Eels Blogs

Odysseus (Roman name: Ulysses) was described by Homer in the Iliad as the IQ behind the Greeks winning the decade-long Trojan War (12^th century BC). Famously, Odysseus snuck troops into Troy inside a Trojan Horse. Jealous of his otherworldly cunning, the Gods sank Odysseus’ ship as he journeyed home. Homer recounts Odysseus’ decade-long journey home to Ithaca in The Odyssey. In this analogy, Jack Gibson is Odysseus, with his trick plays, cunning and innovative coaching, and conscription of serious talent like Achilles (read Stirling, Kenny and co), thereby winning the Premiership War of the 1980’s. But then a long journey home to Premiership Land commenced. Every Eels fan, like a Borg collective mind, is Homer, telling the decades-long tale of just trying to get home. Just as Odysseus had many Journeys, so too the Eels, including triumph to tragedy in 2001 and 2009. On one journey, Odysseus is marooned on Calypso’s Island. Like the way the Eels have experienced some good times despite being marooned without a premiership for decades, Odysseus is held captive by a lovely nymph Calypso. But Zeus instructs Hermes to visit Calypso and order her to release Odysseus, because it is not his destiny to remain stuck on Calypso’s Island. There is no fate, we fight for every step. As Calypso bids Odysseus farewell, she says “no need, my unlucky one, to grieve here any longer; no, don't waste your life away. Now I am willing, heart and soul, to send you off at last” (The Odyssey, Book V, 177-179). Isn’t it time the Eels were sent home, to Premiership Land? Welcome to Round 25, we all made it.

Teams

Thursday 1st September, CommBank Stadium, Parramatta, 7:50pm (AEDT). Lands of the Barramattagal People. Referee: Ashley Klein.

Eels: 1. Clinton Gutherson 2. Maika Sivo 3. Viliami Penisini 4. Tom Opacic 5. Waqa Blake 6. Dylan Brown 7. Mitchell Moses 8. Reagan Campbell-Gillard 9. Reed Mahoney 10. Junior Paulo 11. Shaun Lane 12. Isaiah Papali'i 13. Ryan Matterson 14. Makahesi Makatoa 15. Jakob Arthur 16. Oregon Kaufusi 17. Marata Niukore 18. Ofahiki Ogden 19. Bailey Simonsson 20. Bryce Cartwright 21. Sean Russell 22. Ky Rodwell.

Head coach: Bench Arthur.

Storm: 1. Nick Meaney 2. David Nofoaluma 3. Marion Seve 4. Justin Olam 5. Xavier Coates 6. Cameron Munster 7. Jahrome Hughes 8. Jesse Bromwich 9. Harry Grant 10. Nelson Asofa-Solomona 11. Felise Kaufusi 12. Kenny Bromwich 13. Josh King 14. Brandon Smith 15. Tui Kamikamica 16. Trent Loiero 17. Chris Lewis 18. Young Tonumaipea 19. Cooper Johns 20. Alec MacDonald 21. Jordan Grant 22. Jack Howarth.

Head coach: Bellyache.

Notes: The Eels are unchanged from R24. Niukore has started at lock the past few weeks and will probably do so again. Matterson’s impact off the bench is invaluable, while also saving one interchange. Jacob Arthur is a surprise (?) retention. There is much talk about the wisdom of a bigger body on the bench to combat the size and aggression of the Storm pack. In R24 JA replaced Mahoney at dummy half and played the final 13 minutes. Note we cannot say that move stifled the attack, as the Eels scored four tries in the final 15 minutes. For the Storm, Eisenhuth is injured, replaced by Lewis; Kaufusi resumes his run-on spot, but King is at lock. The Storm have loaded their bench with two props (Kamikamici and Lewis), a second rower (Loiero), and Brandon Smith coming on at lock. Will the Eels sacrificing a forward to have JA on the bench prove a masterstroke, a disaster, or unrelated to the outcome (plays a few minutes)?

Observations from Last Week

Eels (vs Broncos), 53-6 (W), 62% possession, 77% completion rate, 8 line breaks, 52 tackle breaks, 23 offloads, 23 missed tackles, 12 ineffective tackles, 14 errors, 5 penalties conceded, 1 inside 10 meters, 1 ruck infringements, 0 sin bin.

Storm (vs Roosters), 14-18 (L), 47% possession, 75% completion rate, 6 line breaks, 40 tackle breaks, 10 offloads, 23 missed tackles, 20 ineffective tackles, 14 errors, 7 penalties conceded, 2 inside 10 meters, 3 ruck infringements, 0 sin bins.

