Eels Blogs

Remember a few weeks back when we gave up a huge lead on the Cowboys to lose the game? The same thing happened tonight against the Raiders. It was quite an amazing and entertaining game to watch (better than the two Friday night games).

Thurston went down with a busted knee after 10 minutes, which was followed by three fairly quick try's from the Raiders (12, 16 and 20 minutes). It was a near perfect first half for the green machine, being up 18 - 0 after 38 minutes. Cowboys were looking a bit lost and were making a surprising number of errors. I sat there asking myself "why couldn't they play like this last Monday?".

Cowboys managed to get 4 points in just before half time. This was either going to be an amazing upset with the Raiders winning up north, or another incredible comeback from the Cowboys... well now, Thurston recovered for the second half and the rest of the team switched on too. They scored 32 unanswered points, with the Raiders getting a luck try in the 80th minute to reduce the final margin.

This game was a reminder of just how good the Cowboys can be. Not just in the physical game, but mentally and doing what it takes to come back and win. I've seen a few Cowboys games this year. I reckon they've just about set the benchmark for this season. I gets me thinking about how the Eels could be better - better disciplined (especially in defence) and then there's our right edge. Hoppa and Morgan are like Swiss cheese in their attack and defence at times.

But anyway, it's not all doom and gloom. I'm still confident in the Eels scraping into the top 8. We needed the Raiders to lose, to keep them level with us. It's also good to see the Dogs, Warriors and Melbourne losing games.

Teams that we can overtake include Storm, Warriors and Bulldogs -those three are all a bit 'meh' and off form, and could easily lose their next couple of games. Then there's Panthers, Manly, Raiders and Dragons just above us. We could easily overtake those teams as well.

I'm not saying we're going to overtake all of them, but I think at least enough of those teams will struggle and lose enough games for us to make it in, assuming we can get on 28 points. We just need to win 5 of the next 6 games: Titans, Panthers, Rooster, Manly, Sharks and Raiders.

Go Parra!