Eels Blogs

After such a positive result against the Dragons I'm pretty certain that I'm not the only Eels member to be left scratching my head over what seemed a dismal performance by Parramatta on Friday Night.

How could we lose to a side that had their captain and leader missing for half the game, had Munster sitting in the bin for 10mins and also a team that was reduced to no-one on the bench?

The result left me wanting answers, so I siphoned through the statistics from the match and even watched the game a second time.

I am one who has until this day thought that out forwards have predominately been the major issue at Parramatta this season, funnily enough the statistics out of Friday Night suggest they are competitive.

For a side to bounce back from having no ball in the first half to level the statistics up in almost every facet of the game is unbelievable.

For me the mentality of some of the leadership players should be more in question rather than the ability and impact the forwards have (although I do think we are short of a damaging forward whether it be middle or edge).

The players I'm eluding to are:

Mitchell Moses - After defending for majority of the first half Moses skews the ball out of play on the full, just when our players really needed a rest he comes up with a play like this. I really felt for the small guy like Mahoney who had to defend in the middle right through the whole period.

Another Moses moment happened when we finally got down to Melbourne's end and a Moses bomb was caught in goal on the full. It was a moment in the match that we needed to build some pressure after finally getting the ball in decent field position.

I would have hooked Moses off the field after he kicked out on the full and personally I don't feel he is the player to lead the club forward.

Throw a composed halfback into the game at Half Time and we almost certainly build pressure and come up with a win.

Moses needs to play more direct instead of crabbing across the field running into everyone else's space.

Michael Jennings - For a player who has played so much rep football he really doesn't have a brain.

Jennings makes a break down the right hand side and throws a low percentage pass that goes 5m forward.

For me a player that had a brain would of taken the tackle as we had not really been down that end of the field.

Jennings isn't worth half the money he is on, there is a reason Gould let him go from Penrith and a reason the Roosters didn't try to keep him.

He is a non contributor in many ways.

The inability to maintain pressure through our kicking game all season has no doubt cost us many wins and I don't think the club will ever be successful while Moses is the dominant half unfortunately.