Eels Blogs

In 1975, Van McCoy ft. Pan’s People released Do the Hustle, a song with just two lines repeated endlessly for about 4:00 minutes: ‘do the hustle, ooh, do it!’ Do the Hustle is a metaphor for how the Eels play. Like that bloody disco song, the Eels are a two-trick pony: power game, kick it. Ooh, do it! Brad Arthur has been telling anyone who will listen that the path to victory is through “effort areas” and “chasing the collision”, but Peter Sterling put that argument to the sword in a 24 July Triple M podcast. As Sterlo said - while noting he has been saying it “forever” - the Eels play bravely and courageously but “you have to play smarter, you can’t just play with your body”. The Eels, then, are kind of like zombies, all body, and no brain. Fans of the Eels have the same choice George Romero presented in Survival of the Dead (2009), where the ‘deadheads’ are either considered irredeemable (the O’Flynn Family) or potentially curable (the Muldoon Family). Ironically, Chooks at their worst are headless, so maybe this R20 game will be decided by which team keeps their head? Welcome to Round 20.

NOTE: the question you have to ask yourself, punk, is whether HOE is still alive, or I ate him? Delicatus cerebrum.

Teams

Thursday 29 July, BB Print Stadium, Mackay, 7:50pm (AEDT). Referee: Grant Atkins.

Eels: 1. Clint Gutherson, 2. Maika Sivo, 3. Tom Opacic, 4. Waqa Blake, 5. Blake Ferguson, 6. Dylan Brown, 7. Jake Arthur, 8. Reagan Campbell-Gillard, 9. Reed Mahoney, 10. Junior Paulo, 11. Isaiah Papali’i, 12. Ryan Matterson, 13. Nathan Brown, 14. Bryce Cartwright, 15. Shaun Lane, 16. Oregon Kaufusi, 17. Will Smith.

Head coach: Brad Effort Arthur

Roosters: 1. James Tedesco, 2. Daniel Tupou, 3. Josh Morris, 4. Adam Keighran, 5. Joey Manu, 6. Drew Hutchison, 7. Sam Walker, 8. Jared Waerea-Hargreave, 9. Sam Verrills, 10. Isaac Liu, 11. Angus Crichton, 12. Sitili Tupouniua, 13. Victor Radley, 14. Lachlan Lam, 15. Nat Butcher, 16. Egan Butcher, 17. Siosiua Taukeiaho.

Head coach: Trent Hypocrite Robinson

Notes: For the Eels, Mitchell Moses (back fracture) and Marata Niukore (knee) are out injured. Bryce Cartwright comes on to the bench for Niukore. Tom Opacic returns at centre, with the promising Will Penisini returning to play golf or whatever reserves do when reserves are not playing. Will Smith remains on the bench with Jake Arthur retaining the #7. WTF? I think George Romero saw this coming in his Day of the Dead (1985), and he had the proper reply to BA: “You can just sit there in the dark and think about what you’ve done. Think!” Over at the Rorters, Siosiua Taukeiaho replaces Fletcher Butcher on the bench. The Rorters have a few issues in the outside backs: Billy Smith (foot) is replaced by Adam Keighran, Matt Ikavalu (ankle) is replaced by Josh Morris, and Joey Manu shifts to wing (believable?). Though late news has it that the Rorters have signed Greg Inglis from the Warrington Wolves, and Jordan Petaia from The QLD Reds, for a miraculous amount of dollars equal to $5 less than whatever cap space the Rorters claim to possess, with no quarantine required because the Rorters said they are the cleanest team around. You heard it here first.

Observations from Last Week

Eels (vs Raiders), 10-12 (L), 59% possession, 83% completion rate, 2 line breaks, 24 tackle breaks, 17 offloads, 37 missed tackles, 15 ineffective tackles, 12 errors, 3 penalties conceded, 4 ruck infringements.

Roosters (vs Knights), 28-8 (W), 54% possession, 83% completion rate, 10 line breaks, 32 tackle breaks, 10 offloads, 25 missed tackles, 7 ineffective tackles, 9 errors, 5 penalties conceded, 1 ruck infringements.

Eels/Raiders extended highlights HERE.

