Eels Blogs

We do not want to get on our high horse about this, but seriously, the Eels should whip the Broncos. These two teams are at opposite ends of the league ladder. They are also on opposing streaks. The Broncos have stalled in the last year, losing all but two of their past twenty-four games, and their past four against the Eels. The Eels have also won most of their games at TIO Stadium in Darwin. Will the Broncos spring an upset? Neigh, we say, they lack the horsepower. Welcome to Round 7.

NOTE: these reviews are co-authored, by Prof Daz and HOE. While HOE is normally scheduled to be lead-author in the odd rounds, HOE has come down with an illness that required hospitalization. Prof Daz assumed lead author again this week (some graphics will not be as polished). Please send HOE your best wishes for a speedy recovery from penis reduction surgery.  

Teams

Friday 23 April, TIO Stadium, Darwin, 7:55pm (AEDT). Referee: Grant Atkins.

Broncos, the recent nightmares: 1. Jamayne Isaako 2. Xavier Coates 3. Herbie Farnworth 4. David Mead 5. Corey Oates 6. Brodie Croft 7. Tom Dearden 8. Matthew Lodge 9. Jake Turpin 10. Payne Haas 11. Alex Glenn 12. Tevita Pangai Junior 13. Patrick Carrigan 14. Danny Levi 15. Thomas Flegler 16. Ethan Bullemor 17. Jordan Riki.

Head coach: Kevin Bloody Walters

Eels: 1. Clinton Gutherson 2. Maika Sivo 3. Tom Opacic 4. Marata Niukore 5. Blake Ferguson 6. Dylan Brown 7. Mitchell Moses 8. Reagan Campbell-Gillard 9. Reed Mahoney 10. Junior Paulo 11. Shaun Lane 12. Isaiah Papali’i 13. Nathan Brown 14. Oregon Kaufusi 15. Will Smith 16. Wiremu Greig 17. Bryce Cartwright.

Head coach: Brad Arthur

Notes: For the Eels, Dylan Brown returns from suspension, obviously well rested. Ryan Matterson returns but not in the mane event (instead in reggies to regain match fitness). Bryce Cartwright retains his bench spot - the ‘X factor that Could’? – and the hulking Wiremu Greig has another opportunity to build a colt following. For the Broncos, Herbie Farnworth replaces Richard Kennar in the centres, and Dani Levi replaces John Asiata on the bench.

Observations from Last Week

Eels (vs Raiders) 54% possession, 81% completion rate, 7 line breaks, 30 tackle breaks, 4 offloads, 20 missed tackles, 10 errors.

Broncos (vs Panthers) 49% possession, 80% completion rate, 2 line breaks, 35 tackle breaks, 9 offloads, 41 missed tackles, 10 errors.

Eels/Raiders extended highlights HERE.

The most surprising thing about R6, for the Eels, was that the Eels put away the offload. The most obvious explanation, that it was part of Bard Arthur’s game plan, is also the most unlikely. BA is not known for detailed let alone successful game plans. For BA, effort areas are crucial. In R6 the Eels’ middle forwards all corrected the minor hiccup of their lacklustre R5 display in the loss to the Dragons. With Niukore destined to return to playing through the middle when Waqa Blake resumes missing tackles at right centre, we included Niukore’s R6 runs in the Eels’ middle forward output.

RCG, Paulo, NBrown and Niukore ran for 82+70+84+65m=301m (respectively) in R5 against the Dragons. But in R6 against the Raiders, the Eels’ middle runners all exceeded 100m: RCG 179m, Paulo 126m, NBrown 133m and Niukore 146m, for 584mm. If we add in Papali’i, who is playing on an edge butt hopes to play through the middle, Papali’i ran for 158m (and scored twice).

The home of the Eels’ power game is straight down the middle. But the Raiders game also highlighted another strength of the Eels: Moses’ kicking game. Cooper Cronk was as excited as an Eels player in a toilet cubicle when he commented that Mitchel Moses’ game against the Raiders could, and in fact needed, to become “the new standard”.

Although the Broncos have been mired at the bottom of the NRL ladder since the opening of the 2020 season, much to the chagrin of almost nobody except some people with two heads living within cooee of the Brisbane River, the Broncos’ performance against premiership-favourites Penrith would have warmed the cold dead hearts of their fans. Broncos/Panthers extended highlights HERE.

The Broncos played to a game plan of running hard and then kicking to the wing of To’o, where Xavier Coates challenged for the ball and Pangai Jr simply parked himself in the zone the ball was going to land. Collectively they caused all sorts of trouble on Brodie Croft’s cross-field kicks. The Eels can expect Croft will be kicking for Coates and Pangai Jr again, where Sivo will be under pressure. But after Fergo’s catching difficulties in the Tigers game, it would not surprise to see Fergo being bombed as well (where Oates will challenge). Note Croft kicked for 603m against Penrith.

