Eels Blogs

Thunderdbird Two to Thunderbird One, do you read me? Static. No Reply. That was the Eels against the Tigers. The Thunderbirds was of course a TV show aired 1965-1966, featuring the Tracy family as operators of International Rescue, a secret para-military organization dedicated to saving people caught up in disasters of various forms. Every Eels fan has been sending out an SOS to the Thunderbirds of late, caught as we are in the Great Moses Injury Catastrophe. There has yet to be a reply. Recall that Jeff Tracy was the leader of the Thunderbirds. Jeff was an astronaut, manning the orbiting space station Thunderbird 5. Brad Arthur is Jeff, seemingly off in space when it comes to some aspects of coaching. Jeff’s five sons operated the other Thunderbird craft, just as Matt Arthur runs the ruck in reggies and Jake Arthur once ran the team sans Moses. It is possible The Eels’ reputed call to Mitchell Pearce was some kind of moonshot call by Jeff/Brad, but I digress. The Thunderbirds used a technique known as supermarionation, or puppets with rigid fibreglass heads and a solenoid based system to allow the figures to move their mouths in time to pre-recorded dialogue tracks. The models needed to be filmed in rigidly specific ways. The Eels played like Thunderbird marionettes against the Tigers, rigid and drone like, waiting for someone to pull the appropriate string. But their true puppeteer, Mitchell Moses, was sitting in the stands in a moonboot, probably wanting to kick the orbiting space station from which Jeff/Brad appeared to be coaching in his absence? Welcome to Round 5.

Teams

Sunday 7 April, GIO Stadium, 6:15pm (AEDT). Lands of the Ngunnawal People. Referee: Adam Gee.

EELS: 1. Clinton Gutherson 2. Maika Sivo 3. Viliami Penisini 4. Bailey Simonsson 5. Sean Russell 6. Blaize Talagi 7. Dylan Brown 8. Reagan Campbell-Gillard 9. Joey Lussick 10. Junior Paulo 11. Shaun Lane 12. Ryan Matterson 13. J'maine Hopgood 14. Luca Moretti 15. Wiremu Greig 16. Joe Ofahengaue 17. Kelma Tuilagi 18. Ofahiki Ogden 19. Daejarn Asi 20. Brendan Hands 21. Makahesi Makatoa 22. Morgan Harper

Head coach: Brad Jeff Arthur.

RAIDERS: 1. Jordan Rapana 2. James Schiller 3. Matthew Timoko 4. Sebastian Kris 5. Xavier Savage 6. Ethan Strange 7. Jamal Fogarty 8. Josh Papali'i 9. Danny Levi 10. Joseph Tapine 11. Hudson Young 12. Ata Mariota 13. Morgan Smithies 14. Tom Starling 15. Corey Horsburgh 16. Simi Sasagi 17. Pasami Saulo 18. Kaeo Weekes 19. Nick Cotric 20. Trey Mooney 21. Zac Woolford 22. Emre Guler

Head coach: Ricky Chairkicker Stuart.

Notes: running count until Moses is back = 7 weeks? Eels need Moses. Cartwright is still out. Harper has been dropped for Simonsson. Tragic? Not quite. Alan Tracey (youngest son of Thunderbird 5 pilot and leader of International Rescue, Jeff Tracy) once asked his dad if it was true what The Hood (the villain) said, that Jeff had left The Hood to die. Jeff replied “see, you can’t save everyone”. Eels are still going with two running halves, one of whom cannot tackle, so yeah, expect a dog’s breakfast for ‘organization’. Big Emu Greig is on to the bench. For the Raiders, that bloke who cries on the field is on the bench (Red Horsburgh). In some breaking news, the Raiders outside backs are faster than the Eels outside backs. I know, shocking news. There are some Sportsbet odds for this game, but you must go over to that other site to read their questionable previews which spend an inordinate amount of time breaking down the Sportsbet odds for some unknown reason. Put $$$ on the Eels 13+ to make 4.6 times your outlay, or if you’re still smarting from the BS dished up against the Tigers, put $$$ on ‘Eels no try’ for 31 times your outlay.

