1. Bev - positional play excellent, some great takes of the high ball under heavy pressure. Appears stronger than last season in both defence & carrying the ball into contact.
2. Semi - a typical Semi game of strong carries making tough metres. Helped Bev out at the back nicely with kick returns & made a couple of great takes of dangerous looking kicks. Ran down a noted speedster in no time at all & smashed him to gain an important turn-over.
3. MJ - a much higher involvement than he has shown in many previous games. Defensively very strong as always. BA knows that the side of the field where MJ & Semi defend will not give up many points (if Ricky the Stats Guru has any info on this he might kindly tell us where The Eels ranked last season, my guess is that we were probably one of the best in the comp).
4. Taka - one of the leading kick-chasers all game & gained us a few repeat sets with his efforts.
5. The Hoff - became more involved as the game progressed with some good carries & saved a certain try with a terrific read in defence. Was in perfect position to pick up two tries if the passes had been spot on.
6. Guth - nice try with a show-and-go. Every attempt at goal (even the one that missed) looked cleanly struck.
7. Corey - his first game in many months was all-round quality. Controlled the game well & looked like making several clean breaks even after such a long lay-off.
8. S.M. - was targeted by the whole Manly pack but came out on top. Powerful carries & some brutal hits in defence. What a great acquisition for Parra. He has found the home he deserves.
9. Kaysa - good service from dummy half, looked sharp when running the ball, followed Brown & others to pick up some offloads & made nearly 40 tackles in an 80 minute performance where he paced himself nicely.
10. Captain Tim - with Matagi, one of the best forwards on the day for The Eels.
11. Manu - a freakish offload for Bev's try. As ever, full-on effort in defence & attack.
12. Tep - the opposition continually committed plenty of numbers in defence on Tep, but he still made good meters. A big shot on Tapau that jolted the ball loose would indicate that his troublesome shoulder injury is fixed.
13. Beau - up in the face of the Manly attack & combined well with Kaysa in leading the defensive line forward.
14. Brownie - showed he can play the ball at the line, offload, make strong charges & hit hard in defence. We might have found our successor to Beau when he decides to call time.
15. Danny & 16. Rory - a good indicator of why we should have confidence in our depth this year. They may have other players ahead of them in terms of selection but they worked hard & did not let the side down in any way.
17. Frank - appears to be a bit lighter than in past seasons & with more game time his off-loading abilities will be a definite asset.
After a second viewing of the game I noted a few factors worth taking into account in assessing Parra's performance.
It has been mentioned that The Eels should have won by more considering the weight of possession. The stats I've seen show that Parra only had 6 more sets than Manly. Our completion rate was the big difference & the pressure we applied with our defence forced a lot of their errors. Manly had the breeze behind them in the second half. Apart from one lapse in defence under fatigue in the last few minutes of the game we would have won the second half & kept the opposition scoreless. Over the years Parra have seemed to struggle on a heavy or wet track, but in this game, on the back of a game plan of dominating territory with strong defence & accurate kicking to the in-goal for repeat sets, we controlled the game well.
Manly were given a fair bit of latitude in not only slowing down the ruck but also their defensive line was often inside the 10 metre mark. This meant that this was a game that was never going to be full of free-flowing attacking football. Even so, the Eels created a lot of scoring opportunities & came up with a number of near misses. Bev was very close to scoring. Manly just managed to scramble & force the ball in-goal twice from well-weighted kicks. A pass from Bev just floated forward to an unmarked Josh Hoffman & if Gutho had thrown a cut-out pass to the Hoff, who again had an open run to the line, he could of easily had a double. The support was a split second from MJ when he was wrapped up by the defence with the line wide open.
In the first game of the season with our new halves combo & spine, against a fired up opposition on their home track, a number of players running out for the first time for The Eels, a few recent distractions off-field & yet we still managed to come away with a solid win. Also, over the next few weeks a number of players including Vave, Peni, Auva'a and Kenny the Cramp will all be pushing for a place in our starting 17. As the combinations improve & we have competition increasing for places in the game-day squad, The Eels are going to be very competitive in 2017.
Replies
Yep - that'll do.
It will be interesting when Kenny does become available because I don't think he will be given a free ride into FG - I reckon his "punishment" will continue to make him prove his worth to the team.
Six rounds is a great opportunity for someone else to stake their claim as a regular FGer
Only other thing worth noting is there needs to be more communication with the back 3. There were at least 3 times where 2 of Those 3 nearly collided with each other. Should be easy enough to fix though
But it does have BACON.
I reckon Kenny Baybee could be on his last chance at the Eels and is going to need to prove himself.
Like I said - six rounds is a bloody long time and maybe someone WILL show they are every bit as good as Kenny.
Then what?
Hope it becomes a weekly