Eels Blogs

Well, who let the dogs out? The Dogs finally cracked it for a win last week, upsetting the coach-less and somewhat toothless Sharks. This week we expect the Eels will hound them back into their kennel, but despite the Dogs currently competing for the spoon, history suggests a close game: 7 of the last 10 games decided by 8 or less, and of course the Eels’ famous grand final games against the Dogs in the 1980’s was each decided by 2 points. Will the Eels continue their form from last week’s demolition of the Broncos, where the Eels steamrolled a lesser team, or will it be like Shakespeare depicted in Julius Ceasar? With Ceasar lying dead on the floor, his general Marc Antony asked the conspirator assassins if he could make a speech to the people. Despite promising not to criticize the conspirators, Marc Antony declared ‘cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war’ (Act 3, Scene 1). Yeah, whatever. We may tip our hat in respect to the Dogs’ resilience last week, but let’s be honest, we are all more like Brutus, from Act 3, Scene 2, of Julius Ceasar: ‘as he was valiant, I honor him. But as he was ambitious, I slew him’. Welcome to Round 8.  

NOTE: please join me (Prof Daz) in thanking HOE for building the graphics, and discussing the narrative of the preview, from the hospital bed. The doctors have been rebuilding HOE and there is a GoFundMe page set up, as HOE is a few dollars short of the 6 million he needs to be, well, you know, the 6-million-dollar HOE.

Teams

Saturday 1 May, Stadium Australia, Sydney, 5:30pm (AEDT). Referee: Peter Gough. 

Dogs, not so hot:  1. Nick Meaney 2. Nick Cotric 3. Will Hopoate 4. Corey Allan 5. Tui Katoa 6. Jake Averillo 7. Kyle Flanagan 8. Dylan Napa 9. Sione Katoa 10. Luke Thompson 11. Adam Elliott 12. Chris Smith 13. Corey Waddell 14. Bradley Deitz 15. Renouf Atoni 16. Ava Seumanufagai 17. Matt Doorey 19. Brandon Wakeham 20. Joe Stimson 21. Dallin Watene-Zelezniak 23. Ofahiki Ogden

Head coach: Trent Mr Pretty Boy Barrett

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. Ryan Matterson 16. Haze Dunster 17. Bryce Cartwright 18. Joey Lussick 19. Keegan Hipgrave 20. Wiremu Greig 21. Jordan Rankin 

Head coach: Brad Arthur

Notes: For the Eels, Will Smith is out injured, Dylan Brown needs some cash apparently, Ryan Matterson returns off the bench, and for some truly mysterious reason Haze seriously-stay-on-your-wing Dunster is also on the bench. Huh? For the Dogs, we honestly don’t know, as out of pure sympathy we have avoided following their form. 

Observations from Last Week

Eels (vs Broncos), 46-6 (W), 59% possession, 77% completion rate, 11 line breaks, 49 tackle breaks, 16 offloads, 24 missed tackles, 11 errors.

Dogs (vs Sharks), 18-12 (W), 42% possession, 83% completion rate, 2 line breaks, 16 tackle breaks, 3 offloads, 40 missed tackles, 8 errors.

Eels/Broncos extended highlights HERE.

Dogs/Sharks extended highlights HERE.

Before we get to the Eels, we must point out that the stats from the Dogs/Sharks game all point to the Sharks doing everything they could to get the Dogs home. The Sharks enjoyed 58% possession. The Sharks made 40 (to 16) tackle breaks, had 12 (to 3) offloads, and missed 16 (to 40) tackles, but committed 16 (to 8) errors and had just a 66% completion rate. The Sharks had a total of six tries disallowed. Yes, the Dogs’ defence was resilient and desperate, but the Sharks created enough opportunities for the commentators to develop husky voices yelling ‘oh nooooo’.

By contrast the Eels created plenty of opportunities against the Broncos, and iced almost all of them, never taking their foot off the pedal. The heat and the humidity were tough for each team in Darwin, but the Eels refused to wilt and relax their guard. The Eels thus avoided a repeat of the R1 Broncos match where the Eels let their intensity drop. Similarly, the Eels avoided the Jeckyll and Hyde thing, where their play manifests split personalities across the two halves, like the Tigers game in R4 (errors, missed opportunities and poor execution creep into one of the halves).

Notably, the Eels manufacture many opportunities to score, being equal first in tackles in the opposition 20m zone. In both the Raiders and Broncos games, the Eels took advantage of early opportunities, created by errors by the opposition (Rapana, Coates), to score early points. Our conversion rates are dependent upon both our power game (which was in full swing against the Broncos) and our spine players playing eyes up footy and meeting the line and asking questions of the line. The Eels appear sometimes to rely too heavily on Gutho chiming into the line to create numbers, but against the Broncos Moses chose his moments wisely (witness his Karate Kid moment in the second half), Dylan Brown continued his recent form of getting in on the act and ran for 109m, and Mahoney was solid on either side of the ball. Cartwright was extremely dangerous on the left edge, having his best game for the Eels, and indeed probably his best game since his time at Penrith when he was touted as an Origin player.

Our middles all worked hard, but crucially, given the energy sapping conditions, they also worked smart. RCG (106m), Paulo (95m), Kaufusi (155m), and Papali’I (158m; played through the middle when Cartwright (111m) moved to left edge) shared the workload in the middle. Defensively, five of our six starting forwards made 20 tackles (Mahoney of course made 40). Our commitment to desperate defence was indicated by our goal-line defence, which continually repelled the human hulk TPJ (including on Moses’ edge who, which has leaked more points than our right this year (Nuikore says hello Waqa)). The Eels back three were also excellent: Gutho (146m), Sivo (206m), Blake Statham-Ferguson (199m). Overall, these stats suggest Brad Arthur had the team share the workload in both attack and defence, and the team executed that game plan.