Rorters/Knights extended highlights HERE.

Is anyone else just frustrated to be watching the same kinds of issues from previous years resurface at the Eels? The Eels’ attack has often accumulated 30+ this year, so it is not like the late 2020 period has returned (where the Eels struggled to score). But against tough opposition, the points can dry up when the game is on the line. Against the Raiders the Eels lacked any attacking cohesion and seemed to only find even second gear in the final 20 minutes of the game. Similarly, the Eels have the 3^rd best defence, so it is not like they have been leaky boats. But with the pressure on, the Eels can get exposed. Manly and Bunnies caused a defensive headache that saw Fergo dropped and Waqa switched, so questions remain going into a tough run home. And against the Raiders, the Eels largely handled the Raiders no problem, except for two tries down the Eels’ left edge where Jake Arthur is a real concern.

Put differently, when and where it mattered, the Eels attacked poorly and leaked defensively, and those are old problems. Should we feel safe - we are running 4^th - or concerned? Maybe Fran had the answer in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978)? The group believes they are safe in the mall, with the zombies locked outside, but Fran thinks otherwise: “you’re hypnotized by this place. All of you. It’s so bright and neatly wrapped; you don’t see that it’s a prison too”. You know what happened to the mall rats, right?

Overall, of course, the sky has not fallen. The Eels have been Top 4 all year. The Eels are the only team to have went toe to toe with Storm and Penrith and not been ran over. But the Eels have the capacity to play some idiotic and even lethargic footy sometimes, and that is a concern 6 weeks out from the finals. Notably, both Storm and Penrith were off their own games in Round 19 but managed to score points and not lose.

What about the Raiders game itself? No prizes for guessing that the Eels played a power game: their forwards ran 150m+ (Matterson, Brown, RCG) and even 200m+ (Paulo, Papali’i), and three outside backs ran 150m+ (Gutho, Penisini, Fergo). But maybe more important than those totally normal numbers for an Eels team that mindlessly barges it forward was that Mahoney had just 3 runs for 12m. The Eels need Mahoney scheming and misdirecting in the middle, and running, to help counteract defensive line speed, if they are going to persist with one-out footy. Or also that 8 of our 13 starters made an error. The Eels made 12 errors overall. Or that in the middle both NBrown and RCG missed 5 tackles each. Or that on the edges our halves also missed too many tackles (Jake Arthur an expected 5, but even DBrown missed 4). Or that the Eels conceded 3 penalties, 5 ruck restarts and 1 offside restart. Or as the radio announcer grimly opined in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), “things that look like people but act like animals”.

For all the virtues of the power game, when you miss tackles, make errors, and concede ruck restarts, you will be lucky to stay with either a top performing team overall or even a team who just happens to be having a good day out. The Eels’ attack is simply not fluid enough to tolerate either conceding unnecessary ground or blowing their opportunities via poor ball control. One score line that seems interesting in this regard is to consider that the true contenders (I am going to exclude the Rorters) in the Top 5 have all passed 50 and even 60 points in games. The Eels had a blowout against the Broncos (46) and two 40-point scores (Knights and Tigers) but have not ran riot in the same way. Scoring 30+ or 36+ seems de rigueur in the 6-again era, but the Eels’ attack relies on winning collisions that maybe even the Eels get tired of as games progress? Like the zombies outside the mall in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), in the opposition red zone it just looks like “they’re after the place. They don’t know why. They just remember”.

One problem that is thus becoming apparent for the Eels is that by playing so conservatively out of their own end, IF they concede unnecessary ground via too high a missed tackle ratio - even if the Eels defend their line - they are then conservatively rucking it off their line and progressively losing field position. Without Moses there to kick them out of trouble, or Fergo or Sivo making the odd line break all by themselves, the Eels are literally playing off the back foot way too often. Even with Moses there, the issue that arises is Moses might end up expending a lot of energy hoofing the ball as far as he can, rather than focus on what are in fact his true strengths, of tactical kicking and running the ball. 

