Tank Davis is the Mike Tyson of the lightweight division. He recently defeated King Ryan Garcia in one of the most anticipated boxing matches of the year. It was somewhat a letdown, though. In many ways, Ryan is us. Other than a plethora of differences: his electric speed, Mexican heritage, high win ratio, and 11 million Instagram followers. He's less Tyson, more golden-boy. More Oscar De La Hoya; good looks and fast hands.
Against Tank, Ryan symbolized much that is going wrong with us this year and why we too are on the canvas needing to get back up.
Ryan did not fall due to a lack of talent or attacking prowess. He has KO-power coupled with a devasting left hook and body shot that has destroyed many.
Ryan's fall was mental. He wasn’t quite there. Not fully. Essentially, a work in progress.
Switching off in critical moments
In a few critical moments, Ryan mentally switched off.
He lacked focus for a few brief moments, say 15-30 seconds of the 19 minutes 44-second fight (ending in R7 at 1:44'), despite looking to control the real estate in the ring (akin to our propensity to control field position and possession) from the outside.
Those critical seconds exposed Ryan's defensive weaknesses ending the fight with a vicious body shot near the liver. In previous fights, he has also shown similar habits but winning perhaps papered over the cracks.
You only had to look at the tries the Titans scored against us last week in Magic Round - or indeed the last 10 years - for evidence of similarities.
Just like Ryan, we can switch off.
Often, that manifests itself in a drop off of all-important effort areas. Even just in running hard and tackling hard. We sometimes see drop-offs in kick chases, line speed, awareness of spaces, and being able to adapt defensively and decompress following the ball and opposite numbers.
It's the kind of drop offs Moses noted back way back in Easter over a month ago.
“We weren’t running as hard and it was like we were trying to run out of there with the win."
All those small moments, the drop offs contribute to our mediocrity and lack of resilience, defensively. Mind you, we're far from the worst, defensively: just average. Mid-range.
It's something we saw last year as well. We were a switch-on-and-off average defensive unit. We had the worst defence of all 2022 finalists, conceding the most points and also conceding more metres than we made. It's a similar theme this year. Despite being top for run metres made on average at the moment, overall, we concede more metres than we make.
Gus Gould went further, questioning our mental resilience and character.
“They're (the Eels) another team that want to play it on their own terms, they're not comfortable being uncomfortable at the moment," he asserted on Nine's 100% Footy.
"They sort of got over that a little bit towards the back end of last year but you don't always get it your own way, you're not always on your game, they just don't seem to be able to handle it when the game's not flowing for them."
The turnaround in the Eels at the back-end of last year after the R22 0-26 loss to the Rabbits was astonishing. We went from 13/22 between R1-R22 (scoring at 22.3ppg, conceding 21ppg) to winning 5/6 (scoring at 31.5ppg, conceding 12.8ppg) from R23 leading up to the grand final.
Maybe, that's just who we really are?
Perhaps, we're never really going to be an 80-minute mentally tough, resilient team defending as resolutely as the Panthers can. At least, not most of the time. Not in the foreseeable future. Not until the cultural structures and on-and-off field habits evolve. Just in short spurts, and some flashes of brilliance here and there, which may or may not be enough in the closeness of the current competition - where almost anyone can beat anyone on any given day. Maybe, we're too much of a work in progress.
At least we're owning up to some of it.
Confessions
When Brad Arthur, Bailey Simmonson (below) , Maiko Sivo, and Dylan Brown all fronted the media this week there was a common theme a quasi cut-and-paste in their semantics. Almost as if they were in the same confession booth.
They all spoke of the the team and individuals "owning" responsibility and falling down in critical moments.
"There are crucial moments that we're not owning individually and as a team and the boys know that, and we'll review that. We've got to be better", noted Simmonson .
"I think it's the big moments in the game that we need to own individually", echoed Sivo.
"I was a bit of a spectator on the field", admitted Brown, referring to the weeks prior to rounds 9 and 10.
Although our season is on a knife's edge (13th), there is still belief in each other.
Not Yet mentally broken
We might be down, but we're not out. Not yet, at least. Simmonson summed it up.
We've definitely got the team (to turn the season around). We believe in our systems. We believe in our team, and what we're capable. But, it's a matter of going out there and executing
Simmonson, earlier this week, R11 media front
Arthur added he has "trust" in the team.
