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The Broncos blew the Eels away in Darwin on Saturday night but it was the way in which they did it that will have Brisbane fans salivating and Parramatta supporters foaming at the mouth.
A couple of tries to Parra in the second half made the final margin look closer than this match was with Brisbane holding a 20-point lead before closing out the 26-16 victory.
Every year there’s a team that bursts out of the blocks, has a mid-season lull and either doesn’t make the finals or makes up the numbers.
There is no way Brisbane will be that side in 2023.
They are deserved competition leaders with a 7-1 record which includes some big notches on their belt – the premiers in Round 1 at Penrith, a comprehensive victory over North Queensland and this Darwin win over last year’s runners-up.
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After making their first Grand Final since 2009 last October, the Eels look highly unlikely to be in the premiership decider again unless they can quickly rediscover their mojo and their task will be made harder with Reagan Campbell-Gillard likely to miss at least a few weeks after injuring his groin in a possible hip-drop tackle from opposing prop Payne Haas which left Eels coach Brad Arthur hot under the collar.
Haas, and teammate Ezra Mam facing a one-game ban each from the the game while Eels J’maine Hopgood has only been fined, the judiciary reported on Saturday.
Tom Flegler is tackled. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
Why not the Broncos? It’s an open race for the title this year – Penrith are not as dominant as they’ve been the past couple of seasons, South Sydney have been inconsistent, as have the Roosters, Sharks and Storm.
Brisbane by no means should be considered favourites for the title as the Panthers remain the competition benchmark even though they dropped to a 4-3 record on Thursday night when the Rabbitohs snatched victory in the dying stages.
But the Broncos deserve to be in the conversation for teams who could get their hands on the trophy. It’s not necessarily just going to be a rapid rise up the ladder like the Cowboys and Sharks did last season.
Brisbane should be able to build on their early-season momentum to at least secure a top-four berth and with a heaving Suncorp Stadium spurring them on, they could go deep into the playoffs.
They’ve got all the ingredients of a premiership-winning team – a powerful pack led by Haas and Patrick Carrigan, who were typically impactful through the middle against Parra, an elite playmaker calling the shots in Adam Reynolds, X-factor at the back in the form of Reece Walsh and plenty of pointscoring potency from Kotoni Staggs, Herbie Farnworth and Selwyn Cobbo.
It’s been eight seasons since Brisbane made a Grand Final and 17 since their sixth premiership. Trophies are expected at the Broncos, not hoped for.
Kevin Walters played his career in the club’s golden era side which carried the expectation of greatness with aplomb. As coach, he’s repeatedly said it’s up to this generation of players to create their own history. They could be on the verge of doing just that.
“I thought our first 40 was really good,” Walters said. “We expected a tough game and we got one.
“I’m not sure if we made a (premiership) statement. We’ve got a lot of respect for Parramatta as grand finalists. At the moment it’s about winning the games and identifying where we need to get better, which we’ve been doing.
“Our start was good tonight but our finish was not where it needs to be.”
Reagan Campbell-Gillard is set to spend time on the sidelines after his groin was stretched further than any prop would like in a tackle from Haas, which forced him off in the 64th minute.
His coach, Brad Arthur, thought the tackle was as bad as similar incidents involving J’maine Hopgood and Ezra Mam which led to both players spending 10 minutes in the sin bin.
“I don’t think it’s great, his groin, he’s in a lot of pain,” Arthur said. “I think it’ll be more than a couple of weeks. He can hardly walk.”
“I’m not an expert on hip-drops but to me, all three of them looked pretty similar.”
Hopgood was sin-binned for a hip-drop tackle which did not appear intentional or malicious early in the second half.
Soon after he returned, Mam was banished for the same reason for a tackle which looked much worse and will be more likely to attract the attention of the match review committee.
Haas, like most of the hip-drops that have become the judiciary flavour of the month in 2023, did not appear to intentionally try to harm RCG but the veteran Eel ended in a painful position as the Broncos forward’s body weight brought him to ground.
“I didn’t see anything too dramatic with it but I’m a coach,” he said. “It’s a tackle that’s crept into the game and no coach in the game is coaching players to go out and do that, we’ve got too much respect for each other. Sometimes it comes into the game and it’s unfortunate if there are some but we will let the officials adjudicate.”
Ezra Mam heated up the match in the tropics with a couple of back-to-back moments of brilliance midway through the first half.
After Herbie Farnworth and Clint Gutherson traded tries for a 6-6 deadlock, the Broncos shot in front when Adam Reynolds shaped to kick and passed inside to Mam and the young five-eight displayed blinding acceleration off the mark to split the Eels up the middle.
When confronted by Gutherson close to the line, he flicked the ball back inside for a grateful Reynolds to scoot over.
A few minutes later, a Reece Walsh kick looked to be bouncing away for a line drop-out as Gutherson prayed for the right bounce but the ball was reefed back by Kotoni Staggs along the dead-ball line for Mam to pounce.
There were several Eels players who stood and watched Gutherson’s nightmare at the back unfold while just as many Broncos players chased through, with Mam rewarded for their collective persistence. It was a telling play in the course of the match.
Not only did it open up an 18-6 lead, it showed the intent of Brisbane and the lack of it from Parramatta.
That stark difference was again on show when a Reynolds chip kick to the corner bounced at a right angle and Staggs was more enthusiastic than his opposing outside backs to make it 22-6 at the break.
“The second half was alright,” Eels coach Brad Arthur said. “We’re fighting hard as a team but we’re leaving too much to do in second halves. Our start wasn’t good enough, they just rolled straight through the middle. They got into good field position to have easy kicks with no pressure.
“We’ve got to harden up at the start of games.
“We’re trying to play too cute, too pretty at the start of games.”
Parra didn’t go troppo in the Top End, quite the opposite. They looked listless and lacking in energy throughout much of this contest before a brief revival in the second half which kept the Broncos on their toes.
At 3-5 after eight rounds, they are not necessarily in danger of missing the playoffs and it’s too premature to officially put a red line through their chances of breaking the NRL’s longest premiership drought.
But there is cause for great concern in the blue and gold fold.
The Eels still have the nucleus of their Grand Final team despite a few high-profile forwards exiting in the off-season but they just don’t seem to have enough strikepower to be consistently dominant.
Reed Mahoney’s absence at hooker is glaring. His defection to the Bulldogs is the off-season departure that has been felt the most.
Josh Hodgson remains a solid performer but he’s not the player that he was in his prime at the Raiders. That’s the hooker that Parra need but at 33 and on the back of a couple of major surgeries, he lacks the spark that could make the Eels electric.
They are mired in 12th spot on the ladder and will need a major mid-season transformation to string together enough wins to claw their way to an all-important top four spot which is pretty much a necessity if you want to win an NRL title.
Eels winger Bailey Simonsson was concussed after a nasty head clash with Cobbo early in the second half and is unlikely to be cleared to play next Friday in the match-up with Newcastle at CommBank Stadium.