The curtain has come down on the regular season as eight teams begin their off-season and look to head home.
The remaining eight now gear up for the final month of the season as we see them get whittled down to the final two on grand final day.
As many people will tell you in the next week, finals are a different beast. Regular season form generally goes out the door as teams become more desperate with teams battling to keep their seasons alive.
The Eels are playing their third consecutive finals series and are beginning to have one of the more experienced finals squads. Depending on the team selected, only Joey Lussick and Will Penisini could be making their finals debuts, and even then Lussick has played high stakes games in England for Salford as he helped them win promotion to the Super League.
With 2021 being an odd season courtesy of the broadening of the set restarts and the competition once again being impacted by COVID, week one of the finals will likely introduce a number of interesting storylines.
The final round saw the Eels, Storm and Rabbitohs all rest large numbers of players, while the likes of Penrith, Manly and the Roosters all fielded their best available 17.
The Storm were clunky but got the job done, and they had been clunky for the last month of the season as the side was shifted around due to injury and they had wrapped up top four.
Penrith were also far from their best as evidenced by the fact they only led 12-6 at half time over Parramatta's reserve grade before the lack of fitness for Parramatta's second tier players took its toll late in the game.
The Roosters had no players to rest and the same could be said for Manly, while South Sydney heavily rotated their side. Newcastle and the Titans were in interesting positions. The Knights rested some players but were run over by the Broncos in the final round, while the Titans balled out against a hapless Warriors outfit. Neither of those matches would be ideal leading into the finals.
For Parramatta, a six week period of mediocre to terrible performances was arrested with a stellar display against the Storm and with the first grade squad rested in round 25, they possess perhaps the fittest team heading into the finals.
Finals demand another level of quality from teams and the Eels should be well aware of it, given their growing experience at the business end of the season.
There is no room for complacency, and while the Knights are actually one of the poorest sides to make the final in NRL history with a -150 differential, Parramatta can't be turning up with one eye on the loser of Penrith vs Souths.
But as fans, we can, especially given week two of the finals is an absolute base level of expectation.
Parramatta has shown, with its win over the Storm, that it has the structure, game management, skill level and defensive commitment to beat the most dominant attacking side since the Eels of 2001.
Now it's a question of stringing that together for four more weeks.
The new season starts this weekend, and hopefully the Eels are still in it, in four weeks time.
Replies
We landed where most had us placed at the beginning of the season, in 6th.
Apart from Canberra having one of "those" seasons most teams up the top are as expected.
The rest of the season has essentially been a warm up. No "soft draw" this year, we had one of (if not the) hardest runs home of any teams. The season for us starts now. If we want to shake the "pretenders" tag, this is the only time of year it's going to happen.
Go the Eels!!!
Yeah I suppose you have to feel for a lot of kids who have there team not make the semis. A new beginning for many sides trying to make sense of there disappointments. May be worth while to accept we have done better than many others. Hope if we bail out we can do it based on the best effort they can put up and not have too many excuses. Always sad for me seeing the season end
Penisini was amazing against Melbourne, he has the strength, speed and talent to be our centre going forward. I'd prefer him over Opacic who is very slow and makes lot of mistakes..
I'm worried about the Knights game, have a feeling Ponga will kill us.
Ponga vs our rush up right side oh no
I tend to agree with Brissy.
Ponga looks busted. He's definitely carring an injury or two.
The Knights attack looks woeful.
If we lose to the very average O'Brien Knights then BA should and will be punted to the moon.
Anything less than a dominant win will be an unmitigated disaster.
Ponga has gone backwards under super coach Adam ovrien
he runs sideways and looks like he is a confused pkayer
the knights 5:8 is terrible I'm sure the cowboys are glad they let Jake Clifford go - he is killing Bradman best on the left and cruel king one of the best young centres in the game I who gets bugger all space these days
Parra by 13+
I think his due Brissy
You only worry about Ponga out of broken play if we dictate where Newcastle get the ball it lessens his threat that's the key.
For me it's on our spine how deep we go.If they continue to click we can beat anybody
I remember a Tigers game last year when they were playing decent footy with a lot of ball movement and Harry Grant was ripping people's middles with his dummy half running.
What takes away from this is much like what you do with Ponga complete high and make sure they play out of corners or at least have to have long fields.As for the most part we have a set defense in place.
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