Here’s your repeat set for Round 19:
Eels improving (a little)
Titans improving (a lot)
A round to remember for…Smith and Bellamy
A round to forget for…Tom Trbojevic
Play of the Round: Warriors
Annesley’s Briefing Summary
Eels: A Teeny Tiny Improvement
“It doesn’t matter how you win.”
Well, it does…
The Parramatta Eels beat the Brisbane Broncos on Thursday night. If all you’re looking for out of that game is two competition points to all but cement your place in the top four, then sure, it doesn’t matter. If you’re building up to the finals and hopeful of a premiership push, then how you win is what matters most.
While Parramatta’s win was an improvement on their recent performances, it’s not one that moves the needle on their premiership hopes. They’re still comfortably behind the Roosters, Storm and Panthers, and there is a healthy argument for the Raiders to be ahead of them in the pecking order too.
Still, the blue and gold are perhaps the most interesting team in the NRL heading into the finals.
We’ve seen what they can do at times this year and the thought of returning to that sort of form stays in the back of our minds. However, the lack of movement in the needle after Friday still comes down to their struggles attack.
While 26 points is a decent enough outcome and considerably more than the 12 points per game they had averaged since Round 12, the process still leaves a lot to be desired.
Parramatta scored five tries on Friday night.
#1
An excellent Clint Gutherson pass saved an otherwise poor right shift. Nathan Brown goes early to attract nobody before Gutherson is left with no other choice but to hit Ferguson on the wing. Waqa Blake’s run almost blew it.
#2
This is a beauty.
Like us, Reed Mahoney will have circled Joe Ofahengaue. Despite not being known for his darts out of dummy half nor his tackle-breaking ability, Mahoney scoots out from behind the ruck and through Ofahengaue’s flimsy tackle attempt and into the backfield. He makes the right pass to Gutherson who also does well to find Jai Field.
Moses doesn’t panic against a scrambling Broncos defence. Taking the attention of three of the four Broncos players down that side, he finds Maika Sivo in the corner.
#3
There is a helpful amount of luck involved in Gutherson’s first. The play is on as Andrew Davey steams towards the ball, but a wayward grubber isn’t always going to bounce up and into your lap like that.
#4
Blake runs a better line off the scrum to attract an awful defence into making an awful decision for Gutherson to score his second. Better.
#5
Field collected an awful Issac Luke pass to score Parramatta’s only second half try. As Mitch from The Cumberland Throw puts it, “runaway intercept tries are gravy.”
Overall
One really good try (#2), a try making the most of poor defence (#3), a stroke of luck (#2), an ugly one (#1) and an intercept (#5).
It wasn’t a masterclass or anything like the sort of attacking play we saw from the Eels across the first three months of the season.
Good teams create their own luck, but you need more than luck to beat the other good teams. To score 26 points against the worst defensive team in the competition in the way Parramatta did doesn’t do anything to suggest they can crack the likes of the Roosters, Storm, Panthers or Raiders often enough in October.
There is still hope with one more game to click into gear, though. Andrew Davey and Shaun Lane both played well in their new roles, Mahoney looked dangerous out of dummy half at times, Sivo and Ferguson both crossed the line, and seven forwards ran for over 100 metres. But they will need to make more than a teeny tiny improvement against the Tigers in Round 20 if they’re to have any confidence heading into Week 1 of the finals.
Titans make it four in a row
So many things have come together for the Gold Coast Titans over the last month.
Chiefly, AJ Brimson’s return to health and reintroduction to the side has been the catalyst for their recent success. Their laboured and predictable shifts before returning to the middle of the field on the following tackle ensured the Titans played with one of the worst attacks in the competition to start the season. However, that has all changed over the last month.
Tyrone Peachey looked to be trying too hard to create opportunities with his feet when he started to regularly play in the middle of the field. Too often the ball would get stuck in his hands and stall the Titans attack. But in these two tries here, he’s using his skills as a ball-player to engage the line and shift it wide - just as all the best lock forwards outside of Jason Taumalolo are doing right now.
First he engages the line and keeps Kevin Proctor involved long enough for Daly Cherry-Evans to turn in on the back rower in this one. It’s then four on two with Corey Thompson finishing it off beautifully in the corner.
Just five minutes later, Peachey is again involved when he sees an opportunity on the open side. The Manly defence had just been beaten down that side. Reacting to the previous try and trying to jam in on the ball-player, Morgan Harper is too slow and Brimson’s hands too quick.
Young Tonumaipea gets by Cherry-Evans to score and extend the Titans lead.