Eels/Broncos highlights HERE.

Storm/Roosters highlights HERE.

The Eels were superb against the Broncos. Granted, after going to half time with a 31-6 lead, the Eels did not trouble the scorers for the first 25 minutes of the second half. Yet in fairness to the Broncos, they scrambled desperately in defence. The Broncos conceded penalties, batted down passes, and defended with all the weight of shame and embarrassment they could muster. Alas, the Eels kept going, a second-half thing they have not always done in 2022. Late in the season, in games against the Roosters and Panthers, big half time leads were not converted to bigger scores; while against Tigers and Warriors, dominant winning margins were squandered by conceding late tries. Against the Broncos, the Eels were like a predator constantly stalking its prey, eventually overwhelming the hapless Broncos, running in four tries and 22 points in the final 15 minutes of the game.

My favourite part of the Eels/Broncos match was the Waqa Blake try, with 20 seconds remaining, to make it 51-6 (before Moses converted for 53-6). Not only was passing the cricket score barrier of 50+ emotionally satisfying for fans, but the pure joy on Blake’s face as his teammates mobbed him suggested a degree of emotional satisfaction for the players as well (see 1:35:45 on the Ch. 9 replay). A little-known fact of skills development is that the more emotionally involved and invested you are in the outcome of the application of skills, the more expertise you develop. It is a complete myth that high-level, skilled performance is accompanied by emotional detachment. High-level skill and high-level emotion go hand-in-glove; more than just celebratory, emotional attachment is the key to progress.

The Storm/Roosters game was brutal, with commentators fawning over its throw-back physicality. Translated: old footy heads appreciated the litany of dog acts in almost every tackle. An interesting set of stats emerged from the game, though, and are possibly relevant for the Eels/Storm R25 encounter (details below). The Roosters won 18-14, but the Storm enjoyed a statistical advantage in a few key stats: 6 vs 2 linebreaks, 40 vs 23 tackle breaks, 23 vs 40 missed tackles, 7 vs 11 penalties conceded. A team like the Storm would normally convert those statistics into a victory. The Roosters countered in their own way: more runs, more run meters, more post-contact meters, a greater average set distance, superior kicking meters, and less errors. Guess the categories in which the Eels generally hold a (season 2022) statistical advantage over the Storm?

Going the Distance

In Rocky (1976), Rocky Balboa is described as the man who never had a chance, the million to one shot. Rocky is humble, admitting no-one has ever gone the distance with Apollo Creed, and if he can, he will prove (to himself) that he is not a bum. He confides to Adrian – “Yo, Adrian!” – that he does not care about winning, “cause all I wanna do is go the distance”. But as we all know, being there when the bell rang was the start of everything for Rocky. In Round 25, being there when the bell rings could mean, for the Eels, being 4^th. And that could be the start of everything?

One reason a R25 victory could be the start of everything is because it could permit the Eels to convert their decent form of late against the Storm in regular season games, into a strong position for the upcoming finals. A win now is fourth place and both a second shot plus a route to a home final. A loss is sixth spot, and sudden death against Roosters or Bunnies.

Head-to-head, the Eels and Storm have played 41 times since 1998, the Eels winning 17 (41%) and the Storm 24 (59%). Unfortunately, Melbourne has a history of some large victories over the Eels, defeating the Eels 64-4 in R24 of 2013, and 64-10 in R9 of 2019. Also, some devastating victories over the Eels, including the salary-cap-rorting Storm defeating the Eels in the 2009 Grand Final, and beating the Eels in Week 2 of the 2019 finals and Week 1 of the 2020 finals.

We must go all the way back to R20 of 2001 to find the Eels thrashing the Storm (54-10), though the Eels’ overall record against the Storm since the Eels’ 2018 wooden spoon season has been good. In 2019-2022, over seven gamers, the Eels have won 4/7 (though never a finals game). Recently the Eels have won the past three meetings between the teams.

Arguably, the Eels’ recent form, over the last ten rounds, has been better than the Storm. The Eels have earned their inconsistency tag, but the Storm lost several in a row, before wins over minnows and a depleted Panthers, prior to thrashing the Broncos and losing to the Roosters. The Eels have been Rebound Kings, following up disappointing performances with solid victories. Notably, excluding a poor showing against the Broncos in R19 and predictable losses to their nemesis the Bunnies in R16 and R22, the Eels have mostly taken care of business.

