The Parramatta Eels have suffered a 26-14 defeat to the Gold Coast Titans in Round Three of the NRL Telstra Premiership, and centre Brad Takairangi says that the performance from the Blue & Gold was simply not good enough.
The side had jumped out to an early lead after a good opening 20 minutes, however error after error cost the side.
“It was a tough loss to take,” Takairangi said.
“We went up there knowing it was going to be a tough battle and they would be throwing a lot of things at us, and in the end, we weren’t good enough.”
“I thought our first 20 minutes were really good. One error led to another and we ended up going away from what has worked over the last two rounds, which wasn’t us,” Takairangi added.
“We are looking forward to getting back to playing against the Sharks on Saturday.”
Takairangi went on to say that Head Coach Brad Arthur had set up the Round Three opportunity as an opportunity to show some consistency.
“That was a little test for us, Brad had given us a test there to show consistency, and unfortunately we didn’t pass.” Takairangi said.
“Brad was big on us going there with the right attitude which I thought we did, it was just our execution.”
The Eels were without on-field general Corey Norman, but Takairangi shot down talks of the Eels relying on the halfback or showing complacency against am injury affected Titans side
“Corey is obviously a big loss for us, he is our general on the field. But I thought Robbo did a really good job. Our ball handling didn’t help, and a lot of the guys were a bit more tired than usual,” Takairnagi said.
“What we were doing in the first twenty was what we have been doing in the first two rounds, grinding down with our sets and off the back of that scoring a couple of tries. We made a few uncharacteristic errors and it cost us in the end.”
“Everyone knows their role and if we completed our sets, we had 45% of the ball so if we have a fair share of ball, we can do damage against any team no matter who is playing,” Takairangi added.
The Eels will take on the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks in Round 4 of the NRL Telstra Premiership at ANZ Stadium on Saturday 25 March, the Blue & Gold first home game of the year.