The Titans aren’t doing anything too special here. They’re unlikely to score this easily against a top tier defence. But it highlights the improvements Justin Holbrook has made over the last two months with the likes of Peachey and Ash Taylor both involved while Brimson provides the polish they’ve so desperately lacked.
It was a round to remember for…
Everybody, really.
The Melbourne Storm hung 50 points on the Wests Tigers, but for all but about one minute on Saturday, Craig Bellamy looked as though he was going to explode.
Then Smith scored the 47th try of his career to pass Bellamy’s career tally and produce one of the funniest moments we’ve seen all season.
In a round full of blowouts and dead games, trust the Storm to still find ways to provide a memorable moment.
It was a round to forget for…
We caught a glimpse of what Tom Trbojevic adds to the Sea Eagles attack. He didn’t even touch the ball in the build-up to Taniela Paseka’s try, but simply being in the area was enough for Ash Taylor to make a poor read:
Unfortunately for Trbojevic, it was a game to forget as he left the field with yet another injury only an hour into his comeback. He struggled in the minutes he did play to finish with four errors and three missed tackles (25% tackle efficiency). A fit and firing Trbojevic wouldn’t have a problem cleaning up this Taylor grubber:
As bad as he was on Saturday afternoon, the debate around Trbojevic’s State of Origin selection still rages. He has only played seven games for the Sea Eagles all season. Twice he failed to play the full 80 minutes. He’s going to get on the wrong side of a few people on the Northern Beaches if he chooses to play for New South Wales instead of getting his body ready for Round 1 in 2021.
Play of the Round
The New Zealand Warriors had little to play for on Sunday afternoon. The flight home is booked, and they would have been forgiven for phoning in their 80 minutes against the Raiders and moving one day closer to being reunited with their friends and family. Still, this group continues to fight for everything.
While it’s ultimately a try the Warriors conceded due to an errant Jazz Tevaga offload…
This is the play of the round…
Nine Warriors gave chase when next to no chance of stopping the try. It’s something we’ve rarely seen out of this club in the past. To do it now and in these circumstances is a testament to the effort the players and Todd Payten are putting in right through to the end.
Graham Anselsey’s Briefing Summary
Despite not being ones to spend a lot of time focused on referees and measuring the impact a single poor decision can have on a game, we want to offer a summary of Graham Annesley’s weekly reviews that doesn’t deliberately mislead or misuse quotes to generate further controversy.
He kicked things off with Jaxson Paulo's toe hitting the sideline on Thursday night. An obvious error, but interestingly, Henry Perenara can be heard in the Bunker saying "no, no, no" just as the referee blew the whistle to award a try.
Annesley went into bat for the touch judge but did say he should have asked for it to be checked.
On changing the process when the Bunker sees an obvious error without the play being sent directly to them: "Worth of consideration...Definitely something we will discuss in the offseason."
The Bunker was involved with 66 decisions throughout Round 19.
Henry Perenara called a tip on as a knock-on when Clint Gutherson pushed the ball out to Blake Ferguson on Friday night.
It could be challenged because the referee ruled a knock-on. Where it gets complicated is when Perenara blows his whistle. Perenara could have waited for the try to be scored before blowing his whistle and going through the usual Bunker process. Had he done that, a try would have been awarded.
"Blowing the whistle stops the game."
Young Tonumaipea was ruled to have lost the ball when attempting to score on Saturday afternoon. Fairly clear: He didn't completely regather the ball and control it when putting the ball down.
"Just because some people disagree doesn't mean the Bunker got it wrong."
On Jack Wighton's sin-bin: "The reason he went to the sin-bin was continuous infringements."
It's a very close call but Annesley is prepared to say "he's offside."
Again, he wasn't binned for a split-second decision. It was due to the continuous Raiders infringements.
Unbelievably, somebody asked if the Raiders were warned before being sent to the bin. The NRL made it clear a long time ago that a referee is under no obligation to provide a warning before using the sin-bin.
It was a decision most at home knew would be corrected on Monday: The penalty for Adam Pompey tackling Jarrod Crocker in the air was incorrect.
Annesley wanted to highlight that 'hip drop' tackle charges haven't come out of thin air by producing an email he sent earlier in the year.
He then produced vision of guilty hip-drop tackles going back to 2018.
It's a dangerous tackle and one that Annesley and the NRL would like to see players do better to avoid.
John Morris wasn't happy that the game wasn't stopped for Josh Dugan's injury on Saturday night. Officials weren't wrong to continue play and that has since been communicated to Morris and the Sharks.
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