Prior to the Raiders game, more than a few 1Eyed's were proclaiming that Canberra's attack was going to run riot, having made the Bulldogs D look feeble on a number of occasions the week prior.
One of the replies to the naysayers, went along the lines of, let's see if they can do it against Parramatta's defence.
As it turns out that proves to be the prophetic take on the match.
The first aspect of Parramatta's defence that slips under the radar is the linespeed. Linespeed is important for two reasons - if helps you to limit the metres that the opposition makes, but secondly it reduces thinking time.
For Parramatta, I think the latter is even more important than the former. Based on meterage, the Eels and Raiders were pretty equal, both coming in around the 1400m mark with a pretty even split of possession.
However, what I’ve observed about the Eels defence is it is just relentless. Every single ruck, the Eels present a fast-moving, organised line that moves up across the park.
It means opposition teams don’t have a lot of time to execute their plays, and the result is we’re hurrying a lot of teams into error. Ricky Stuart lamented his side’s poor execution, but it’s not just Canberra that has struggled. In only one game this year, has a side executed at 80 per cent and that was against a very conservative Dogs side that tried very little against our defence and only scored in rubbish time.
That’s an astounding statistic, given an 80 per cent completion rate is probably a baseline figure for an acceptable performance.
What’s more, according to nrlstats.com, Parramatta gave up just five fast play-the-balls. Again, that’s a remarkable achievement across 80 minutes, which tells you how much good work the Eels are doing in the ruck.
This isn’t a defence that goes out and necessarily dominates the opposition as Dylan Nappa did last week against the Bunnies. Sure, there are the big hits, but it’s probably fair to say few people have wallked out of any Parramatta match proclaiming that the Eels had bashed their opposition into submission.
Rather, it’s a defence that does it’s job on each and every single ruck. The defence gets strongly off the line, makes good contact with numbers in and then they do the dirty work on the ground. Subsequently, we’ve seldom been caught on our heels and back-pedalling, and opposition attacks simply aren’t getting presented with a lot of time to manufacture fancy backline movements. From the hard-work in the middle to Semi and Gutherson doing a terrific job of coming in at just the right time, every man in that defensive line is doing their job and to quote BA’s favourite phrase they “just keep turning up for each other”.
The beauty of a defence this strong and this organised, is that the playing group will develop an immense amount of self belief. They will believe they can beat any team, because if you think the opposition isn't going to score many points, you're always in with a chance. Even when they make an error, they'll believe they can hold out the attacking team and get the ball back.
And to me, that's what we're seeing out there in the park right now. A well-coached, organised, energetic defence playing with a heightened level of confidence and self-belief. And that's a foundation for a team that can achieve anything.
Replies
I reckon it says a lot for our players when we can carry a middle forward who only makes 20 tackles in just over 50 minutes of football yet be able to keep opposition teams out. With Junior going next year I wonder if we'll see more/better in attack from Moeroa?
On a side note, wasn't it terrific how big a game Junior put in against the Raiders. I don't think players necessarily deliberately shirk in games against clubs they are heading to, but I think it's probably difficult to get into the headspace where you want to go out and belt your future team mates. Junior, of course, absolutely belted a few blokes and I think that says a lot about the spirit and mindset in the playing group.
I think it's such a big thing just to not have any weak link in the defence. A lot of modern day coaching is about identifying weaknesses in the opposition defence, and then working out ways to exploit it, but there just isn't much to exploit in our side. You truly need to do something pretty special with the ball to get through us, and that pressure means you push a little bit hard or choke and come up with the error. Kieran Foran is an excellent defender, and he's probably the weakest link purely on size alone. That's saying something indeed.
I particularly have enjoyed the defensive work of our centres, Jennings and Takaraingi.
I've always thought your defence is usually as good as the defence of your centres, its the hardest place on the field to defend. Jennings in particular has surprised me at how good a tackler he is, I guess I never focused on t that part of his game until he came here, but he is one hell of a good defensive centre.
Nice observations Phil :)
Great read Phil. We are all very enthusiastic about what we are seeing and the fact that it is getting repeated week after week makes it more enjoyable.
As an aside, we were all disappointed to see Pauli Pauli depart and go to the Knights. Having watched him in a couple of games this year I an of the view that he would really struggle with the way we are playing "turning up for each other" at Parra in 2016.
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