Gus Gould often says there is only one thing harder than winning a game.
It’s winning it twice.
In Round 1, 2021, Parramatta came back from 16–0 down at halftime to beat Brisbane 24–16 at Suncorp.
Five years later, in Round 2 on Thursday night, it happened again. Only this time it was harder. Much harder.
Down 20–6, Parramatta stormed back to win 40–32 in a match you had to watch to believe.
Perhaps it wasn't surprising last night's Broncos vs Eels was the most searched topic on google, with the coverage attracting over 2.7 million viewers across Nine and Fox according to nrl.com.
But the difference is the Broncos of 2021 were a club rebuilding after their wooden spoon in 2020. If you punched them in the nose, they often wobbled. We also were regular finalists from 2019 back then. This Broncos side is very different. Defending premiers. Two grand final appearances in the past three seasons. One of the game's most dangerous attacking arsenals.
And half-way through the first-half they looked every inch the defending premiers.
Image: Walsh gets the Broncos off to a flyer | Getty.
The Broncos Blitz
At 20–6, in the twenty-fifth minute, Brisbane were in complete control. The scoreboard didn’t reflect how dominant they were.
Reece Walsh sliced through the middle in a manner fitting of his 2025 grand final heroics. For fun. Toying with us. Payne Haas strolled through our left edge like it was butter. The Broncos’ kicking game was lethal, and repeatedly caught our fullback out of position.
Image: Haas strolls through | Getty.
The stats didn’t lie. Field position. Momentum.
70% possession.
Perfect sets. 17 from 17 to our 7 from 9.
The tackle count told the real story.
129 to 64.
Parramatta weren’t just losing. They were barely surviving.
Even the penalities and restarts were collectively 7-2 against us. It felt eerily similar to last week's 52–4 mauling by Melbourne. Fatigue was setting in. The floodgates looked ready to open.
Any minute now.
And then the game flips on its head
Three tries in five minutes. Suddenly Brisbane’s dominance meant nothing. By halftime Parramatta had turned 20–6 into 22–20.
At first it looked chaotic. Opportunistic. Even lucky. But Andrew Johns noticed something. Parramatta weren’t just throwing the ball around Hail Mary style. They were running structured shapes, isolating Brisbane’s left edge with decoys, inside lines and outside runners appearing where defenders didn’t expect them. It was smart.
“Well coached,” Johns concluded.
And it worked. The Broncos’ left edge had been vulnerable last season, conceding the fourth-most tries in the competition. Parramatta found it again.
Surprise, Surprise, Momentum Swings Again
Two minutes into the second half, Iongi crossed on that same Broncos left edge. Parramatta extend the lead to 26–20.
But the pendulum swung yet again.
Brisbane hit back to level the scores at 26–26.
Then, at the 60-minute mark, Reece Walsh produced another moment of brilliance.
The Broncos surged ahead once more. 32–28.
Brisbane sensed blood. They had the momentum again. Eels fans could be forgiven for thinking the same thing. At least we put up a fight. The old Parramatta might have folded there. Many teams would have.
Bookies had tipped Brisbane to win this game comfortably. It was the most favored result of the entire round. A fait accompli. They had too much firepower. Especially, after last week’s humiliation where our fan base had spent the week in meltdown. Sack the recruitment team. Move Pezet on. Jason Ryles was Stephen Kearney 2.0.
The noise was loud. And about to go nuclear.
But Parramatta had other ideas.
The Second Comeback
They didn’t panic.
They did the boring things.
No miracle passes. No desperate offloads. No coast-to-coast going nowhere. Completed sets. Kicked long. Chased hard. Tackled hard. Just football. Mitchell Moses’ kicking game, well below its usual standard the week before, become the backbone.
66m kicked in the first half last week, became over 600m this week.
Instead of forcing errors, the Eels forced Brisbane to work from deep in their own half.
The Broncos pressed. We held. Eventually they cracked. Their errors increased. 12–5. Penalties mounted in our favour. 8–3. And when they made their mistakes, we pounced however they could.
It wasn’t always pretty. A few ugly Pezet kicks. But it worked. Almost everything we failed to do the previous week, we did this time. The middle was better. Ryley Smith was better. So was Tallyn Da Silva. Dylan Walker was a colossus. Kelma Tuilagi had the game of his career. Isaiah Iongi, class as usual. There was urgency.
We played for each other this week.
Our defence still needs work, we're not all there yet, but the most impressive part wasn’t the scoreboard.
It was between the ears.
We came back off the canvas from last week's massacre, down and out for the count. And then we came back to win the game. Twice. The real question is: Is this the real Eels?
Table: Comparing 2021 vs 2026 comebacks
Footnote: All Stats used in this article are from nrl.com unless noted otherwise.
Replies
The key to Parra isn't there stars it's there workers.If we can get consistency from them we'll be in every contest as then Moses can play off the back of it.It's not rely on Moses Iongi or whomever to pull a rabbit out of the hat.We fight and show grit in the little areas of the game as above we'll be competitive.
32 points is ugly after 52 last week so I guess this resurgence in improvement has to start somewhere I'd suggest there.Dragons this week and the best team in the comp next week I'd suggest the hill gets no easier to climb.
