Trauma snowballing syndrome and the urge to blow things up isn’t just something buried in human DNA. It's now rebranded as “high standards". Forty Years can do that. Sometimes, all it takes is a few minutes.
But let’s park the emotion for a minute. What actually happened yesterday?
The good news? We fought. Fought hard. That’s two weeks back-to-back. Despite being undermanned, we’ve already used 28 players - the most in the comp - and have the worst injury toll in the game.
The bad news? We didn't stick to what works.
Foxlab shows we made 15-9 errors. That’s the game.
If you’re handing over that much ball, you’re not winning too many.
Fair dinkum. You could have a $17 million roster and a recruitment team featuring Jesus, Mary, Mohammed and Buddha. You’re still getting beat.
Even the Panthers lost 32-16 to the Dogs with 15-8 errors two weeks ago. The Storm made 13-9 errors and lost 48-6 to Souths this week.
Given the injury crisis and rebuilding roster and the fact we’ve been losing the yardage battle every week (see table above) and possession except for once (Broncos game), the adjustment isn't complicated. It's obvious. We have to kick longer, at least over 600 metres, chase hard, hold the ball, make no more errors than the opponents, and complete above 80%.
When we do that, we compete or win.
When we don’t, we lose, usually badly.
Yes, it's boring. It’s not revolutionary. It's not sexy. It just works.
In the first half, despite errors, we kept largely to that blueprint. The kicking game and chase was doing its job - close to 500 metres - was keeping things within possibility of an upset. We were still in the fight at 7-6. Hanging in by our finger nails.
But in the second half, we fell away from that. Kick metres dropped to around 240m. Errors kept piling up at critical moments in the wrong places. We invited Manly to "please enjoy almost unlimited possession and field position." Game over.
Emotions will point to the highlight reel.
Saab and Hopoate, right and left wingers, combining to slice through the middle.
Garrick making a break on our left edge.
Sean Russell missing a tackle and getting steamrolled.
Oka bashing Walker out of the game and running over blokes like he’s late for a Sunday roast.
But cold-hard stats tell a deeper story.
The game didn’t slip away gradually.
Thirteen Minutes of Choas
It snapped. Between the 50th and 63rd.
The score went from 7-6 to 27-6.
4 tries in 13-minutes.
Lights out.
But that thirteen minutes of chaos didn’t happen in isolation.
It sat in within a mammoth 20-minute momentum swing. Almost one long fatigue-feast of a death zone.
Between the 46th and 66th.
Possession was almost 80% against us.
13 /15 vs 2 / 4 sets
87% v 50% completions
It all kicked off with a single error.
Then the avalanche.
5 errors
2 restarts
1 penalty
1 sin bin
4 tries
22–0
We didn't lose the game over 80 minutes.
For 67 minutes, we led 18-11.
Uncomfortable Truths
When momentum shifts nowadays, it doesn’t just shift, it accelerates. One error becomes two. Two becomes a set restart. Then a penalty. Then fatigue. Then someone’s in the bin. Then you’re watching wingers carve up the middle with your head spinning.
Naturally, the You're Fired Posts were inevitable. Sack R&R. Sack the Team. Sack Ryles. Sack the board. Sack the Club. Rebuild the club by Tuesday morning. Get Shane Richardson in, he'll bring us Galvin. Get Matt Cameron. He'll bring Ice and Talagi back along with Alamoti and Jenkins. Job Done. Who said running a $200m organization was hard and needed 5-year plans?
Right now, until we get troops back and new signings like Su'a, this team doesn’t have the punch or luxury of intricate playing loose or expressive footy for long periods. Or to look hot. We’ve got to stick to a simple blueprint, and it’s about as exciting as a trip to the dentist. Hard yakka.
We know exactly what works. We just don’t always stick to it. And when we don’t, we get thirteen minutes like that or worse.
Replies
Agreed, HOE, the new 6-Again Regime creates huge runs of possession. Ironically, Vlandy's and the NRL over pre-season talked incessantly about how their proposed rule changes were all about creating changes in possession. If one were a conspiracy theorist, one might suspect the NRL has set about ensuring by end-of-season that everyone will be clamouring for whatever rule change ensures changes not gluts of possession!
As for Russell, it was one his worst games for quite some time. He seemed off-the-pace. Hopefully he is OK. Head knocks are no longer treated as "get over it ya wuss', rightfully so.