A good team, playing a bad team, who is on an emotional high

Rather than dogs of war, lately the Dogs have been the dogs of minor skirmishes; or, mutts rolling in sh*t at the park. Put simply, it has been a bit ruff for the Dogs of late. Indeed, the dogs have literally not been this bad for decades.

After Trent Barret’s inglorious exit from Manly, Dogs fans would have hoped that Barrett’s time at Penrith as an assistant coach might have given him a fresh leash on life. But the Dogs started 2021 in a fur-miliar pattern for Barrett (recall his time at Manly), with a string of losses.

Yet is the Sharks game a sign that the Dogs might soon start retrieving some of the lost ground? Barrett is reported to have cried after the Dogs’ win. Someone should have said there is no need to terrier-self up, it’s just one win against a Sharks team who couldn’t ice a popsicle in a blizzard.

Barrett has not won many games as a head coach, so the tears of joy may have been for the players or for his own conscience (‘heh, I can do this’)? In fact, it has been three years since Barrett tasted a win as a head coach. Ironically, Barrett's last win as head coach was against the Dogs in R18, 2018, 18-6.

The Dogs players also appear to have derived a lot of inspiration for their break-through win, and could be heard asking each other at training “howl we do this weekend, ya think?”

Most importantly for R8, the Dogs’ forwards played with more directness and aggression than we have seen all year. Starting props Napa and Thompson ran for 130m and 156m respectively, the lock (Waddell) ran for 103m, and their bench prop Atoni ran for 101m. From the backfield, both wingers (Cotric and Katoa) ran for over 100m.

But these two teams are very different outfits, as the Eels are a far superior attacking unit, even if they do make some errors in general play. The Eels are also a better defensive unit, due to discipline (limited penalties conceded) and low missed tackle counts.

To get a sense of the difference between the two teams, we used NRL.COM to compare attack and defense statistics.

Attacking play: the smaller the number, the better the ranking (you succeed at doing these things better than others … here, 1^st is good, 16^th is bad)

Defensive play and discipline: the smaller the number, the worse the ranking (you are more guilty of these problems than others … here, 16^th is good, 1^st is bad)

The Bottom Line

These teams have some history, but this game is a statement game for each team, though in different ways. Historically, the Dogs are the Eels’ favourite nemesis.

Viewed since 1988, the Eels and Dogs games have seen results split evenly.

But in the past few years, the Eels have been mostly on the rise while the Dogs have fallen back into the pack, even if most games have been close affairs.

This steadily growing advantage to the Eels is reflected in the Eels dominance over the Dogs at the venue for this game, Stadium Australia.

 And that dominance is reflected in the coaching contest, too, with Brad Arthur enjoying a 4-1 count over Barrett.

Gutho knows the Dogs are going to be confident after their last-game win, and that the Eels will need to be sure to turn up in the right frame of mind, otherwise “the dogs will roll us”.

In the past, the Dogs have frustrated the Eels’ attack with aggressive, direct, in your face bustling. We want to say the Eels are a different team this year, but we all saw the Eels stumble against the Dragons in R5, and the Dragons bustled the Eels out of the contest (with help from suspiciously fast line speed). Similarly, over-powering the Broncos in R7, who are destined for the spoon again if we all get lucky, does not dispel the notion that the Eels are flat track bullies.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of signs that the Eels play with more purpose this year and have developed a killer instinct, via an attack that is more cohesive and well executed than in 2020. The killer instinct was evident in the victories over the Raiders and Broncos when the Eels pressed their advantage and ran away with each game. Certainly, new recruits Papali’i and Cartwright are adding attacking depth to the Eels’ arsenal, and Niukore and Opacic are holding the fort defensively in the centres, and both facets of the Eels’ play might be helping overcome our tendency to play in halves or even patches and continually give teams a chance.

Where will the game be played if stats tell us anything?

We anticipate the Eels to attack down their left-edge, using Moses and either Papali’i or Cartwright to straighten the attack and suck right-edge defenders in, creating room for Gutho on sweep plays and Opacic and Sivo on the outside. This strategy would pressure the relatively porous middle defense of the Dogs and test their capacity to slide out to their right side. If the Eels get too loose, like they did in the Tigers game, we expect errors and either plucky Dogs defense or the luck the Dogs enjoyed last week to lead to a close game. If the Dogs refuse to roll over, a close game will probably test the patience of Eels fans, who want to see the Eels turn up each week and run up scores against weaker opposition.

But last week we thought Fergo might transport himself to the line frequently, only for Sivo to score a hat trick. Maybe Sivo will finally break his duck against the mutts and score a few? The Dogs’ right edge defence has been better than the Broncos’ right edge, allowing just three more tries than the Eels’ right edge (so far) this year, despite the Dogs being the second worst defensive team in the competition. But a strategy of going left against the Dogs would bring Sivo into play, and he is a much better finisher than the Wobbegongs masquerading as wingers at the Sharks.

Our prediction is that the Dogs are free to talk a good game of crying havoc and unleashing the dogs of war, or as Ceasar opined, he is “constant as the Northern Star” (III.i.60) and could “lift up Olympus (III.i.74). But Ceasar did not make it out of Act 3, Scene 1. One way to thus think of this upcoming match is to say the Eels are going to do the Dogs a favour, putting them out of their Season 2021 misery. Remember, after Ceasar had said “Et tu, Brute” (III.i.76), Brutus went on to tell the conspirators they had graciously shortened the time Ceasar would have spent fearing his demise. The Broncos and Dogs will compete for the spoon in 2021 and the Eels are going to shorten the time the Dogs spend thinking they can avoid that impending fate.