What convinced me about today.

[Timmah]

Finch will work as a sub-80 minute hooker and that's about it. He doesn't deserve a full game tbh and his work from today showed it. Just the one flash of brilliance for that try he managed on his own but that aside, you lot need Green and Smith to be steering the ship.

Smith still seems a little edgy and distracted as well :?


Anyhow, at the end of the day you lot played quality for a lot of the day and your big men took it to ours... I'd say arguably yours and Souths are the two big packs when it comes to matching ours. We got away with it today as we did last year (22-18 wasn't it?).

Can't wait for the return bout at Telstra in R21 (first week of August) :crazy:

 

[Suitman]

Finch will work as a sub-80 minute hooker and that's about it. He doesn't deserve a full game tbh and his work from today showed it. Just the one flash of brilliance for that try he managed on his own but that aside, you lot need Green and Smith to be steering the ship.

Smith still seems a little edgy and distracted as well :?


Anyhow, at the end of the day you lot played quality for a lot of the day and your big men took it to ours... I'd say arguably yours and Souths are the two big packs when it comes to matching ours. We got away with it today as we did last year (22-18 wasn't it?).

Can't wait for the return bout at Telstra in R21 (first week of August) :crazy:

Thanks.

Suity

 

[PJ Marshal]

tbh cannings will be lucky to hold his spot for much longer....his performances have been fairly laclusture of late. I suppose being playing in lower grades n injuries havnt helped his cause..but his size n skill he hasnt been setting the world on fire

our bench is lacking impact in terms of go foward... seems we play good until we start to rotate then all the cohesion bukcles from our attack

 

[yy_cheng]

Our biggest problem is that when we're on top, we take the gas off and let them come back.

We played well today, better than last week I reckon but we just can't put that final nail in the hammer.

The dogs were terrible but won.

Grothe I would still persevere with. Yes, INU or Reddy can take his spot but I just don't think they would provide much more that what Grothe is providing.

Benny, Maybe he does need to move into the pack. Defend in the middle somewhere and let INU take his spot.

Finch/Green - After Finch's performance today, it doesn't really matter to me which one takes it.

Timmy - He is probably the only one trying to keep the pressure on.

IHindy could share his spot with Benny from the bench.

 

[Gronk]

Timmy finds himself soooo close to the line at times. One time in the second half he was 2m out and one-on-one and chose to kick.

Mateo & Green were ordinary this week.

Benny is dynamic in defence and a kitten in attack. Can't run and never looks to pass.

Why o why do we never give Tahu clean ball ? No wonder he's going to the Tahs. He'll get more ball standing on the wing catching a cold there.

Agree that we missed Piggy and Chad.

 

[eel01s]

There is no doubt the Eels beat themselves yesterday. They not only matched the Bulldogs pack, but outplayed them (something not many people thought could happen).

However silly mistakes: pushed passes, drop balls, poor kicks etc. and a couple of missed tackes and we lose the game.

At half time, even after that Bulldogs try, I thought that if the Eels could control the ball then they would win comfortably. However, in the second half, I would love to know what the completion rate was because it seemed atrocious to me.We just gave the Dog's to much easy field position.

And nobody else should get the blame for the missed field goal attempt than Blake Green. Any player with any sense at all should have known what to do. It wasn't clear on tv, but who was in position to take the shot? Burt? I can only assume Blake felt he had a shot at a miracle try by taking the Dogs unaware on the blind side.

 

[Jake the snake]

Positive from the day was The forwards who dominated the Bulldogs pack. Very good sign for us.

 

[Stagger eel]

Positive from the day was The forwards who dominated the Bulldogs pack. Very good sign for us.

yep, much rather lose a game making due to making dumb decisions than being pumped on the field.

atleast we could learn from making the poor options

 

[HevyDevy]

who would you have then ????

6. Keith Blackett

7. Tulsen Tollett

 

[Hollywood Jesus]

Did anyone notice Mateo spent too much time on the left hand side of the field? He can be terribly dangerous on the right but was rarely there, and even more so they shut down Tahu well yesterday and thus nullified what he could do out on that side.......

Oh yeah, he tackled like a girl, too

 

[Bigfella]

I thought most of the people mentioned on this thread played well?