I want to push on you on this Daz, cause whilst I get your "armchair R&R experts" narrative and I agree it definitely holds true to a small minority, I think it's flawed. And I respect your opinions a lot so I'm going to go toe to toe with you on it.
Here's where I sit on the matter - I am by far and away not an expert in R&R in the NRL, or in any other sport for that matter. I have decades of real experience running organisations with hundreds to thousands of people so understand a lot about people as capital, human behaviour, management at scale etc...but I don't for a second think any of that experience crosses over usefully into the world of the NRL - I'm not that naive nor that impressed with myself.
But (and here's where I disagree with your narrative) you don't have to be an expert to criticise someone who is paid to be an expert.
I would certainly hope that MON is better than me at R&R, and at running a football operation. That is the premise for his employment and has been for many, many, many years now. Being better than me doesn't mean he's good - I am an objectively terrible bar for that (as are all of us on this site). I could find a thousand dodgy mechanics who know more about cars than I do but are still objectively bad mechanics. I'm not comparing him to me or my opinion. I'm comparing his outcomes to those of his peers. And as evidenced by our squad over his tenure...he is underperforming his peers regularly and routinely over a long period of time.
On Russell in particular, his stocks have gone up and down and up and down. He was originally touted as one of the juniors that would show us exactly why our pathways were now great. Then the tide turned and everyone said he was bog average. Then he had some good games and everyone jumped on the Russell train again, and then he signed with Perth and the knives came out and he was going to be the next Hayne.
There's definite FOMO in the Eels supporter base and it leads to super silly conversations. But none of that means we can't hold professionals to professional standards, compare them against their peers, and call out that they're not objectively doing a great job even if we ourselves can't do the job. I'm not saying I should replace MON, I'm saying someone better than him should...and that given his performance that shouldn't be that hard to find.
FWIW I don't think Russell is worth fighting for - he's NRL standard, but not exceptional and is defintely replaceable. To me he's just another example of us over-valuing the potential in our juniors and trying to dream up a scenario where our juniors are all suddenly the next coming of Andrew Johns. It's what makes me equally concerned at the talk surrounding the next batch of juniors who are all apparently going to deliver us to the promised land (which is why it doesn't matter that MON is bad at his job).
Good point on that since someone is better than someone at something doesn't automatically make them great at it.
Its where many people use the "he's played footy and you haven't so you can't have an opinion" claim. I mean not many people have been PM but many abuse whoever is PM.
Im more in the boat of giving credit where due, not using small examples to make argument stronger and not solely blaming one person when others have a say
Hi Captain, let's first clear some under-brush. You say the following: "But (and here's where I disagree with your narrative) you don't have to be an expert to criticise someone who is paid to be an expert."
I never made that assumption and would never make that assumption. Indeed I may even have written a whole book in which it is argued, in part, that non-experts can certainly make valuable critiques of experts. Note I also argue that domain specialists are probably best placed versus non-domain specialists to make judgments about domain-specialism claims. Both claims can be true!
How can both claims be true? Your dodgy mechanics analogy tells us how. We do not have to be a mechanic to know if a mechanic might be swindling us. The mechanic can know more about some engine than us but we have some non-mechanic knowledge relevant to assessing if the mechanic is swindling us.
Thus, my critique of the R&R experts is NOT that they are NOT R&R experts. My critique is of the cherry picking in the evidence they offer as part of their critique. I am simply saying an argument that relies on cherry picking is probably more agenda than reasoned case. Also, I very much doubt that there is a direct, linear, deterministic relation between GM and on-field performance. Of course there are strong relations. But the 'movement' we have seen in some of these critiques, like NOT paying overs to keep Russell as a sign of poor mgmt, are just completely overblown.
I don't know if we actually disagree, to be honest. It is a fair point to say that IF a GM has been overseeing a decline since a 2022 GF appearance, questions should be asked. I am only saying, for instance, that the critique gets a bit ridiculous when appearing in a GF in 2022 is discounted from consideration, along with appearing in the finals 2019-2022. Yes the wheels appear to have fallen off, but we know at least that we cannot infer deterministically and linearly from GM to on-field success if our GM's relation to on-field success has been finals 2019-2022 and non-finals 2023-2025 (yes 2026 soon too!).
I am being a critic of the critics not because they are not GM experts but because their critique has a giant flaw in it.
Lol, very fair Daz, maybe we don't actually disagree because I completely agree with what you've written.
I think I agree we agree, Captain. Onward ho!