How might the Eels win this game? Returning to the Roosters/Storm R24 game, recall that the Storm won a host of stats but NOT the following: the Roosters had (I said above) “more runs, more run meters, more post-contact meters, a greater average set distance, superior kicking meters, and less errors.” Now look at the stats compiled by ZeroTackle (below) and combine them with the stats compiled on nrl.com.  

Credit: https://www.zerotackle.com/eels-storm-round-25-2022-mc10002-122195/

The Eels lead the Storm, statistically, in . . . more runs, more run meters, more post-contact meters, and superior kicking meters. The teams are even for errors (Panthers, Eels and Storm are best three for least errors) and the Storm make one less handling error per game than the Eels.

Winning that specific set of game-factors helped the Roosters against the Storm, and here we see why BA harps about winning the collision.

But there is another telling statistic. How will Junior Paulo go?

The fortunes of the Eels roughly follow the fortunes of their bookend props. Above I tabulated RCG and Paulo’s more recent game outputs, and then convenience-sampled some major losses and major wins.

RCG has been a beacon of consistency, regularly running for 100+ meters. But note that RCG had low outputs in the losses to Cowboys, Roosters and second Bunnies loss; but big outputs in some stirring victories over Panthers, Roosters, Manly and Broncos. Now look at Paulo. Quite like RCG but a little more extreme: less meters in losses, more in victories. Thus, in demoralizing losses to Cowboys, Roosters, Broncos, Bunnies and Dogs, Paulo fell below 100 meters. In stirring victories over Panthers, Roosters, Manly and Broncos, Paulo was a titan, pushing 200 meters.

There is an outlier. The Bunnies. Against Bunnies in the second loss, both RCG and Paulo ran for less than 100 meters, mirroring a team that did not play like they thought they could win. But in the first loss to the Bunnies, both RCG and Paulo ran for 100+ meters, Paulo approaching 200 meters. What happened? No other forward broke 100+ meters except Kaufusi.

Consistent with the stats that show the Eels have the game to replicate the Roosters’ run-hard-through-the- middle strategy, which by the way could be called the Eels’ strategy after the Eels did it in a R3 victory (both almost 200 meters), the Eels excel when BOTH Paulo and RCG are pumping out the meters. But Paulo is less consistent. If Paulo can fire, RCG will already be firing, and the Eels have the weapons to challenge the Storm in the middle of the field.

The other weapon for the Eels is their ball-playing and kicking spine of Moses, Brown and Gutho. Mahoney’s run meters are down, so what we really need from Mahoney is to watch Grant from dummy half and ensure Grant doesn’t get too much time in the middle ball-in-hand. But in the past few weeks, what has been noticeable is the way Moses and Brown have straightened the Eels’ attack. It is not a coincidence that the Eels have gone on to exceed 40 and 50 points when Moses and Brown have been running the ball and straightening the attack, collectively, more than at any other point this season. The Eels need them to continue their merry way.

Continuing a theme from last week, which we can now add to, we need 1) both Paulo and RCG to get high run meters, and we need 2) Moses and Brown to straighten the attack, and 3) Gutho to continue his excellent support play, and 4) please tell me the good defence over the past two weeks reflects a real change? This is the way.

 PS: The Mandalorian protects Baby Yoda with every fibre of his being. Shout out.

The Bottom Line

In Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi (2002), we read of survival against insurmountable odds. A young boy and his family are on a journey, not too dissimilar to Odysseus, in that the family is trying to get home. Only it is a new home, having decided to flee the political strife of 1970’s India and resettle in Canada. But the ship sinks, and the young boy, obviously named Pi, finds himself on a lifeboat with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena, and a Bengal tiger. The Hyena kills the orangutan and the zebra, and the tiger kills the hyena, leaving Pi with the tiger. The novel is about the two of them surviving almost a year on the lifeboat.

Pi learns many lessons in that time: mutual respect, forgiveness, the value of multiple kinds of faith . . . and the value of never giving up. Reflecting on being stuck in a lifeboat with a tiger, Pi reasons that “it was not a question of him or me, but of him and me.” Teamwork.

So, a little message to end the regular season. One, obvious, it may be a journey, like that of Odysseus, but there is no giving up. We all know the intended recipient of this message, out along the digital freeway. It applies to Eels players and fans too; it just so happens. Two, just like 1EyedEel sometimes works together admirably, three cheers to the Eels to do so too, and steer us home to Premiership Land, if you will. Go Eels.