runs for only 80 metres, yet half of those were post contact. That’s about three metres for the big man to wind up before meeting the defence, which is not how you create attacking chances. Of more concern though was his defensive efficiency, missing 8 tackles and having 4 more ineffective. If an outside back posted a 72% tackle efficiency you’d say he had a rough game, for a forward it is inexcusable.
J’maine Hopgood
13 – Lock
If we had the troops to do it, I’d be sending J’maine back to NSW Cup until he could string three games together without a crippling error. He ran with a bit of purpose this week and his defensive numbers were good, but every week there is at least one (and often more) backbreaking handling error or miscue. He’s still got the talent, but this second year slump has dragged worryingly deep into his third full season too.
Dylan Walker
14 – Interchange
Walker was made to do plenty of defensive work, and fell off a few more tackles than we’d like. His work with the ball was still strong in difficult circumstances; he’s going to be most effective in mid to close range attack with his passing game. In a game where we needed to just truck it up, he did what he could and was on the spot to score a great try in one of the few chances we got.
Matt Doorey
19 – Interchange
I was a touch surprised he came back from his head knock, but boy did we need whatever he had left given how light his absence would have left the bench. He didn’t get much chance to get anything going against a tough defence.
Jordan Samrani
17 – Interchange
Not a lot of time or opportunity for Samrani, so this grade is more for the coach and his use of The Ibis than it is for anything he did on the field. He’s too good for Cup and his versatility makes him a great bench player, but given our current middle situation there isn’t room for both Samrani and Papalii on the same pine right now.
Joash Papalii
18 – Interchange
The livewire impact player came on at hooker, made 14 tackles and did not run at all, limiting his opportunities for livewire impact significantly. Aside from the issues our current bench construction presents, I think the future of Papalii as an impact player is more in line with a Queensland-style roaming role rather than as a straight hooker replacement. Given our attack is struggling as is, we probably shouldn’t be adding that wrinkle in just yet.
The Bulldogs dug in and waited for the Eels to beat themselves in this one, and sadly that is exactly what happened. The Parramatta forward pack just didn’t have the talent to go with the Bulldogs deep into the second half, especially after having to defend the line time after time thanks to cheap, basic errors. It’s rare that Mitchell Moses can’t kick his way out of a problem, but the fitness and determination of this Canterbury side was too much for Parramatta to handle.
No shame in losing to a good side, even when it is one you really, really don’t like. Better times will be coming for this work in progress Eels team. Playing more footy like that first half will see them win just about any game against equal competition, playing more footy like the second half and they’d be lucky to beat Glebe.
A bye week will allow the team to refresh and tighten up some combinations, though the absence of Moses and Lomax at Origin camp won’t help with that. Then we get the Sunday night special, hosting a struggling Titans side in a game that I will chuck an all time hissy if we don’t win.
Until then, stay slippery, Eels fans.
Gol
Stats and images provided by NRL / Eels media
The loss of Oregon Kaufusi and Stefano Utoikamanu, having developed them has been the disaster. The thought that Junior is not going to be around forever hangs over us like a dark cloud. We desperately need two strong, tough props who are near their peak now
I look around who’s available and, truly, I can’t see where they’re going to come from
Someone always comes on the market unexpectedly. Take this season for example, Fisher-Harris, Tyrell May and Francis Molo (and Dylan Walker) all made moves whilst still under contract. The Sharks are apparently under a bit of cap pressure, so maybe Kaufusi might end up back at Parramatta
The Roosters have some good young ones too
Now, I see, Mitch is out with another lower leg injury
Have others asked themselves, has this situation a relationship with, so smoothly, his agent committing him to us for another five years?
Thank goodness we have Dean Hawkins; we need to tie hom up long term from to-morrow.
Good post Noel. How we lost both is farking unbelievable
What are the odds that five teams have had their best completion rates for the entire season (to date) against us?
The Storm, Dogs, Panthers, Dolphins and Raiders have been had year-best handling performances against us. Bulldogs and Raiders in tricky conditions no less.
Out of 13 games played, that’s insanely “unlucky”.