Eric's pass before halftime was extremely costly. Other than that he was our most likely to provide a line break with a hit and pass. Got heavily involved (Hayne's work rate by comparison is concerning me).

Finch and Smith IMO did enough to win a game and show that they can work for us. Finch finally did what I had been hoping he would provide us all year - whole running and short ball playing options. Just chop his right foot off and NEVER let him kick a ball again.

Tim's first hal;f was great, with some running options and getting some better early ball to Finch.

I think they fell away in the second hal;f as the Bulldogs pack re-asserted themselves. We started to get less go forward, and more sloppy ball from dummy half and their game deteriorated a bit.

I think we only diominated their pack for 50 minutes. Ther est was even and they were on top for maybe 15 minutes.

To me Cannings and Green were where we fell down. Green was a wasted interchange yesterday.

Cannings started the game lumbering and got progressively slower. We needed smoe more dynamic running in the second half with Cayless and Hindy fatigued. I think that's where we lost out, just in lacking some sting in attack in the closing 20 minutes.

Between Cordoba and Cannings we got very little in terms of penetration. Cayless was strong and Fui is close to our most important player.

BTW I thought Ben Smith and Wagon were phenomenal in defence.

I don't completely blame Mateo too badly for the miss on Patten - the defensive line was slightly staggered, with a big gap between him and Tahu. The kick should never have been put there, and after that he lost confidence massively. We missed his penetration because when his head went down, we lost a weapon in attack.

 

[hindmarsh4pm]

You guys rip into finch calling him crap, then he finally plays well and its not enough, green is not upto 1st grade yet, he makes poor decisions, just like when we were 5 out from the line, tim was set for a field goal and he goes short side, leaving tim with no option but to put up a cross field bomb.
Signs were there yesterday, give this team a month and with the class they have in this team they will be very hard to stop. If you want to get rid of a player now, id say tahu, he just does not seem interested and does not do what we all know he is capable of.

 

[Hindyscrack]

What convinced me today ?


Tim Smith and Brett Finch are not the combination we are looking for.

Correct... Although finch played well early, they still havent formed a combination

 

[forward pass]

I don't agree with you Eela.

I really thought we offered nothing. Finch had two great moments but really I thought we looked fairly predictable and pretty ordinary at times.

In the second half we had a set on the Bulldogs 30m line and we deadset took 5 hitups??
I just don't think we have a lot points in us. Lets wait and see if that changes !

 

[V1er]

I thought our forward pack laid a good platform but we just couldn’t find that killer punch to put the dogs away, it seems that we can’t get smith or finch to fire at the same time, if one has a good game the other puts in a sub par performance, once that gets sorted out I think we’ll be a major threat.

 

[Stagger eel]

I don't agree with you Eela.

I really thought we offered nothing. Finch had two great moments but really I thought we looked fairly predictable and pretty ordinary at times.

In the second half we had a set on the Bulldogs 30m line and we deadset took 5 hitups??
I just don't think we have a lot points in us. Lets wait and see if that changes !

as much as you hate to do it, you need to also give the opposition a little credit for that also.

 

[The Engineers Room]

I think we need to bring in 1 or two of the premier league pack:

Fa'aoso
Hauraki
Taia

were all awesome again on Sunday

If our backrow were making metres and being creative then the halves don't have to try and create too much.

 

[forward pass]

as much as you hate to do it, you need to also give the opposition a little credit for that also.

Bulldogs !

 

[carson]

Is the pig the worst commentator ever? He even almost makes gordon Tallis look good!!

 

[Bigfella]

If our backrow were making metres and being creative then the halves don't have to try and create too much.

That is one of the truest statements I have ever read.

Not sure if it is just our back row.

Look at Canterbury, how much penetration they got from Mason, O'Meley and Hickey.

We had Fui punishing them, but that was about it. And he didn;t play a lot of time yesterday. Cordoba and Cannings didn't hurt them much at all.

I thought our backrowers were better than our front rowers in general.

We need at least one more prop who can hurt an opposition.

Cannings is a potential liability in defense, which might be okay if he was at his damaging best in attack. But has anyone seen it from him yet?