"We’re fighting hard”. “We’re in games”. “We’ve still got a good footy team” that is “working hard”.
“But it doesn’t mean anything unless we win.”
Sure, we have been losing by tight margins: 2, 4, 4, 4, 8, 10 points (Broncos). That is an improvement on one stat: reducing the average losing margin, which is in line with this year's overall trend.
Perhaps more interestingly, is coming into R11 this team is an outlier of the last twenty years for not conceding a blowout score, hitherto.
No Blowouts, yet
Perhaps, it's a symptom the team is fighting - not yet mentally broken.
Last year, our blowouts started in R8 (4-34, Cowboys) and continued throughout the year.
Over last twenty years, since 2003, in 18 of 21 years (86%), we've had blowout 20-point margin losses or more by R10.
Other than this year, 2010 and 2016 have broken the trend.
In 2010, we lasted until R12 until a blowout (30 point loss in R12) in the 11th game of the season. We missed out on the finals that year probably because of our horrendous attack (15th, second worst, at 17.21ppg) whilst our defence was reasonable (5th, conceding 20.46ppg); better than this year.
Notably, it's also our 11th game this round. And history has an odd sense of symmetry and humour.
In 2016, we lasted until R23, four weeks out, until a blowout (a 22 point margin loss to the Broncos at Suncorp); our biggest that year. We had the 6th best defence (18.46ppg conceding) despite playing for nothing but pride with the salary cap dramas assigning us to purgatory in a cold, dark, basement in desperate need of better plumbing services. Ironically, it was our best holdout in the last twenty years.
Will we see a blowout this week, or the next against the Rabbits? Can we holdout and stay in fights?
History, though, suggests a blowout might be just around the corner.
Six points
Although Mitchell Moses kicking game is critical and he has nailed a few clutch moments (the golden point field-goal win over the Panthers, R4), his goal-kicking in three games has been costly.
We've lost three games (half our losses), due to goal-kicking differences when scoring the same number of tries as the opponent.
- R2 Sharks - 5 tries each (lost 30-26); Moses 3/5 (60%) v Trindall 5/5 (100%)
- R3 Manly - 6 tries each (lost 34-30); Moses 3/6 (50%) v Garrick 5/7 (71%)
- R10 Titans - 5 tries each (lost 26-24); Moses 1/4 (25%) v Tanah Boyd 3/5 (60%)
- Moses has a 7/15 (47%) record over these 3 games.
Six competition points right now is the difference from being 13th or 3rd (being equal-second with Souths on 14 points). Four more points puts us in top-eight (around 5th).
Compare that to 2022, where we won a few close ones on the back of Moses' goal-kicking.
- R1, Titans - 5 tries each (win 32-28); Moses 6/8 (75%) v Sexton 4/5 (80%)
- R11, Manly - 4 tries each (win 22-20); Moses 3/4 (75%) v Garrick 2/4 (50%)
Four competition points in 2022 proved to be the difference from being 4th where we ended up or 8th where we would have ended up had Moses' been more like 2023.
Those six points could prove critical to our finals' hopes.
A puncher’s chance
Although we are on the ropes, history suggests we’re still in with a chance of sneaking into the eight.
We have made the finals twice (2006 and 2009) being in our current predicament at R10: 13th or worse. In those two years we just sneaked into 8th despite having far worse points differentials than this year;
There was also 2000 when we were bottom four (11th) at R10, and made it into 7th.
But, six out of eight times (75%) when 13th or worse we have missed the eight.
As an aside, we are actually scoring more points at the same time that our great 2001 team were (24.6ppg v 22.80ppg). Indeed, only four Eels teams in NRL history were scoring more at this point of the season (2005, 2022, 2002, 2021). And we showed our attacking potential in our big wins over the Knights and Dogs, coupled with a few glimpses here and there.
All in all, we’re in with a chance.
Despite being below our best and a work in progress, we’ve managed to find ways to both stay in contests - fight - and lose them.
It's probably a good thing many critics have written us off, and consider our season just about over.
When told that Paul Gallen had effectively drawn a line through the Eels' chances this year, Dylan Brown grinned.
"Everyone is entitled to their opinion."
