Arthur: We weren’t prepared to roll our sleeves up at the start of the game

Eels Coach Brad Arthur labelled his side's effort as soft, after going down to the Manly Sea Eagles in Round 10.

Here's what he had to say after the game.

“We knew exactly what we were walking into and I think we were prepared for it but we weren’t willing to do anything about it when we got here. Three tries in 10 or 12 minutes at the start, our attitude wasn’t there from the start,” Arthur said.

“The good teams keep getting themselves up all the time. If we want to be a good team, we’ve played some reasonable football; teams are going to come after us so we have to be prepared for it. I think it was 20 minutes before we thought geez we’re going to have to roll our sleeves up and have a crack,” he said.

ON EELS DEFENCE

“We knew what we were coming into. They’re a tough footy team and we weren’t prepared to roll our sleeves up at the start of the game. There were some silly errors and defensive lapses, or not even enough effort to put our bodies in front of blokes on the try line.”

“Soft tries. We’ve worked so hard and in ten minutes you undo it all with some soft efforts on the try line. The way we started, the taste is still a bit sour in my mouth,” Arthur said.

“We still managed four tires all but the tries we allowed at the start of the game were soft. I can’t say it any other way.”

KEEPING MANLY SCORELESS IN SECOND HALF

“There’s a positive there. We know we’re a different team to what we have been in the past. We talked about it and we thought we could get enough points in the second half but we had to keep them scoreless. They have some quality players so that’s a positive sign for us but you can’t give good teams, or any team, a start like that.”

THE INJURY FRONT

I hope so, but that’s not the problem. Blokes who are in there have to do their job. Matto has a fractured finger and Fergo had a heap of swelling on his knee and had some fluid drained from it on Thursday so hopefully he will be right the following week but since round four he has been carrying it. He had 55mls of fluid drained out. Browny (Nathan Brown) has a pretty bad cork but I think they said he’s alright.”

ANDREW DAVEY'S NRL DEBUT AT 28

“Yeah he was good. We put him out there and he got thirty minutes against a tough footy team when we were under the pup and I thought he did a good job. We want to win footy games but when we bring people to our club we want to see them improve and you want them to be good people and he’s a good bloke and you want to see them get an opportunity. He probably would have gotten an opportunity last year, he was our player of the year in the Reggies (Canterbury Cup), but we didn’t have many injuries last year,” Arthur said.