Eels Blogs

We coud be at least be 2 or 3 wins further up if we had some more astute work from the coach. Although many on here rave about Ryles - and personally I like him and the things he is trying to do - he is making as many rookie errors as any of the players.

What does "astute" mean? It means tactically aware, understanding weaknesses, communicating clearly and applying all the correct resources available.

One of the obvious things last night was that Ryles overplayed Moses role - we became so predictable. We need more tactical adaptibiity and creativity.

Farnsworth sat defensively on Moses when ever he went to the blindside he loves. Just about every set Moses got his hands on the ball (nothing wrong with that) but every time the variation was negligible. There had to be room for shorter kicks as well as the perenial long ones. Not once did Moses really take a run. Were there occasions he could have lifted the pace? Could Moses sometimes be used as a dummy with a point of attack coming from somewhere else?

Are we contestng the ball enough? Having your kicker back is one thing, but at no stage did we get into a position to really challenge the receiver. On the odd occasions we did, we did not contest the kick. It seems the players are under instructions to stand next to the receiver and hope he drops the ball. I do not understand this non contested kicks. The same applies with the drop outs and in some cases defensively where they allowed the attacking side to make the mistake. That's fine when it works, but bloody awful if it doesn't. Perhaps, it is in part the fear of being penalized or sin binned? It's an areas that is undermining us. 

Another issue is Ryles' selections.

Matterson should have been playing last night and he would have provided a completely different drive from the "pigs". I thought Junior tried hard but he was a bit out of sorts, almost like him needing to be prodded to get moving (herding cattle). Nothing wrong with Hopgood and Williams games, they are the workers in the pack and the people on here do not understand that or more the point appreciate it.

Russell is honest as the day is long, just a second grader filling in and he stops progress by not creating anything. Does him being solid actually weaken our game?

This game was there for either team to win on the night. Unfortunately, it was a flick of the coin and we lost.

One final thing: people need to get over the constant BA bashing. The guy has gone. But it seems that anything the side does badly is laid on his shoulders. The other things we need to understand are that its fine to have plenty of money to spend, but unless the people we want want to come to Parramatta and play for us, then they won't come! Build it and they will come, selections and poor communication with players is not part of building anything. There are players in Reserve Grade that are going well that are not geting a look in, there are players in first grade that seem to being favoured, I don't no why?