Parramatta's Rollercoaster Trends Up
A month of tough performances have steadied the Blue and Gold ship
Five weeks after they were booed from CommBank Stadium after conceding 50 against the Gold Coast Titans, the Eels have rebuilt their season.
A tough, upset win against the Bulldogs was followed by 2 hard fought losses to Manly and the Warriors before Parramatta bounce back in dramatic fashion in Townsville.
The 33-30 win ensured Parramatta didn’t lose touch with the top 8 with their 4-6 record actually keeping them level with ninth place.
Were their defence not such a shambles they’d be a lot closer on points difference.
The Eels got into a shoot-out with the gunslinging Cowboys and despite the protestations of Cooper Cronk, the shoot-out suited Parramatta.
The Blue and Gold have struggled in recent weeks to keep in the grind of matches. Usually they have been the ones to blink first.
This time though, it was the Cowboys. Depending on your stats source, the Eels made a grand total of between 4 and 6 errors. While the Cowboys racked up 18 according to NRL.com.
The kicking game of Mitchell Moses came to the fore as he continued to flip the field, while Parramatta’s fill-in players in Ron Volkman and Jordan Samrani stated their cases for being impossible to drop.
Volkman in particularly has continued to build on the promise he once showed as a talented junior at the Roosters.
With a fairly injury-free run and familiarity with his teammates, he’s begun to look comfortable at NRL level. A persistent run threat on the left edge, his short kicking game also paid off for Josh Addo-Carr to score the first of his 2 tries.
The Fox’s experience came in handy too, when his intercept flipped the script on the Cowboys who had bagged two consecutive tries in a 10 minute period that threatened to finish the game off.
Samrani meanwhile was a handful on the right edge, running for nearly 250 metres, bagging himself a try and try assist.
The try assist itself was a thing of beauty as Moses raided the short side before Samrani took the pass, drew the fullback and position Joash Papalii to cross in the corner.
For all of that effort though, it could have come to nought had Junior Paulo’s hand of God deflection not forced Jake Clifford’s field goal shot wide. That minor touch led to a Cowboys error from the drop out and allowed the match to go to golden point.
The Volkman raid up the left edge in the 81st minute gave Parramatta the momentum and space needed for Moses to launch his match-winning field goal on the following tackle.
There remains plenty for the Eels to fix in their defensive systems. Their edge defence regularly gets shredded by line-running backrowers, while their middle can give up the ruck too quickly to crafty hookers.
They will need a similar level of commitment if they are to topple the Storm in Magic Round this weekend.