Observations from Last Week

Eels vs Tigers, 16-17 (L), 53% possession, 79% completion rate, 4 linebreaks, 31 tackle breaks, 13 offloads, 29 missed tackles, 6 ineffective tackles, 13 errors, 2 penalties conceded, 2 ruck infringements, 0 inside 10 meters, 1 sin bin (Tigers).

Raiders vs Sharks, 22-36 (L), 49% possession, 75% completion rate, 5 linebreaks, 23 tackle breaks, 10 offloads, 27 missed tackles, 14 ineffective tackles, 11 errors, 3 penalties conceded, 5 ruck infringements, 0 inside 10 meters, 0 sin bin.

Eels/Tigers R3 Highlights HERE.

Raiders/Sharks R3 highlights HERE

Before we get to the embarrassing Eels, there were the embarrassing Raiders. The Raiders led 18-0 after 25 minutes but then conceded 0-30 before eventually losing 22-36. Most of the all-game stats were evenly shared, but in the second half the Raiders line speed fell away (Sharks 6.29 vs Raiders 5.32) and the Raiders missed 23 (vs Sharks 14) tackles. I despise Sticky, but at least in his press conference Sticky was honest, saying his troops were “embarrassing”, "dismal", "really poor" and that "every player out there was below par" (for all but about 10-15 mins, he said).

Now we turn to the Eels. Last week I noted Freud’s emphasis upon ‘working through’: uncover a resistance, name it, and allow the patient to become familiar with the resistance, to overcome it. Against the Tigers young Talagi at #6 certainly re-acquainted himself with defensive errors. Talagi missed three tackles and made five ineffective tackles, but two of those defensive bloopers were direct causes of two second half tries for the Tigers. The defeat was not the sole or even major result of Talagi’s play. But can the Eels afford his defensive lapses, given we have not replaced Moses’ organization capability and thus lack direction in attack? Our attack might not be able to ‘cover’ such defensive frailties?

As noted, let’s not be foolish and pin the loss on Talagi. According to most fans, the real culprit lay elsewhere: the coach. In his press conference, BA said that we did not seem to want to play “tough” and “roll the sleeves up”. BA opined that “until we learn and understand that every game matters”, taking “soft” options in a game would continue. I try to stay out of the sack the coach talk, which I previously suggested emerges every second week, because Eels fans have become (rightly) disillusioned by years of disappointment. BA is thus like Ariel from The Tempest, the magician charged with saving the day, and that is a heavy burden to carry.

But I agree with the critics, at least this week.

First, it is implausible to imagine professional athletes, who have come through junior footy and lower grades and who have been immersed in an aggressive contact-sport culture, struggling to be physically aggressive. Making ‘toughness’ the issue is, ironically, to (indirectly) talk to tough players like they are shrinking violets unable to be told a harsh truth: they played without smarts. Defensive misreads, pushed passes, impatience, lack of on-field leadership. That was dumb play.

Second, the question we should therefore be asking is why, after overseeing the team for almost a decade and having had the nucleus of this team together for 4-5 years, BA is still talking about them needing to learn something? Should we not reasonably expect that a long-serving coach of a stable-roster will have already achieved this footy nous of his team knowing that all games matter? Indeed, if all games matter, why did BA switch a successful bench rotation in a context where his chief playmaker was out? Why tinker when an important deck chair already went overboard?

There is a scene in a Thunderbirds episode where Alan Tracy instructs Tin-Tin to “keep backing up … I’ve got a plan”. Alan then pulled out a rock catapult, aims at (the villain) The Hood’s head, and misses. Tin-Tin says “that’s your plan?”.

Blind Freddie could see the Eels’ attack was dishevelled without Moses, but why did the defence drop off as the game wore on? Let’s look at Pre-Contact Metres Per Run (PCM/run), which you may recall is a measure of how far a player ran before anyone even tried to tackle him or her, and is one means to assess line-speed. Recall the formula:

The greater the PCM/run, the greater is that team’s line-speed. I use Fox Sports Lab (foxsports.com.au) instead of NRL.com because Fox Sports Lab breaks down stats by halves. The PCM/run, all-game, was Eels 5.95, Tigers 5.77. The Eels had the faster line speed. But not so fast (shall we say). Let’s break down by halves: Eels H1 5.99, H2 5.91; Tigers H1 5.15, H2 6.37.