Coryn, well said. After the Panthers strangled the Sharks, I loved what Brian To'o said post-game: “Hard work beats talent.” Hard yakka.
It was also interesting what Nathan Cleary said in an interview about last year’s finals loss to the Broncos that ended their incredible four-title-five-grand-final streak: it was the first time he felt another team was fitter than them.
That offers small but telling clues about the Panthers’ mindset and the foundation of their success, even after losing a bevy of stars. Year after year, due to other clubs' offering more money.
With To'o and his comment of "Hard work beats talent" leans into what i suspect with my comments below as well. Discipline, ie hard work to get back in the line and move up when fatigued , the cover defending the fullback getting back in position,the hard yakka, the marathon fitness is now more important then ever then talent alone.
The way the game is being policed right now and the direction that V'Landys is pushing the game, i think the very essence of whom your trying to recruit may have changed. You now need players with enormous stamina and mental toughness to push through fatigue, the talent only players are simply being found out now. Reece Walsh a classic last week, like Cronk said in commentary, Walsh has clocked off for the night, when he didn't get back into position to stop a try. You see it with another talented player in Latrell, Bennett identified it and had the courage to demote him from fullback to centre,obviously done for the same reasons.
The game is being transformed before our eyes.
A great view on how we did it, HOE.
I'm wondering if we are forgetting the 27th person on the field, the referee. I'm watching a different game this year, where it feels referees are playing a huge part in the games. I can't get over the feeling that results and or periods of the game are decided by 6 agains and penalties. I've watched a lot of games and momentum swings are coming from a 6 again , penalty, try, or variances of that.
I still can't really tell if we have a good team, a bad team or a top 8 team. I don't like really talking about referees, and i usually avoid it, but watching footy this year, i have a sense that a win this year is so dependant on being on the right side of 6 gains and penalties. The scenes of 2 or 3 quick try's in a small period are becoming common place.
I'm thinking the rule of who kicks off after the try that the NRL attempted to bring in, may have been the circuit breaker required to stop this from happening, breaking up the weight of possession, ensuring if someone scored then the defending team may get the ball back, if the Captain so decided. A way to stop momentum on a grand scale.
I'm not sure how to treat some scorelines this year. Real or artificially created. I'm not sure i have seen the weight of possession being so dominate by so many teams in so many differing periods of a game. Just as a long kick or a great ball playing half or a speedy backline was critical to winning, i suspect the art of discipline and fatigue management or marathon fitness is just as or more important this year.
Thanks, Bluey. You're onto something. Refs are having a huge say. Most points are off the back of a combination of either errors, penalties or restarts.
Restarts are getting out of hand and so inconsistent it isn't funny anymore. They've doubled from last year.
V'landy's has too much say into the results.
He manages the NRL like a Venezuelian economy where killer restart inflation doubles at the drop of a hat. Keating's Banana Republic.
Restarts ended up 4-4 this game. Mild compared to last week. 9-5. Last year the average was around 4.6 per game.
Ruck control is now even more important than it was during the Storm wrestling days, which restarts were meant to help. The cure has become far worse than the initial illness.
Gus Gould says you get a few restarts and it can change the momentum of the entire game.
The issue with restarts is they are for very minor infringements which in the past wouldn't warrant penalities. And to ensure teams don't deliberately give away restarts early in the tackle count, refs can sin-bin players for multiple restarts. I think it's like three or four straight, and a sin bin is on the cards.
Ridiculous in my view.
PS: I've had to edit my blog. I've rechecked the final restart-penalty stats and they've changed from game day.
The game hasn't changed as much as you'd like to think the good teams keep momentum by not making errors keeping there games simple and completing sets.
The 3 games I did watch this week were ours Riff and Melbourne.
Melbourne was the interesting one because the Dragons were right in it physically and were coming over the top of Storm and when Gutherson got HIAed the class of the Storm shone through and Dragons errors piggybacked them the result by gifting them field position and the momentum swung and it was game over.
Riff are on a mission this year last year they were injured like nobodies business were last and still made it one game away from the GF if they stay uninjured I think they'll win the comp.Early signs are great there defense looks right on the mark and they just outmuscled outdid Sharks and beat them on the scoreboard and on the park.Big thing here they suffocated them with there defense and won the grind and the sharks couldn't go with them.
Its a simple game rugby league you just got to execute the small things and don't give the referees and excuse to mess with the result you get the simple stuff wrong then the variables like 6 agains and refereeing decisions play a part.The good teams aren't as affected and it may look like favouritism but the good teams execute the simple things consistently imo that's the difference.
I mean how long have Melbourne got away with slowing the ruck down 10-20 years.Everyone says it but no one has the answer to beat it.
Saints looked primed for an upset leading 20-18 with twenty to go. But then from 61’ to 74’. Thirteen minutes. Boom.
Saints 4 errors.
Storm 4 tries.
A Faalogo hat-trick.
22 points. Game over.
Storm 46-20.
Saints imploded under Storm's blowtorch, when they got punched in the face. The ol' Blitz campaign. Faalogo is a late-game weapon 5 tries in last 18 minutes both games (62', 63',65',74',76') when fatigue is at its maximum.
Look at Dolphins now, 60% completion and are down 8-0 at break to an ordinary Titans team. It is simple, completions.