Dragons Post Mortem

[redvscotty]

Torn hamstring - three or four weeks at least. Was shame as when he came on he was hitting the ball up very well and straightening us up in attack.

Big test next week as to who goes in and takes his spot. Peletelese, Oake or Horo?



Actually you'll find the reason he didn't drop back was so Soward didn't have the opportunity to run the ball on the last.

Grothey blasted Hayne and Hayne agreed with him too after Grothe was trapped in goal - Hayne was way out of position and it wasn't the first time on the night either.

Agree.. Grothe did nothing wrong.

Good game, and a bit disappointing from my point of view in taking the penalty goals, but our 9 was off injured and im sure they will work something out.

Some great passages of play from Parra for mine, and a close game til the end. Boths teams will be present in a great finals series.... i hope haha.

 

[natheel]

You blokes shouldn't be too worried.
Nor should we about our attack.

Round one FFS. See all the games this weekend and then compare.

If anyone knows, then we ALL know that what we see in round one doesn't equate to end of season form. As for Saints attack, it is still a work in progress and when you lose your hooker.....well take number 9 out of many teams and see how they go. Our attack in the Charity Shield was infinitely more dynamic than tonight. So hard to judge form this early. I don't know what injuries you had. But we had a hooker out (2nd half) and a couple of centres out as well (Coopers replacement, who we have immense expectations on was out too). So as with many clubs, full squad looks good, few players out meh.

OK one negative comment. You can yawn if you wany avenger but saying Saints won't make the 8 after what you saw tonight is a bit ordinary. We all know that making the 8 isn't really THAT hard :sto:. Seriously there are some teams out there with much less to offer than both Saints or Eels.

Both teams will make 8.

If both teams play like tonight, they won't win the comp.

Surely if one team can improve, then possibly.....just maybe, so can both.

our injuries tonight:

in warm up: Reddy - Hamstring - Replaced by INU, we lose the combination with Grothe he has
and during the game we lost Shackleton who i think was our best forward tonight till he got injured - hammy

according to eels site fien has a suspected broken ankle that sucks for dragons he played well is a little bitch but plays hard

i loved poores face rub on weyman and so did the eels fans in the crowd dunno if weyman was either laughing or angry about it haha

and tahu had some decent touches and some good hits

 

[Captain BF]

Here's my take on things....
It's Round 1, the sky isn't falling.
Tahu was great and as long as he keeps his head and stays injury free, will be fantastic.
Inu went ok.
Grothe was good.
Hindy is as Hindy does.
Poore needs more fitness. Looks like a Greg Drake clone right now.
Ben Smith is really starting to come into his own as a 2nd rower.
Shackleton was going great guns untill his inury.
Look, lets not stress too much as we didn't play well and yet still competed with a pretty good side.

 

[El Diablo]

Coaching errors???? Other than selecting Poore over Moimoi and draining the confidence Fui had after last year and the trials, what else did he coach do?? However, IMO was this a massive error. Fui should have been able to continue the momentum.


Did Anderson tell Keating to put that sh*t kick it??? Or didn't tell Grothe to drop back?? Or forced all those penalties?

Mateo should have come back on much earlier towards the end

 

[pedge]

when i look at the stats, and discount the two points for the win, im a fairly happy camper....we were entitled to get absolutely murdered on the scoreboard but we hung tight in defence...the real reason we got to last years gf and glad to see we have continued it this year....the combinations will come and our forward pack is massive, will take a few games under the belt to build up the match fitness
parra dragons
0 Field Goals 0
0 Sin Bin 0
0 Send Off 0
324 Tackles 256
997 All run metres 1318
5 Penalties 7
0 Penalty Goal Attempts 4
16 Errors 2
72 Hit-ups 81
14 Offloads 6
4 Line breaks 2
19 Completions 34
43 Possession (%) 57

 

[andrew057]

Not going to comment on the backs or forwards.

Robson was solid in defence, but was lacking creativity when they lifted the tempo. I think just before the second half when the Eels had a bit of momentum, he (tried) kicked to the sideline and that's the last of what we saw of him at half back. Was no better than MK at hooker.

Mortimer, played well. Had a lot of defensive work to get through and was strong. Kicking game struggled a bit.

M. Keating, flame him all you like, his service from dummy half was excellent. Very hard to get anything going when the forwards are struggling to get over the advantage line. His kick at the end was horrible, but apart from that I thought he did ok with what he was working with.

K.Keating, very good in defence like Robson. Wasn't given any chance to show any attacking skills, especially with Mortimer receiving almost all the ball in the last 25 mins.

Basically, too many simple errors lost possession and put the forwards on the back foot. Team will be a lot better for the run. Also bad news about the Shack, was the best forward until he got injured.

 

[jk13]

the ref was crap
gaba is full of sh1t again

 

[BissyB]

We were too flat. Watching the Broncos game after the Eels one, if we could develop that long sideways shift, we have the speed and skill to execute much better than the broncos, and score a lot of points of it.

 

[Glenn]

Indeed Parramatta need players in motion rather than standing flat footed and looking for someone to make a break as was the case tonight.
Still enough positives from tonight, so not reaching for the Gillette blades just get.

 

[salvy71]

Too many errors but at least they showed glimpses of the flair that took them to last years grand final , if they can hang onto the ball and hopefully not get too many injuries , they should carve many teams up with their attack this year . The online defence was excellent as well .
Saints will improve once they get the likes of Cooper and Kyle Stanley back , shame about Fien though .