In the second half, the Tigers significantly increased the line speed (by 21%), while the Eels’ line speed remained marginally the same (a 1.3% decrease). What else happened in that second half? Missed tackle counts remained roughly the same, and both teams marginally decreased their penalties conceded (Tigers from 6 to 4, Eels from 2 to 1). But the Tigers significantly decreased their errors (from 8 to 2) while the Eels marginally increased their errors (from 6 to 7).

Yet note the overall picture in that second half: the Tigers significantly increased their line speed, but significantly decreased their errors and marginally decreased their penalties conceded. This more efficient play is evident in the H2 results: Tigers 19 to Eels 7 tackles in the opposition 20, Tigers 89% completion rate (Eels 80%), Tigers two tries to one.

If the Eels are going to be spending the better part of the next two months minus their chief playmaker and kicking maestro, can they afford their defence to go to sleep when it matters?

Moses always made all the difference? 

In this section I want to make three main points.

1) The Eels are under-performing given their over-performing field position.

2) The Eels and Raiders play very similar games.

3) Moses is the difference, and no Moses means trouble.

1) The Eels are under-performing given their over-performing field position.

First, The Eels are performing better than in 2023 and could easily have been 4-0 in 2024 rather than 2-2. With only four games played thus far in season 2024, the sample pool is too small to make too many judgements. But entering Round 5 in 2023, the Eels had started 0-3 before a R4 victory over Panthers for a 1-3 record. Entering Round 5 in 2024, the Eels are 2-2.

But the Eels played well against the Panthers and were ultimately undone by the Panthers’ clever ability to exploit a weakness the Panthers’ foul play had opened in the Eels left side outside backs (Simonsson concussion). And the Eels should have won against the Tigers: if Moses was there the Eels would not have played so impatiently in the first half and then in the second fritter away a lead by ill-advised play. Overall, the Eels have done OK.

But are the Eels under-performing given the positions they get themselves into in games? Yes. With thanks to The Rugby League Eye Test, against the Tigers the Eels had enough possession to have been up 18-6 at half time, not tied 6-6. Overall, the Eels finished 8 points adrift of about the score they should have reached, based on field position.

If you track the X axis (the horizontal) across, then travel north up the Y axis (vertical) at the 40-minute mark, you can see the Eels should have been well in front. By the end of the game the Tigers finished (points-wise) about where their field position would indicate, but the Eels came up 8 points short of expected.

WARNING: recall in the Round 4 preview we noted stats showing the Eels are an 8-point better team with Moses in the side. I am calling this a clear vindication of those stats!

Another way of highlighting where the Eels are under-performing is by looking at actual points scored versus average expected points scored AND actual points conceded versus average expected points conceded.

In the figures above, again with thanks to The Rugby League Eye Test, we can see that the Eels look good on paper. They are dominating teams with the ball-in-hand, averaging the most expected points due to their control of possession and territory. Nevertheless, the Eels are scoring 10% fewer points than expected given this domination of possession and field position, and they are conceding 15% more points than expected given that same possession and field position dominance.

The Eels, then, are an under-performing team in relation to what could be expected from their possession and field position stats. The Eels are NOT an under-performing team in terms of failing to put themselves in a position to win. The Eels are doing many things right, with respect to possession and field position, and with respect to errors, averaging an error every 43 touches, which ranks them 5^th best (NB: Raiders rank 2^nd best with an error every 52 touches).

The trouble for the Eels is that against Panthers and Manly, defensive lapses undoing their ‘dominance’ could be attributed to the backline reshuffle against Panthers and the first 20-minute defensive teething trouble out wide against Manly. But against Tigers, it was clear that Moses was missed. And Moses will be missed every game for months.

Note also that the Raiders are fellow occupants of the ‘dominant’ quadrant, along with the Eels, for both attack and defence. The Raiders are slightly less dominant in each facet than the Eels, but the Raiders make fewer errors than the Eels.

2) The Eels and Raiders play very similar games.

As everyone knows, the attack/defence stats in league tables are always a little off because of the bye rounds creating uneven games-played. Only averages matter. So here is the table that uses averages for key statistics.

