Roar Guru
The Manly Sea Eagles are struggling to string wins together after a strong start to the season and need to return to winning ways at home against the Parramatta Eels tonight. Join us for live scores and commentary from 7.00pm AEST.
Despite still sitting inside the top four, Manly have lost their past three matches and are in a form slump.
Recent defeats to the Warriors, Bulldogs and Roosters leaves the Sea Eagles just one point ahead of the fifth placed Titans.
Brett Stewart’s absence from Manly’s line-up has really hurt the Sea Eagles capacity to score points over the past eight weeks.
In last week’s defeat to the Roosters, Manly were too frantic with the football and looked like a team with no key attacking game plan.
Although Stewart did make his return from injury last week, the fact that Kieran Foran was a late withdrawal against the Roosters did not help Manly’s attacking cause.
With Foran and Stewart back in tonight’s line-up for Manly, expect the Sea Eagles to finally hit the right gears in attack against the struggling Eels at Brookvale Oval.
Prediction
Despite lacking direction in attack, Manly still managed to dominate upfront against the Roosters for long periods in the contest and should be favoured to do so again against Parramatta.
Indeed the Sea Eagles should get plenty of chances to score points tonight, but whether they take their chances or not will be the key to deciding if they win or not.
If Manly fail to take their early opportunities against the Eels, frustration will build and the home side may once again push too many passes and produce too many errors.
Throw in a try against the run of play to the Eels and Manly may once again struggle to secure the two competition points.
A patient and disciplined start from the Sea Eagles however should allow them to secure a convincing victory against an Eels side that simply lacks the class and experience to trouble top four opposition.
Sea Eagles by 18.