Parramatta Eels Head Coach Brad Arthur has said he is disappointed in his side after they fell to a last-placed Newcastle Knights side in tonight's Round 23 clash at ANZ Stadium.
“It's not great but we've got to move past it. All the things that we've done really well for the last period of our games," Arthur said.
"We were outbeaten, outenthused, we didn't kick well. All those key words - composure, discipline, patience we didnt have any of it."
"All the simple things in our game that we've been on top of, we didn't."
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Arthur said his side didn’t look like they were willing to do the hard yards and get into the same grinding game they had in previous weeks.
“Maybe we were looking for a soft win. Maybe we thought we could come here and get a soft win. They just worked harder than us" Arthur said.
"They wanted to complete, they wanted a tough win, they wanted to run hard, they wanted to complete, they wanted to kick long. It didn't look like we did.”
Arthur added that his side wasn’t looking complacent earlier in the week but they failed to stand up early in the match.
“I didn't pick up on any complacency during the week. Our warm up was great. Our first 10 minutes, they just rolled through us too easy and we gave them plenty of energy and plenty of enthusiasm out of their start" Arthur said.
"We knew they were going to start hard and fast and we couldn't match it.”
"We play to win so that's not good enough. We have to get back to what we have been doing well for the last period of our wins."
Captain Tim Mannah, who was playing his 200th NRL game for the club, agreed with his coach.
“At this time of the year we've got to be better than that. We've been building nicely the last few weeks and we let ourselves down,” said Mannah.
When asked about the controversial decision to allow Ken Sio to offload the ball after looking like he’d been held which led to a Newcastle try, Arthur said that incident wasn’t a major issue.
“I thought the tackle was complete; if we go in there we get penalised for a flop but there were a lot more problems than that.”
The Eels next face the Gold Coast Titans at ANZ Stadium next week on Thursday 17th August.