That stuff just makes us want to play harder
Dylan Brown, earlier this week, R11 media front, comments on what Paul Gallen said
We need to start changing our habit patterns. Soon. Or we might just run out of time. We can't wait until the end of the year after we get a multitude of blowout beltings, like last year.
We're not mentally broken. Not yet, at least.
PS: Round 12 against the Rabbits could be the telling blow.
Replies
Yep today is the day to put there foot down. No Moses means all the boys will have to take on more responsibility to be better.
Great Blog.
Fantastic read HOE.
I think this is the time we need to stand up and show the comp we are capable of challenging for the title.
Thanks a lot, Badger. I think we showed the same thing we showed all year. Some fight, and some very soft moments where we couldn't handle the pressure. But, the ref was a disgrace.
I thought I was the only one I used that word resilience a lot after that GC loss you could see the lack of it over the sin binning of Gutho when they needed to mentally be in the game they switched off and let in 10 points in back to back sets.It was so poor by us the onfield leadership just wasn't there.
Which is rather shocking considering who we had out there.
Yep, Coryn, agreed. We show some fight, but also a lack of resilience or mental toughness in critical pressure cooker moments. A common theme.
I watched the Panthers game last night and was impressed with the mental team work attitude with both sides.It was in my view tremendously competitive for quite a while.When Panthers over came the early contest,the Roosters were gone.
I still think we play too much as individuals and can't seem to get the team work intensity together particularly in defence consistently.. I don't think shopping around for a X factor whatever will make much difference until we get the mental continuity as a team. Many X factor players running around in the comp who can,t get their teamwork connectivity working to maximise their talents.
Penrith and Rabbits do the teamwork stuff beautifully together and a lot of individuals are probably playing better than their natural talents. Once you get that magic working for you consistently you are a genuine winner
Yeah, TAD, Spot on. Souths and Penrith are probably the best two atm, imo.
HOE I am not sure if both these sides can sustain the way they are playing now. Every side playing against them will put their best foot forward against them. They will be playing a GF every week
True, TAD. They'll drop games. It's inevitable.
Tigs were up for it v Souths, yesterday. The Tigs had the lion's share of possession & opportunities. It was 8-0 in the 72nd. But blink, say Latrell-TV & it's 20-0; it all changes.
Tigs weren't bad. They tried their guts out too. Like us. They had some good performers. Ice, Da-dream Bula, their centres, Bateman, Api, their forwards put in. Brooks was even trying to put a few hits on and tackle with gusto.
But that's the thing about Souths, they can be somewhat below their best, under the pump, look gone, not have things go their way, even make more errors than the opposition. But, then blow a team out of the park in a few moments of power and skill and "eyes-up footy" (to use that catchphrase).
They have the defence to do that (we don't).
We on the other hand conceded 20 points to the Tigers when they put us under the pump and then claim our goal-line defence was quite good. We have a lot of work to do (and mental work).
Last night, we conceded 3 tries, 18 points, in 9 minutes either side of the break. Gee wiz. We also had plenty of good performers. Hopgood, Penisini, the spine tried hard, even JA tried his best (and was better than last year), Matto. But, in the net equation - the Raiders still outmuscled us mentally and physically - in critical moments.
The Rabbits have cohesion, confidence, real belief, and have enough good habits on-and-off field. Whether they maintain it all year or at the time when they have to, during the finals is another thing. No-one knows the future. They may fall over. But, they look likely.
And at the moment, although we are talented and aren't playing badly, we just switch on and off, often enough in critical moments, and are too much of a work in progress (e.g. JH/ right edge of Davey, Dunster, JA).
PS: Plus, Souths have the power brokers to make things happen; which helps their "family" but is no guarantee of success (just ask the Roosters atm).
I didn't watch that game. I do have some empathy for Tim Sheens coming up from a long retirement and trying to set a new chapter for Tigers. I hope it works out for him.
The frustrating thing for me is that we have shown we can match it with the best over the last couple of years and we simply can,t get our act together. We have a couple of great games and then get into a comfort zone where we think we don't need to address things like mental discipline coaching or different attacking styles. Defence is another major issue.
I think BA is old school and simply doesn't understand developments in a broader spectrum of professional coaching..I think it will take a lot from here to progress. I don't know if BA should maybe allow others to have a greater role with preparation .
We just need to get our footy entertainment from other games.
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