A foul-mouthed spray from Paramatta captain Clint Gutherson aimed at a teammate has summed up the Eels’ frustrations after being held scoreless against the Roosters in a dreadful showing.
Despite the match being billed as a blockbuster between two premiership contenders in the lead-up, the Eels were no match for their opponents as the Roosters ran out 28-0 winners in Mackay.
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The Roosters scored two tries in the first half courtesy of Josh Morris and Sitili Tupouniua, surviving an error-riddled start of their own, before adding a further three tries in the second half via Sam Walker, Daniel Tupou and Joseph Manu.
With the Eels down 18-0 in the 61st minute, Gutherson’s frustration with his teammates boiled over as he hurled an expletive-laden rant at teammate Tom Opacic.
The incident occurred when Roosters halfback Sam Walker put up a high kick on a fifth tackle which was easily caught by Gutherson, only for the referee to call a penalty against the Eels after Tom Opacic had carelessly taken out one of the Roosters’ chasers well off the ball.
Gutherson was initially left livid at the referee for the call, thinking a penalty had been called on him, before he was notified that it had been called against Opacic.
“Tommy, leave that,” Gutherson yelled as he shifted his ire towards Opacic, before throwing the ball away in anger. “F–k me, you dumb c–t!”
The Gutherson-Opacic incident was symptomatic of a team that played with no confidence throughout the contest.
According to NSW Blues coach Brad Fittler, the Eels’ troubles started with the game’s very first set of six.
“It was interesting, Peter Sterling made comments during the week about them needing to play more and play coming out of trouble,” he said on Nine’s NRL coverage.
“In the first set of six they had a set play coming out of trouble and they dropped it with Jake Arthur.
“You talk about confidence, straight away I dropped my head. I felt like they needed to do that as well – play a bit of footy, and the moment I saw that happen, I think I was like Jake Arthur.”
Former Roosters star Sonny Bill Williams said the Eels had one of two options coming out of the loss and urged Eels coach Brad Arthur to tweak his game plan in the lead-up to the finals.
“You can take it one of two ways as a player – you can either put your head down and lose confidence or you can look at it like a positive [and say] ‘We were at our worst tonight, what are we going to do to correct that?’,” he said on Nine’s NRL coverage.
“To be fair, tonight they did lose the leader of their pack in [Reagan] Campbell-Gillard nice and early.
“For me, they lacked a little bit of spark once they got down to the Roosters’ end.
“Arthur needs to have a good look at what he wants to do combination-wise beacuse with them playing the style they did tonight, I don’t see them going too far in the finals.”
“They’re a confidence side and they didn’t play with any confidence tonight,” ex-Jillaroos star Allana Ferguson added.
“If they’re going to come up against those top sides, they really need to have a look at what they want to achieve in a game and how they’re going to get that confidence.
“Is it out of their defence nice and early? If you do lose a couple of those key players like Reagan Campbell-Gillard, they lost the middle battle early and they had nothing off the back in attack either.
“They dropped a lot of footy, but as soon as they lose that confidence it all turns upside down for the Eels, so they need to figure out how to find that against the top sides.”
Parramatta’s task gets no easier in Round 21 with a clash against the third-placed Rabbitohs on the horizon, while the Roosters will face Penrith in another blockbuster.
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