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Parramatta Eels coach Brad Arthur praised the resilience his team showed in tough periods of defence during their 36-16 win over the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs at ANZ Stadium.
Arthur also told the post-match press conference the Eels still have plenty to work on in their game.
“It’s nice to win two games. It’s nice to have those wins when we know we still need to play better, “Arthur said.
“I thought our resilience in the first half was good. At one stage they (Bulldogs) were 75 percent possession to our 25.”
“(For us) not to panic and to work ourselves back into it at half time. We had a disallowed try so it could have been a really pleasing tail to us into half time.”
“(I was ) just disappointed how we didn’t close the game out and the players were disappointed about that too.”
“We didn’t drop our confidence, you know we did’t have any ball, we needed to get the ball, complete (sets) and get down the other end of the field.”
“We stuck to our system and if the ball was passed to them there I wanted them to catch it. So you know no one came outside our system which happened a bit last year,” he said.
On Blake Ferguson’s confidence
“Yeah he is great. He is 106/107 kilos; when he cam he really wanted to play around that 100/101, but you know I think he is strong and he is good to have around the group. He is a winner,” Arthur said.
“He (Ferguson) has helped (team confidence), you know he is a winner and the boys just like sitting there next to him in the sheds because he breathes confidence. He just wants to win. He thinks he is going to win all the time and that’s how he is.”
“He was the best winger in the game last year and the challenge for him was to make sure he was coming to our club and still be the best winger in the comp; only two games in and still has a lot of work ahead of him but you know he has started the way we needed him to,” he said.
On Dylan Brown’s performance in the halves
“Yeah he’s good. If he can just do that for us every week, and you know that’s going to be the tough ask for him, 24 tough games,” Arthur said.
"I don’t need him to do anymore than that. Next year he can worry about going to another level, but this year he just has to get himself ready for the physical battle week in week out and you know that’s going to be a bit of management from us as well,” he said.
On Dylan Brown contract talks
“I think Dyl just got a bit caught out there. He was straight on the phone to me when the story broke so you know he has a bit of a weird sense of humour Dyl,” Arthur said.
“He is not worried about the future, he is worried about next week and making sure he can get himself ready to go next week,” he said.
On playing the Sydney Roosters next week
“I watched their game last night and I watched a bit again this morning and they’re a good footy team. The second half there gave us some things we need to work on and we need to do that if we are going to get ourselves in the picture next week,” Arthur said.
“Our attitude is in the right space for coming up against last year’s Premiers, yeah definitely our attitude but in terms of the footy we are playing some of our execution needs to be better because they don’t give you many chances and if you turn over cheap possession, they make you pay,” he said.
