PARRAMATTA could be forced to field a makeshift dummy-half as their hooking stocks plummet, while star half Corey Norman is no certainty to recover in time to play against Cronulla on Saturday night.
The Eels’ undefeated start to the season came to an end with a 26-14 loss to Gold Coast on Friday night.
The shock defeat was compounded by fears Kaysa Pritchard faces an extended time on the sidelines with an ankle injury.
Pritchard was in a moon boot when the team returned to Sydney yesterday, after coming from the field in the 62nd minute.
Veteran hooker Isaac De Gois faces an uncertain playing future because of a serious concussion, while third choice hooker Cameron King was ruled out of the Eels’ NSW Cup team with a sternum injury.
King is racing the clock to be fit to play against the Sharks. If he does play, it will be his first NRL game in 637 days since he turned out for North Queensland.
Veteran Jeff Robson — who replaced Norman on Friday — and 11-gamer Cody Nelson are other hooking options for Eels coach Brad Arthur who was forced to use prop Nathan Brown as a replacement for Pritchard.
Co-captain Tim Mannah said King was up to the task.
“He has proved himself before,” Mannah said
“He has impressed with the way he played. He gives the halves another option as well.
“He can kick, is fast out of dummy-half and is intelligent.”
A serious bout of food poisoning left Pritchard physically ill just moments before the Titans clash.
The ankle injury compounded his woes after he was forced to spend Friday night on a drip in hospital, battling the sickness.
“He spewed on the field in the warm-up,” Mannah said. “I didn’t realise until then how bad he was.
“After running out of the tunnel (for kick-off) he said to me to keep an eye on him and help him out.
“He is a tough character. He is the kind of guy that doesn’t show too much (pain).”
The Eels will be sweating on the fitness of Norman to recover from his hamstring strain, with statistics revealing the Eels have just a 27.3 per cent winning ratio without him. Mannah said he expected the halfback to play.
“He will be all right,” Mannah said. “If we played on the Sunday night he might’ve been a chance. He was a few days away from playing.
“It’ll be good to have him back in the team. Across the park we have to lift our game and be competitive.”
Mannah lamented the team’s poor showing against the Titans.
“It’s a good lesson for us early in the year to make sure we turn up with the right attitude,” Mannah said.
“We let ourselves down a lot with game management and fundamental errors cost us.”
Replies
Kaysa looked like he broke the ankle when it happened, hopefully that is not the case, but it looked really bad.
Here we thought we had cover for nearly every position and already we are at the end of the barrel for this position. Maybe club should sneak under Cronulla's guard and sign Segeyaro.
500K in the cap to spend and we go into the year with no quality hooker depth and zero halves depth, a blind cave dwelling newt saw that coming all off season but BA obviously didnt, sometimes i think he backs poor prospects too much, he takes risks that are bound to go wrong like we are seeing with our halves and hooker crisis.
Massive fan of brad but that doesnt mean its wrong to point out if hes fucked up, and hes fucked up, nobody is exempt from criticism and in between all the smoke i blow up his ass it has to be balanced and realistic.
Hes quoted as saying our halves depth will be fine, i believe hes off the mark.
We need Taka to come in and partner vanilla, thats our best hope because Robson is years past it and offers nothing.
Lets hope Kings fit.
Edwards being out is a huge loss atm, he could have filled in around the ruck and worked to help out our hooker and halves.
We'll be easy pickings.
It's arrogant - some may say it's hedging his bets.
Time will tell but I don't think any successful side has a stack of cash in the tinny leading into one of the clubs most important seasons in decades.
Funny thing is its rumoured we want Peats back, you can spin a chocolate wheel to find out how many games he will miss through injury, well be lucky if he doesnt pick up a season ending injury first round, hes on the sidelines now ffs.
We bought Choc and Foran who were both completely busted too, maybe its time we started looking at buying players without huge injury worries.
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