Another issue, expanded upon below, is the Eels’ unfortunate habit of spilling the ball when it matters or (in general) failing to ice an opportunity. Against the Raiders, young Jake Arthur took a bomb out of the Raider’s fullbacks’ hands and popped a ball for NBrown, who promptly dropped the ball with the line 1m away and no-one within cooee. The score was 6-12 with 8 mins to go and it would have been 12-12. After Sivo’s try to make it 10-12, Gutho missed the sideline conversion, with 3 mins to go. Reminded us of Moses missing the winning goal with time up against Penrith a few weeks ago. Then, with 10 seconds remaining, Sivo neglected to get low and slide in to goal. It makes no difference if JA passed off the ground, or DBrown was offside, or Rapana should have been penalized for his hit on Sivo. What matters is the Eels routinely miss opportunities. These are all instances of skilled performance under pressure and fatigue, and the Eels seem unable to ice them. Maybe, if the Eels practice conservative play, they are just not well prepared for adventurous play?

As for the Rorters game against the Knights last week, the Knights led early but then fell away in the second half and the Rorters piled on a few tries. But as I said in my R10 preview of the Eels vs Warriors game, when mentioning the Eels’ victory over the Rorters in the previous R9 clash, the Rorters are a bunch of hypocritical cheats who are nevertheless presented as the victims by a fawning media that treats them like a protected species. The dirty Chooks can do their own press.

Eels should beat Rorters even without Moses

For all the negative nelly stuff above, I still think the Eels should beat the Rorters. This might seem counter-intuitive, because if the Eels do beat the Rorters, winning two games in a row against those dirty birds would be the first time in 14 years the Eels have done so. The Eels’ track record against the Rorters has not been stellar of late, reflecting the Rorters and the Storm dominating the competition this past decade.

Trent The Hypocrite Robinson leads the tally against BA, and BA’s away-record against Robinson is uninspiring.

But if there is a silver lining in every Covid cloud, it is that BOTH teams are now away, and the history books are a blank slate for BB Print Stadium.

To get a sense of the difference between the Eels and whoever they are playing in any given week, we use nrl.com/stats to compare the statistics for attack and defence/discipline.

Attack: The smaller the number, the better the ranking (you succeed at doing these things better than others … 1^st is good, 16^th is bad). Also: green, yellow, light red, dark red is better to worse.

Defence & Discipline: The smaller the number, the worse the ranking (you are more guilty of these problems than others … 16^th is good, 1^st is bad). Also: green, yellow, light red, dark red is better to worse.

What do you see when you look over those stats above? One stat that stands out is the Rorters’ poor completion rates, which is a problem for them especially when coupled with conceding penalties and their general/handling errors. Watch the Rorters and they often fail to keep up with the speed of the attacking line and resort to pushing the envelope on offside and ruck infringements. If the Rorters get away with it, they stymie attacking waves. And if they get away with it, they can also win. Indeed, when the Rorters have scored more than 18 points in 2021, they have won all 12 games. And when the Rorters complete at 75% or higher, they have won all 11 of those games. Obviously, the 18+ points and 75%+ completion rates overlap in those wins. What happens if the Rorters complete well and reduce their errors? Here we start getting into the territory noted above, of what happens to the Eels when the opposition is ‘up for it’? The Eels, simply put, need to do things like increase their dummy half runs, maybe their decoy runs, and move the ball about more to create indecision and increase their line breaks. Look at those specific stats above and we can see from where the improvement can come.

What do you see when you look over those stats above? Obviously, the Eels score mostly down their left side and the Rorters concede mostly down their right side, so normal programming should see the Eels win. But even though normal programming does not apply with Moses out, the Eels surely won’t play as insipid and incohesive attacking footy as they played against the Raiders? Up there in QLD isolation, maybe the Eels could watch Romero’s Day of the Dead (1985)? Scientists are trying to find a cure for the zombie plague but are “pulling in different directions” says the reasonable Sarah, and maybe “if we tried working together” it would help. Conversely, the Rorters like to attack down their own right side but the Eels defend well down their left side, where Moses has formed a stable combination with Papali’i. But again, normal programming is inapplicable, as Jake Arthur is a defensive work in progress. Angus Chrichton will be dreaming of running at Young Arthur.

