The Parramatta Eels have suffered a 20-6 defeat in Round Four of the NRL Telstra Premiership, in their first home game of the season at ANZ Stadium against the Premiers, the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks.
Speaking in the post-match press conference after the game, Blue & Gold Head Coach Brad Arthur said the side’s errors and extra efforts in defence ruled them out of the game.
“When you put that much effort into a game of footy, you need to come away with a better result than that. Completions were low 60%, we had to make an extra seventy tackles, we just didn’t give ourselves a chance,” Arthur said.
“We lacked composure and a bit of patience.”
“The efforts there, they tried very hard. Defensively and physically we were pretty good,” the Head Coach added.
“There were a couple of offloads on the try line which hurt us, but we were just giving them chunks of possession and back to back sets, it’s hard to defend and shut them out when they’re last year’s premiers. They’re Premiers for a reason.” Arthur added.
“We need to be prepared to build pressure. Which we were the first two games, we were prepared to spend a bit of time there and not get flustered but they frustrated us and that showed with our attack. It was very scrappy.”
Blue & Gold co-captain Tim Mannah echoed Arthur’s sentiments.
“Defensively I thought the boys had a real crack. We shot ourselves in the foot and let ourselves down with the ball the last two weeks.” Mannah said.
“Like Brad (Arthur) said, just a lack of patience and composure and just some uncharacteristic errors that we shouldn’t let creep into our game.”
“It’s stuff that we can fix but we got to fix it pretty quick.”
Click through to read how the clash unfolded. / See the key moments from the clash