I studied the replay pretty closely tonight and I want to defend both Pearson and Wagon who both got slammed by some for their performance.
Pearson easily made more hit-ups and metres than any other Eel. He came up with a fair metreage per hit-up stat in a side where he didn't have a lot of support and he continually slipped nice offloads that resulted in second phase play. He was solid in defence and actually managed to stop the attack fairly abruptly when he was involved in the tackle. I thought he was Parra's best.
Wagon made more than 40 tackles and I thought his running was the most effective its been all year. He cracked the Warriors twice and the pass he slipped to put Hopkins over was a dead set pearler and should no way have been called forward.
In fact, there weren't too many really poor individual performances in the squad and I really can't fault the effort. They just lacked team cohesion and that comes down to missing Dykes and neither Thorman or Witt being able to step up.
Pearson easily made more hit-ups and metres than any other Eel. He came up with a fair metreage per hit-up stat in a side where he didn't have a lot of support and he continually slipped nice offloads that resulted in second phase play. He was solid in defence and actually managed to stop the attack fairly abruptly when he was involved in the tackle. I thought he was Parra's best.
Wagon made more than 40 tackles and I thought his running was the most effective its been all year. He cracked the Warriors twice and the pass he slipped to put Hopkins over was a dead set pearler and should no way have been called forward.
In fact, there weren't too many really poor individual performances in the squad and I really can't fault the effort. They just lacked team cohesion and that comes down to missing Dykes and neither Thorman or Witt being able to step up.