The Bottom Line

Much blood will be spilled this week about the decision to again play Jake Arthur at #7, with many (myself included) calling for Will Smith to be handed the reigns. Playing JA reminds me of the story of John Sylvan, who invented the now-ubiquitous K-Cup (or pod coffee) in the early 1990’s. K-cups are an environmental disaster, being non-biodegradable and non-recyclable yet sold so often if they were put end-to-end they would circle the planet 10 times. Per annum. Few currently think JA is good for the team’s prospects. Of course, Sylvan sold his share of the company in 1997 for $50,000, and Keurig went on to be a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, so who knows, keep the faith? Or as Bon Jovi advised young Jake, “it’s hard to hold on when there is no-one to lean on”.

If we thus set aside the JA issue, because it is what it is with Moses out, we can return to Sterlo’s point. In defence, yes, chase the collision with maximum effort. But if all you do ball-in-hand is chase the collision, it ends up being counter-productive via slower play-the-balls and fatigued players. The Eels need to play with their brain too: move the ball around a bit more, targeting holes and smaller defenders, or seeking overlaps, especially out of their own end. I think most fans would agree with Sterlo. We are all sick of seeing one-out plays from our own end, crash plays at the other, and towering kicks when none of it works.

Though it may always work against teams 7-16^th on the ladder and thus always keep the Eels in the Top 6. Being continually in the Top 4 frame is certainly both a better position to be in than competing for the spoon, and arguably a better foundation upon which to work than a team perennially on the margin of 8^th position (think Tigers). Yet the issue remains: by rarely forcing opposition defences to make choices, the Eels are just bashing and barging their way to flunking out in the finals again. In Sterlo’s Triple M podcast he was quite deferential in the end, saying he is “not a coach” and observing from the outside. That is us fans as well, not coaches and observing from the outside.

But as George Romero replied when he was asked why he wrote about zombies, that he was really talking “about humans and how they react, or fail to react, or react stupidly”, fans know stupidity when we see it. BA’s power game + kicking needs to be supplemented. Everyone can see it. Does BA? In Diary of the Dead (2007), Romero laments the modern fragmentation into tribes. In one scene Debra labels The Stranger’s stealing of supplies “looting”, to which The Stranger replies “it’s called doing what you gotta do”. It’s not looting to borrow ideas supplied by others, like Sterlo, it’s doing what you gotta do to survive.

It thus becomes relevant that there is a truism about what makes an expert that reinforces Sterlo’s concerns. BA focuses on effort, but true expert skill has a degree of intuition to it, where a skill has become routine to the point where you are no longer thinking consciously and explicitly about what you do. Instead, it just happens, and you just do it. Effort is BA’s mantra, but effort is conscious and explicit. Playing smart can sound like you are being conscious and explicit but involves two things. One is what Sterlo mentions: a conscious and explicit approach to the game where collisions are mitigated, specifically by attacking gaps and spaces and avoiding overly conservative play that permits the opposition to gang tackle you. The other is about how you develop intuitively skilled performance. Guess what? It is NOT by NOT practicing skilled performance, or forever avoiding high risk plays on game day. When the Eels consistently fail to ice opportunities – the desperate pass does not stick, the catch that was oh so close, the pass or run selection is just off, the kick just misses its mark – those who research what makes expertise would say this is an artifact of not training for low margin plays and simply not practicing low margin stuff in real life (game) situations. Sterlo was not only correct to suggest the Eels need to let the ball move more if they want to break down better defences, but he was also pointing to how the Eels can improve in terms of icing situations that matter: train to play adventurous not just conservative and practice it before you hit the business end of the season. Will the Eels continue to play like zombies, lumbering and brainless, or can they evolve? At the end of Romero’s Land of the Dead (2005), Riley is driving the armored Dead Reckoning to Canada to escape the zombie horde that overtook the city. Mulligan wants him to stay and rebuild, and when Riley says he is unsure “what will we turn into” if he remains, Mulligan says “We’ll see, won’t we?”. We are all Mulligan.

Now, for a pictorial history of the Eels.

Above: Eels attacking gaps in the defensive line

Above: Mitchell Moses organizing the Eels’ goal-line attack

 Above: Eels’ forwards rucking it out of their own end.

Above: Plays in the outside backs for the Eels