I say unlucky but it makes you wonder whether it’s something we are doing intentionally or otherwise that allows teams to just roll through their sets without any pressure.
The flipside of this is that almost every team has very aggressively raced up on our outside backs forcing many errors.
To me our halves did not lead us overly well on the weekend; lets be honest when was the last time they both dominated in the same game? Brown has not been great all year…..and is being paid too well.
Our forwards need some recruitment here and more than the backs. We have a mix of exp and youth in the backs but the forwards need some more experience / punch.
Brown and Moses haven’t looked as deadly as halves under the new cosching staff in my opinion.
We are definitely improving in defence especially the scrambling and also shutting down sweeping attacks our wide.
But there’s no way this team has the same attacking or razzle dazzle as we did have before AND we have gotten more speed and class in the backline than we have had in many many years.
From my understanding the systems we are playing with are designed so that different players can jump in and the systems are repeatable and it keeps on working something like you see at the storm.
Brown ran 3 times dor 27 meters. I think the grades are not harsh enough on him.
This is a guy on apparently over $1 million per year and his teams getting their asses handed to them and he only has 3 runs in 80 minutes.
You obviously need a forward pack laying a platform and maybe the yardage work scared guys like Dylan away from taking more runs.
But we make too many excuses for our players. In previous years majority of experts agreed eels had a top 3-5 halves pairing.
We’ve had our “top 3 halves” in honesty neither of them have looked even like top 8 halves this season, maybe in 1 game you looked at them and thought they looked truly great.
Young Katoa at the dophins is making our halves look like rookies. Even when his team was losing he was truly controlling the team and looking very impressive.
We don’t know or understand what’s going on but you can’t watch replays of our team (as I did this week) from our games over the last few years, I watched highlight of us.
This is the most basic and bare our halves have looked. Even the short side raides and occasional razzle dazzle has almost litterally disappeared from our attacking game.
Maybe grading them poorly isn’t the answer. It might actually be the coaching & game plans they are following.
I don’t think Mitch moses or even brown is a good half to use too systematically, they both are eyes up instinctive players with speed and a running game.
Kenty who used to be on nrl 360 said recently part of brown leaving is he told Knights the game plan was too boring at parra with Jason Ryles.
And before anyone bashes this comment from kenty. Look at how basic and boring they are playing. We do nothing in attack that’s very creative. We don’t even use grubbers anymore near the try line.
Iongi’s ball playing has also gone back on to the shelf. Remember earlier this year close to the try line he was doing it? Now he seems to have stopped it and is mostly just running.
I believe our defence is way better. But our attack? I think we’ve gone backwards this year. Is that partly gutho leaving? Or due to the new systems? Or maybe it’s even due to our middles being dominated each week?
Our attack will come eventually, our spine this year has a guy who has played 1 game and another who had played like 3 nswcup games. A lot of them playing more systematically is most likely due to them just getting used to the new systems.
Ryley Smith basically had no attacking stats ate the very beginning of the year, wasn’t even really running from hooker, now we’re starting to see him find his feet a bit in the system and engage markers, which got him a line break (or line break assist?) that was great against the panthers and engaged the defense which led to the Dylan Walker try.
It’s generally a miracle that the team has started understanding Ryles defensive systems so fast into the rebuild and you’ll find loads of people saying that the eels are probably further ahead then the coaches thought they would be in terms of systems etc.
The difference with Iongi throwing those passes at the start of the season and now is that teams now have 12 games of game footage of him playing NRL and he played against his old team 2 games ago who would know him and his attack the most. We’ve just come off the back of versing a panthers side that played like they were in premiership winning form and the top of the table bulldogs, I’d look to the titans game after the bye to see how our attack looks right now rather then 2 teams playing like defensive power houses.
Another quiet game from Brown,Moses looked off as well- is his foot ok?he used to be out goal kicker
Really though the biggest issue we have is the lack of folding power which is becoming increasingly apparent
We need a NAS or Hass today, someone buy him for whatever he’s asking
Fold or get folded
Actually the biggest issue is all the ball handling errors that is something we should have eliminated by now
We went from being the best offloading team to the best knock on team
Other than that, we are looking good!