The other notable feature of the Broncos’ effort against Penrith was the way Kevin Walters just annoys the s**t out of a TV watching audience. He insists on wearing those stupid plaid shirts, which produce a shifting moire pattern on screen due to the misalignment between the stripes on his stupid shirt and the pixel lines of TV transmission.

 About your shirt, Kevvie, about your shirt. But I digress.

The Broncos’ forwards ran hard: Lodge (125m), Carrigan (126m) and Haas a whopping 195m, with Pangai in support with 71m. The Broncos also scored down the middle, through Croft passing to Bullemore (89m). The Eels will need to be alert to the Broncos new-look halves of Croft and Dearden playing off the back of Haas in particular.  

Will the Broncos’ (defence) have the knight off?

Unfortunately for the Broncos, Allan Langer is their best defender. The Broncos average 32.5 missed tackles per game, the 4^th worst. Even the totally mis-named Manly are better (5^th worst; average 32.3 missed tackles per game). Notably, the Broncos appear to be getting worse, if measured by missed tackles. In R1 against the Eels, the Broncos missed 38 tackles, mostly in the second half. In their victory over the Dogs in R3, the Broncos missed just 14 tackles, signaling if they could get their defence right, they might go OK. But even after dropping the turnstile formerly known as Anthony Milford after their R5 loss to the Bunnies, the Broncos missed 41 tackles against Penrith.

By contrast, the Eels average 23 missed tackles per game: ranked 15^th, or the 2^nd best for making their tackles. Interestingly, measured by ineffective tackles (defender fails to prevent an offload), the Eels rank 3^rd worst (average 18.3/game) and the Broncos 2^nd worst (average 19/game). Obviously, each team permits some offloads, but whereas the Eels cover them, the Broncos play with blinkers on. With HOE temporarily down, forgive the poor graphic, but the Eels and Broncos are also two very different attacking units.

The questions to be asked this week, though, are two-fold. One, can the Broncos maximize their own strengths (right-side attack) when they come up against an Eels team whose weakness is left-side defense? Two, will that not matter? While the Eels are slow starters, they come home strong in the second half, while the Broncos tend to fade and stall down the stretch. 

Note the Broncos score 64% of their tries down their right side, where Pangai J roams and Coates waits on the wing. Meanwhile the Eels have conceded 44% of their tries down the left-side, where Opacic and Sivo defend. Thus, we should expect the Broncos to attack down the Eels’ left side. Assuming Kevvie is not too distracted by his stupid shirt to notice the obvious strategy.

But will it matter? In racing parlance, the Eels are like a stayer, getting better the longer the race goes. Below, blue means points scored, and red means points conceded. The Eels concede their points in the first half (collectively -16 differential based on first halves) but turn it around in the second (collectively +77 in their second halves). By contrast, the Broncos appear not even to ‘falter’, where a horse is in contention early and then drops back. Instead, the Broncos play like also-rans from the moment the boom gates open, conceding just as many points in the first half as they do in the second half.

With the exception, of course, of the Eels/Broncos game in R1. The Broncos jumped out to a 16-0 first half lead but were run down in the second half. While it thus took the Eels about 50 minutes to start reigning the Broncos in, it took about 70 minutes to retrieve the Parra Pessimists who had by then run into the streets screaming ‘not another bloody 2018’! That may have been us, too. Sorry.

 Somewhere between ironic and ominous is that the Eels are also slow starters at TIO Stadium in Darwin.

 But unlike the hoodoo that awaited the Eels last week at GIO Stadium in Canberra, at TIO Stadum in Darwin, the Eels might enjoy a track bias.

 Similarly, the Eels’ recent history against the Broncos bodes well for success.

The Bottom Line

 As Eels fans, we all know what happens when we think the opposition’s chances against us are akin to writing your own ticket (where a horse has little to no chance and bookies will give you whatever odds you ask). Yes, the Eels earn one of BA’s famous “the effort areas were not there, and we failed to show up” press conferences. But given the Broncos finished with the wooden spoon last year, and look shoe-ins for stone motherless again, it seems not unfair to saddle them with rank underdog status against an Eels team that has played at least 4.5 out of 6 good games so far in 2021.

 A Broncos victory would be like Donkey (Shrek) beating Black Caviar, or like a jockey thinking Winx will not accelerate, or like Prince of Penzance winning the Melbourne Cup … Oh, wait, frak, Prince of Penzance won the 2015 Melbourne Cup at 100-1 and they made a damn movie out of it (Ride Like a Girl). On that note, we should point to Blake Ferguson, the Eels’ leading tryscorer in 2021.

Clearly, Fergo is really Jason Statham. Fergo transports himself to the line with great regularity, can crank out the meters from the backfield, and his nose obviously has a relationship with all things fast and furious. Have you ever seen Fergo and Jason Statham in the one place? From Fergo/Statham, we take our inspiration for Round 7: