As we've seen, there's been a massive swing in the fortunes of the Parramatta Eels of late. One week it seems like the players are on a different page from one another & totally exhausted , the next we're totally switched on and firing on all cylinders. How can this be ?
There can be two reasons on why this has happened, one is it's just pure luck and that they couldn't replicate it even if they tried, the other could well be that the bush coach maybe smarter than many think.
Knowing that we are a pure effort based, forwards driven, front loading team, could the bushie have tapered the training schedule as to have his players peaking at the right time? Could have the past month of heavy defeats been a predetermined plan to save his players from exhaustion & raring to go at the right time ? This effort based system was surely very taxing on the players and we saw them getting slower as the year wore on.
I don't know if this was Arthur's plan, but nobody saw the Melbourne result coming, not even the most ardent fans in Brissyeel or Sixiesboy would have thought we'd get within 20 points of the Storm. Even Muttman said we'd get 50 + put on us.
Who knows, maybe this (Bushie) Brad can do something with this team come the finals campaign. We can only hope. We could well be the sleeping giant that has finally awoken. Up the Eels.
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I was certainly one who thought we wouldn't get within 50 of Mel. But my only query of this blog is even if he didn't want his players basically burning out surely he would have at least wanted them to win one more game up until this point? Being outside the top 4 makes it that much harder for us to go deep into September
Yes, I think the game your talking about may have been the Canberra game where they gave everything only to come up short. They looked very fatigued during the back half of that match.
Sivo and Opacic's exclusion from the team due to injury and being dropped, has helped us significantly! Added more speed in both attack and defense.
Not to boast Chiefy, but I did post that I had backed Parra twice. Firstly at $7 when the markets opened and then again when the teams were named at $9. I also posted why I thought we could win by the brutal aggression which this bench was selected to contimnue when they came on. Carty played middle and on an edge and covered the halves with if needed with a big body. We also had 2 starting frontrowers who stood approx 4 inches shorter than the opposition props allowing us to get our centre of gravity under their defence through through the middle, followed up with Nathan Brown's brutal appeoach to the game. Our backline had been reshuffled with both our centres being men with agressive toughness in the own right. Anyway that was my opinion and for once I got it right. Sadly for them Opacic has played through pain and with Sivo both have their skills and benefits, brutal defensive toughness doesn't seem to be counted amongst them.
Good observations Chiefy. Your gracious concession to BA the Bush coach was interesting as was BA's team selection.
Typically a Wayne Bennett and Trent Robinson strategy and if you do listen to alot of early season talk from BA, he talked about learning from his mistakes in past final seasons but who knows, possible a lighter training intensity could be involved.
I think we have had players carrying injuries that have been a massive factor, Jr paulo was carry a rib/chest injury through origin and after, Gutho with hip padding / rib injury and i have seen nathan brown holding ribs in multiple games through our slump. Moses back and knee injury. Matterson has struggled with concussion and all that compounded by losing our best middle Rcg and a unfit Mahoney. Than Sivo has been completely disinterested with the slowest play the balls in the comp
I'm personal hoping we could of just been playing dead. Reason's being we wanted the opposition to think they could easily get around us and just work on that. In attack maybe BA didn't want to give away all the play sets and our style in attack. I just hope it continues the rest of the year now and wasn't a one off.
I'd put money on the coach, we've been doing bullshit side to side plays and not scoring.
On Saturday, we had two players running lines inwards and our halves picking between centre and wing to pass to. Surely this isn't dumb luck.
For those that don't know what is meant by running lines, have a good look at our attacking plays versus Melbourne, when we are shifting the ball we have bodies in motion and they are running towards the goal posts instead of towards the side line. This puts the opposition in two minds and forces them to commit seconds to the player charging through, ultimately creating an overlap or allowing more room for the centre and winger to attack in.
Moses's pass for the first try set up a lot of what we did later in our attack. Gutho has been getting shut down of late because our attack has been so predictable. I haven't seen Moses throw a pass like that for a long time. This pass stopped Melbourne's edge jamming on us and gave Gutho the time to set up 2 tries after this. Great to see
Fergo's second try is about as beautiful as you get for a backline movement, through the hands, and every player ran their line perfectly, squeezing up the Melbourne defence and giving Fergo enough room to go over in the corner. Even better for that is it was our right edge, which is generally our poorer attacking side.
https://youtu.be/AfzIPWZ3l7M
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