What you can see is how similar are the Eels and Raiders (all stats from Fox Sports Lab): they play a conservative brand of football. Both seek to control field position (Eels 2^nd and Raiders 5^th for plays in opposition 20m), achieve high completions (Eels 5^th, Raiders 2^nd) and low errors (Eels 5^th best, 9.3 pg; Raiders 2^nd best, 8 pg). Both are awarded high penalty counts (Eels 1^st, receiving 7.5 pg; Raiders 4^th, receiving 6.3 pg).

Neither operates with fast line speed (Eels ranked 15^th, Raiders 14^th).

The Eels seek to disrupt defences through offloading, not fleet-footed backline plays. Four Eels forwards feature in the Top 10 offloaders (Cartwright, Paulo, Matto and Hopgoode). The Eels are 2^nd for offloads as a team (Panthers 1^st), averaging 13.8 offloads per game (the Raiders are 12^th, averaging 7.5 pg).

An interesting stat?: Eels rank 5^th best for preventing offloads, and the Raiders 3^rd best for preventing offloads. So, the Eels will attack through conservative play, relying upon offloads, which the Raiders appear to defend very well, and in turn the Raiders will rely on weight of possession and territory to score, which the Eels appear to control very well. Go figure who wins this one? The most composed? The team with the most efficient execution?

WARNING: if the Eels are an 8-point better team with Moses in the side, and it appears efficiency of execution and composed organization are all that separate the Eels and Raiders, no Moses suggests an Eels win at GIO might be in for a frosty reception. I’m sorry to say I suspect Raiders by 8 points.

Anyway, below are the averages for “attack and defence” and then for “discipline” (drawn from Fox Sports Lab). HOE and I realize that averages are all that matters for showing relative comparisons. One cannot infer directly from the straight league table due to differences in games played. But producing these tables means copying big chunks of data from Fox Sports Labs OR we can use a formula in Excel to rank attack and defence. This takes a little bit of work.

We must copy a straight league table, then generate scored per game and conceded per game by dividing For and Against columns by the Games Played column (which varies per team); that part is simple. But to show rankings, of where team’s attack and defence sits per games they have played, we use a formula that looks something like this:

 =RANK(M3,$M$3:$M$19,0)

All of this adds … four separate columns to any league table and must be done manually per week. We would love to hear feedback about which format, the three tables presented here, or maybe one league table (using our ranking method), 1Eyedeel fans might prefer? What kind of data gives you the best info for making up your own mind about what you see happening with the Eels? That is ultimately what I am aiming for with some stats, to give you, the reader, the tools to make your own judgements.

3) Moses is the difference, and no Moses means trouble.

Well, I have proven Proposition 3 already, but frak it, HOE made a graph, so:

The Eels have historically fared poorly playing in Canberra, but Moses helped turn that around with wins in 2021 and 2022, before a Moses-free Eels lost again in 2023. BY -8 POINTS!!!

Indeed, the Eels’ record against the Raiders since 2019 is a win percentage of 78%, but in each win, Moses played. The absence of Moses accounts for that loss percentage of 22%.

The Bottom Line

Currently, the Eels are like the following scene from the Thunderbirds, where we see Thunderbird 2 hovering over a crashed Thunderbird 1. Mitchell Moses is Thunderbird 2, the rest of the team is Thunderbird 1.

There is a high probability that Moses has basically become International Rescue, for the rest of his brothers, and fans can only hope the remaining Thunderbirds do not keep flying like Thunderbird 1.

Without Moses, against the Tigers, the Eels played like a Thunderbirds briefing, everyone sitting around, stiff as boards. Brad Arthur lamented their lack of toughness, but they were tough, indeed too tough, too one-dimensional, lacking creative autonomy, their strings pulled by an absent puppeteer, and thus listlessly waiting for someone to direct them to where they needed to be.

Recall from the Thunderbirds that Virgil Tracy (Mitchell Moses) was the pilot of Thunderbird 2 and was thus responsible for deploying the rescue pod vehicles (The Mole, Firefly, and the Elevator cars). As Virgil said to Alan in the episode ‘Atlantic Inferno’, “Alan, Thunderbird 1 is sliding. Get her up! Fast!”

Eels 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - are GO!