Sitting in the sheds after his side had upset St George Illawarra on Sunday, Parramatta winger Eric Grothe revealed the secret to his vital intercept try which all but killed off the Dragons’ challenge. “I didn’t think about it – it was there and I grabbed it,” Grothe said.
“That’s the way Haynesy (Jarryd Hayne) plays and it seems to work and he doesn’t hesitate.
“I think when you think about things that’s when you maybe knock on … it was lucky there was no-one in front of me.”
By Grothe’s own admission, the powerful winger is not one of the game’s great thinkers.
No, Grothe is an entertainer – in whatever he does.
Run the ball up, make a tackle, run over the sideline – when Grothe does it, he does it with an edge-of-your-seat suspense.
Like when he was being bundled dead in goal only to try and flick the ball back infield where two unmarked Dragons were waiting hopefully.
Or when he came to the end of his 85 metre run to the line and he popped the ball in one hand and slammed it down with a carefree action which suggested the Eels may have been up by 40.
This is the way Grothe operates.
But maybe we don’t give his powers of deep thought enough credit, because afterall he had the nous to direct skipper Nathan Cayless to run left to right in the first half.
Why?
“He didn’t want to be in the sun, so he asked Caylo (Cayless) to run left to right so he could be in the shade in the first half,” coach Daniel Anderson revealed.
“Caylo went with the wind and Eric was blowing up even before the game had started.”
And what did Anderson make of the one-handed put down?
“That’s Eric, it doesn’t matter what I say to him, Eric will have some retort, he’s a very humorous man,” Anderson said.
“They smoked him on the second one, he tried to do it again and they got him the second time (with Brett Morris scoring to make it 18-12).
“You take your one-offs, you’re thankful for it and then you get back into the fold.”
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