 

[strider]

Actually you'll find the reason he didn't drop back was so Soward didn't have the opportunity to run the ball on the last.

Grothey blasted Hayne and Hayne agreed with him too after Grothe was trapped in goal - Hayne was way out of position and it wasn't the first time on the night either.

you couldn't tell on the TV, but Hayne actually came running across giving grothe an absolute gobful first - then grothe got up and gave it back .... I think grothe should have dropped back a bit, soward didn't look like running it .... anyway, sh*t happens

 

[Craig Johnston]

our best imo tonight was T

moi moi needs to start, robson needs to assume control on 5th tackle (general LMAO) or not be on the field.

 

[strider]

as for the game ....

1) I was REALLY impressed with our defense out wide ... that has been an issue for us in the past, but the dragons, who have great ball runners on the edges didn't make a dent in our wide defense .... great work by Robson and Inu early and Ben Smith later on

2) unfortunately we were soft as sh*t up the middle - which was quite disappointing considering thats where we improved our roster this year .... oh well, hopefully we can address that ..... credit to the dragons forwards - they are a club that makes good forwards year after year - must be something in the water (interestingly, their young forwards they keep bringing through are whities - while other teams are generally getting their big boppas from islanders)

3) I think there are good signs ... i'm not bothered by the 5pt loss at all - they had so much opportunity to score and they didn't

4) I thought INU did well - good on him ... probably not easy to be the one left out, but he came in and did a good job

 

[benoir91]

Guys I don't mean to blame the ref for the result and sound like a sore loser but after watching the replay I noticed 2 blatant errors by archer which led to st georges two tries.

Firstly ben creagh in playing the ball clearly kicks the ball 1m forward before rolling it 2m behind him in what should have been a scrum to parra instead the dragons get two more tackles and then score the opening try.

Secondly before the second try when archer calls 6 again to the dragons-I have no doubt the ball was played at by a parra player but after it hits him it goes into Jeremy smith and then into nightingale who collects the ball 2m infront of smith- clear offside penalty to parra instead the dragons go on to take a 12-0 lead.

Makes me wonder whether archer really does have something against us

 

[strider]

yeah archer was sh*t .... but hey, what else can we expect ... meh

I agree about the creagh one - very poor miss from teh ref - no doubt he would have called us .... but the other one I think was the right call - mateo did play at it but I think it bounced into another of our players then to st george -so play on, 6 more

 

[Kornstar]

Guys I don't mean to blame the ref for the result and sound like a sore loser but after watching the replay I noticed 2 blatant errors by archer which led to st georges two tries.

Firstly ben creagh in playing the ball clearly kicks the ball 1m forward before rolling it 2m behind him in what should have been a scrum to parra instead the dragons get two more tackles and then score the opening try.

Secondly before the second try when archer calls 6 again to the dragons-I have no doubt the ball was played at by a parra player but after it hits him it goes into Jeremy smith and then into nightingale who collects the ball 2m infront of smith- clear offside penalty to parra instead the dragons go on to take a 12-0 lead.

Makes me wonder whether archer really does have something against us

Archer was pathetic, we still weren't good enough up front though!!

Probably one of our better starts to the season in a while, nothing to be worried about just yet.....we definitely need to capitalize more in attack next week imo!

 

[Ray Parlour]

Justin who? Justin sh*thouse, thats who. Deadset $375k for this bloke? Easily will be the worse signing this season in terms of value.

 

[mickdo]

Can't believe we only lost by 6. Bugger all possession, a stack of errors, short end of the penalty count thanks to our favourite ref, and a mountain of line defence. We should have lost by a cricket score with those stats but the boys put in big time... nothing to be ashamed of.

 

[Ike E Bear]

Guys I don't mean to blame the ref for the result and sound like a sore loser but after watching the replay I noticed 2 blatant errors by archer which led to st georges two tries.

Firstly ben creagh in playing the ball clearly kicks the ball 1m forward before rolling it 2m behind him in what should have been a scrum to parra instead the dragons get two more tackles and then score the opening try.

Secondly before the second try when archer calls 6 again to the dragons-I have no doubt the ball was played at by a parra player but after it hits him it goes into Jeremy smith and then into nightingale who collects the ball 2m infront of smith- clear offside penalty to parra instead the dragons go on to take a 12-0 lead.

Makes me wonder whether archer really does have something against us

I feel the same way. Credit to the Dragons on a clinical performance on the back of great defence, but I wonder how the Mortimer forward pass was any more forward than three or four I saw from the Dragons (at least two of which were called by the commentators) which were let go.

I also didn't think there was much in the Poore "face rub" ... I reckon Tahu did worse on a few occasions (must have learned it in the other game hahaha) but wasn't penalised.

Finally, the Robson block was pretty innocuous as well - I've certainly seen many worse let go.

All of the penalties (many of which either came on the fifth tackle or deep in our territory) and errors served to help the Dragons keep the foot on the Eels' throats.

Oh well. First game of the season and plenty of positives to take away.

 

[hindmarshisgod]

Was it just me or did the refs cane us. It looked like they were keeping 12-13 metres each tackle. I had a few to many so i could have been imagining it. We looked like we were always having trouble getting back on side, therefore could not get off our line in defense to mount any pressure. The drags seemed to be getting the proper ten and were always in our face. These are little things that go unnoticed on tv but impact greatly on the momentum of the game. But i still believe we done ok. INU was great imo. Good on him.