- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Brad Arthur must wonder what he has to say to his team anymore.
With his job under huge pressure, his Parramatta side managed to get themselves into a comfortable lead at half time, then throw it away, get themselves into a position to win it again, then set fire to their ambitions in an epic collapse that saw them lose 32-18 to a Manly side that had been vulnerable.
Maika Sivo, only just returned to the side at all, had one of the all time brain explosions, smashing a prone Reuben Garrick after a tackle had been completed, mere seconds after his side had been returned to a full complement following a previous sin bin.
All that good work, gone in a second.
“It’s dumb, isn’t it,” said the coach.
“It’s 20-18 and we’re in front four tries to three with ten to go. It’s tackle four, they’ll put a kick up and hopefully we get the ball back.
“There’s no point saying too much tonight on emotion, we’ll let it settle. I’m sure he knows, he doesn’t need me to tell him how silly it was.”
Captain Clint Gutherson was visibly annoyed at his teammate.
“It’s just stupid,” said the fullback.
“We’re right in the game, we just got Will back on, it’s last tackle and (we can) just catch the ball and give ourselves a chance.
“It’s silly things that the moment that are hurting us. Missed tackles, penalties against us. You can’t do that in the NRL, it doesn’t matter who you’re verseing. You can’t do that in NRL games.”
Sivo himself was this side in microcosm: he had scored a hat trick of tries, all excellent finishes, but then totally undermined all that work by losing the run of himself.
Parramatta were clearly stung by last week’s comments about being a part-time footy side, by which Arthur meant that they stopped competing for long periods rather than playing the whole match.
There could be no doubt tonight that they didn’t give up tonight.
The Eels saw an impressive debut from Ethan Sanders and another gutsy effort from Gutherson – there has been no suggestion that he gives anything other than everything.
Both meetings between these two have been quality affairs, with both defined by highly contrasting styles.
Manly shifted from their very first play of the game and constantly tried to move the big Parra pack around, which was contrasted by a middle dominance from the Eels, who utilised all their second phase ability to roll up the field, then shred Manly’s still vulnerable edges.
In the end, the difference might have been as simple as discipline. In the first half, Manly’s was awful, but in the second, Parra’s was worse.
Haumole Olakau’atu was binned for a dangerous throw in the first half and might have a case to answer this week, but Manly survived it only with a penalty goal against.
“I thought it was an accident,” said Anthony Seibold.
“It wasn’t a typical lifting tackle, he hit him through the stomach which is a really good tackle, and then Chez (Daly Cherry-Evans) was on top.
“He did land in an unfortunate position, but he came back on and played the rest of the game. I thought ten minutes was sufficient so hopefully nothing more comes of that.”
Penisini was sat down in the second half and Parra did even better, keeping Manly to nothing and scoring themselves, only for Sivo’s brain explosion to gift the Sea Eagles an extra man for the close.
They would concede two tries late down that edge.
Seibold will be happy to have avenged their earlier defeat to the Eels, but must still hold concerns about their defence, which was awful at times.
“First half you have to give Parramatta some credit, they disrupted how we wanted to play our footy,” said the coach.
“We got together at half time, came up with a tactical change or two and executed well second half. To win the second half 26-4 was a really good job by the boys.”
The first half was very strange indeed. Manly were getting killed by penalties, Parra by their own errors.
Manly made more errors in the early stages, but each of them was done in the pursuit of something, whereas Parramatta were coughing up the ball in simple situations. Seibold asks his side to promote the footy, and would have been impressed with how they did it even with 12 men in the first half.
Manly had made most of the running, averaging almost ten meters more in their exit sets and asking Parra, at least on the occasions they didn’t get penalties, to kick from deep.
The intensity was huge.
Gerard Sutton had to separate players on multiple occasions and there were shots everywhere, not least between former teammates Luke Brooks and Ryan Matterson, who were tackling each other with real spite.
Yet it was the Eels who had six line breaks to zero – even accounting for Manly’s try, off a superb Brooks kick – and led at the interval.
Manly’s issues with pressure control were very much at the fore. All three tries were late in the set, exposing edge defences that could have done a lot better when faced with less than complex shapes.
Had Bailey Simonsson kept his head better with the final play of the first half, it might have been game over.
So what changed?
Gutherson’s goalkicking didn’t help, because three misses from three conversion attempts gave an achievable target, but beyone that, it wasn’t actually that different in the run of play, save that Manly finally made incursions.
They threw attacks that finally got results, with Sivo’s defence suspect for one and then a collapse in the middle for another.
Nathan Brown’s intensity helped, with another kamikaze kickoff return and then some of the softest hands you’ll see to get Jake Trbojevic through for Daly Cherry-Evans’ score.
Manly went from zero breaks in 40 minutes to five in 20, but hadn’t particularly changed how they went about it. Parra dropped off badly and made some bad misses, but they were also under constant pressure from the side with the ball.
When the plan is to throw all attack all the time, with few dead plays at all, it’s very hard to defend consistently for 80 minutes. The Sea Eagles’ defence is still miles off, but the potential for points, and quick points at that, that they have might be more than any other side in the NRL.
By the end, the line break count was 7-6 to Manly, with Parra not breaching their defence at all after the resumption.
The big count, however, might be the sin bins. At 1-1, it was on a knife edge. Then, Sivo blew it all up.