Who was saying to pay overs for Russell. He has turned a corner to some degree this year, but certainly not a player we should pay overs for is he. If they the coach's believed in him "I didn't untill his chip kick to score game" and they wanted him then it's a bad loss, if they think it was too much for his talent level then so be it.
I hope the fixing the R&R debate dosnt get bogged down in minorities calling for certain players to be paid overs or let go etc. Surely people can get behind fixing the R&R committee and finding away to sign, resign, identify and keep young talent and the players that the coach's are shortlisting in the first instance. If we trust the coach then R&R are only doing a bad job when they can't secure whom they go after. This is what needs fixing. Its a committee of 4 people surely it can be identified what's going wrong, the how and why on missing out on targeted players that they want or want to keep. Fix that may be the last piece of the puzzle to becoming the powerhouse club.
Nice analysis HOE. Our forwards and backs cannot get us the important forward metres. Thus we are losing the yardage. Only saving grace is Moses big boots. However, our middle and backs are always getting steam rolled against bigger counterparts. It initially causes fatigue that results in missed tackles. This is the time when dumb penalties and errors coming in and 6 agains rears its ugly head causing more tackles and more fatigues. Then it is rinse and repeat throughout the remaining minutes of the game. It only takes one error or one penalty or one 6 again to put our players in this ugly cycle.
I appreciate the efforts of our middles especially the younger ones for their effort, but in any other team, our middles will not play FG. Unfortunately, our senior middle Junior has an on again, off again performance. JDV no longer has strong carries. I agree that we currently do not have the right roster for the current NRL game. Who is responsible for this? Is it the coach? R&R? the pencil pushers who do not have any in depth knowledge and field experience of the game? Whoever it is, we need to find the root cause of the problem and take the appropriate solution to it. It is not enough that the club is earning revenues, it should also be winning Permiereships.
TolEllts, agreed the Eels have some issues in yardage. Of coourse when I checked in with the comments on 1EE during the Manly game, it was interesting to read some arguing that we lack strike edge backrowers. Of course we are missing Tuilagi, who beat Broncos almost on his own, and Kautoga, who many claim is constantly threatening to create breaks.
But maybe that just says that the edge backrowers at the Eels who are attacking weapons are defensive liabilities? And the edge backrowers at the Eels who are defensively more sound lack attacking prowess? And maybe that explains Su'A?
Great breakdown HOE, and I completely agree that this one wasn't on the players and their effort, or the coaching staff and their plan. We are playing a hodge-podge first grade side at the moment and thus we need very simple plans that we can execute. This means we will probably be outplayed regularly, but it also means that if our opposition makes more mistakes than us we will be in a position to capitalise on it.
I thought we played with high effort and I thought the overall gameplan was solid. I also don't hold scorelines in the same was as I did a few years ago because it's clear the game is being driven to have high scores which means blowouts will be more common and margins need to be taken with a grain of salt.
This season a margin of 12-18 points between teams at full time is a "tight game", not a demolition. In prior seasons that wouldn't have been true.
I still think our Top 30 is poor in comparison to the average team in the NRL and on paper we deserve to be in the lower quartile of teams (on paper). I don't think Jack Gibson could have lifted this squad to Top 4, injuries or no injuries. I think the only team who is very objectively worse than us on paper is St George, which ironically. is where we're poaching our great signing for next year from.
Injuries have definitely hurt us this year and have made us sit lower than we otherwise would have on the ladder. The change in game refereeing has made our For & Against worse than it would have been in other years because fatigue is deliberately being used by the games administrators to get more tries per game.
Both of those aside, our roster is not a very good roster. Fully fit and with the rules of last year, we are still getting regularly beaten. The shape of our roster is entirely within our control as a club and if we try to play it off as just happenstance then I truly believe we're doing ourselves a huge disservice.
Your uncomfortable truths turn into uncomfortable excuses...and that is where I straight up disagree. Our Top 30 is not a great Top 30 and that is our lesson to learn. Whether we choose to learn it or not is entirely up to moments like these where we either take acocuntability, or we say it's all not our fault.
There's a brilliant quote by one of my favourite authors Joseph Heller that I quote a lot in my professional life, and I think it applies to the Eels a lot as it shows how many in the world like to accept good luck as their doing, and claim no ownership of the bad times:
Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.
Our squad is not simple bad luck. We did this. And if we don't face into it we will keep doing it.
Love your work as always HOE and I know I'm one of the annoying agitators on this. It comes from a place of passion, not for internet drama points. I truly believe if we don't face into this we will continue to be mediocre regardless of the coach and player churn.
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