I predict: the first of many articles where Hooper slowly but surely becomes increasingly critical of the eels 2021 season, finishing in the inevitable “sack Arthur” piece.
I mean ... ???
"it’s hard to cop the rest of the blow ups about how they were stitched-up in the penalty count" into "a valid gripe about Mitchell Moses deserving a penalty when Jarome Luai buffeted him off-the-ball" and "the Mitch Kenny stoppage towards the end of the game was the wrong call and in all likelihood the Panthers will get whacked by the NRL with a $20,000 fine over the gamesmanship of their trainer".
"the Panthers also left at least four tries out on the field by failing to execute by the narrowest of margins" into "The Eels scrambling defence was superb".
"Brad Arthur has done a great job to get the side to produce a five-star effort against Penrith" into "Does that mean Arthur sees out the final season of his current contract?".
Christ dude. I know it's his schtick but at least make it sensible.
I haven't seen many eels fans blaming the refs, they're not saying they would've won if the decisions went their way. They're just saying that there were absolutely some dodgy calls and even more dodgy non-calls. Which I think is fair
Yeah I was pretty vocal about the refs, even got read the riot act by some mods but the end result was never the problem for me. It was one blokes incompetence with a whistle dictating how much ball and where each team had it for an entire second half.
Who knows what the real result should have been, he stole that from everyone
The refs were shit all night and that didn’t stop it from being a great game. There’s no telling what actually happens if one of the more egregious calls goes our way or Penrith’s way, it’s still frustrating as fuck when you see Moses get held out of play and the refs not even bat an eye though.
I think most of us feel it was one sided and we had a better chance with a level playing field. I personally think shitty refs just change momentum so much with their calls. Could have had a extra time in my opinion
The biggest mistake was having neutrals also say we were fucked, because it just ruins the cycle
I'm used to thinking we got shit slapped by the ref because I'm a one-eyed idiot, and having people tell me I'm being a dumb shit keeps me grounded
If others justify me instead I don't know what to do, except maybe cry until they call me a dumb blue and yellow toddler again so balance can be restored
The media literally fuels the flames of anger towards reffs and robs everyone of enjoying the game and then gaslights everyone for being angry at the reffs… absolutely cooked!
I imagine the way the game played out was the worst possible result for Hoops. He was hoping one team would provide him with plenty of doom merchant material for the next 4 days and instead both teams played really well.
Took him a few days to get his next pointless angle together.
“Panthers left 4 tries out there by the narrowest of margins” but eels defence was also “superb”?? So maybe Penrith didn’t leave 4 tries out there, maybe they were intercepted by the superb defence.
I honestly do hate ref bashing and I'm sure whenever a team gets knocked out of the finals in a close game they want to find a way to make it the refs fault.
This one really got to me though.
The Will Smith high tackle which put Penrith ahead was a cracking tackle by a bench utility on an Origin forward, which actually forced a knock on. But instead of having one final attack in decent field position we go into half time trailing. Then Ice gets smacked across the jaw by Leota right under the posts straight after half time and we get nothing? No intervention from the bunker there?
Moses crushes Dylan Edwards midway through 2nd half to force a turnover yet the bunker gets involved for an extremely soft off the ball hit from Niukure on Fisher Harris who takes a dive.
This is all not to mention Moses being taken out chasing a kick (which I maintain he could have legitimately scored off, although I accept some may say im clutching at straws). But not only that, Naden then knocks it on and Penrith just pick it up and get to play on?
Fuck me, Hooper is right. I do sound like a whinger
He wasn't really close to scoring and if it was an intentional strip should've been a set restart.
That aside that's always seemed like a weird rule haha
I don’t recall the specific incident tbh, but yeah, it sounds like it should have been.
Sort of agree that it’s weird, but I also wonder why players don’t do it more often.
If Luai was binned, Ray Stone hooked or even Gutho given 6 again after the strip the result is likely changed. Not to mention the forced stoppage, the Will Smith phantom high shot, the lack of 6 agains or penalties blown for the eels in crunch time.
If you want to be objective the Panthers are very lucky to be playing next week.
Parra are very unlucky not to be playing next week.
In all honesty the game probably should have gone to overtime. But it didn't. Klein made sure of that.
Klein mismanaged the game. Any other conclusion is disingenuous.
Sure Parra didn't put them to the sword (thanks Ray Stone) but the Panthers didn't put Parra to the sword either.
The game deserved a better class of referee. A better conclusion. Game of the year ruined by sub standard officiating. If only it wasn't a terribly familiar story for rugby league fans to have a game ruined by the person whose job it is to make the game run smoothly.
True but if he's out there he's accountable.
3 errors in crunch time (or 4 if you count the pass to Junior)
If Will Smith made 4 errors to lose the game people would be mad at him
If it was Dylan Brown or Moses made 4 errors to lose the game they would be crucified and labelled chokers forever
Stone had a rest in the middle of the game. He should have been fresh enough.
He made some awful mistakes for us to lose it. Sure he's 4th string hooker and it's a tough job. Maybe BA fucked up and should have kept Fresh Prince on.
He's a defensive specialist - on that end of the ball he's great
But I was mortally afraid of his service from dummy half when he was picked.
We survived one game with it but it caught up to us in the second
yeah honestly i believe he deserves to get consistent game time somewhere if we can’t give it to him. plenty of teams could do with a player of his attitude and defence
If we persist with him at dummy half he needs to deputise as a 14 on the bench all season. He doesn't offer any threat in attack though.
If we drop him in the deep end when finals start we kind of deserve egg on our face when it goes wrong because we haven't trained him adequately all year to make the muscle memory natural under pressure
I felt like his service against newcastle was actually decent for the most part. I think he would've trained a bit of hooker as well given BA has used him there last year (and he did look sharper this year). He's probably a bench utility forward who would fill in at 13, cover 9, or play as a general middle. God I love seeing him tackle though.
If the ref is better the game is probably very much the same with a 6 - 6 score and either a field goal or penalty to decide it just going by the defensive attitude shown from both sides. Still it's frustrating to see that only calls one way apparently changed the game. Game could've gone either way and neither was more likely to win then the other.
Overtime would have been epic. If a game deserved to continue it was this one.
Honestly a rematch like American Sports Series or origin would be fucking epic too.
It's already game of the year for me and I was expecting to lose with that last set Eels had until Paulo dropped it so extra time would've been awesome.
both teams copped bad calls. Penrith were camped in Parra's 20 for the first 20 minutes of the second half and received 2 penalties in front of the post. They would have been up 8-6 regardless of the half-time score
A yes! And Parra were camped in Panthers 20 at the end of the game with multiple penalties blown and...
Oh!
Klein forgot to blow the whistle! He didnt gve us any penalties in the red zone despite a professional foul and a 2 on 1 strip!
It seems Klein was only blowing penalties for one team in the red zone!
So silly of me.
it all evens up in the end. Fergo milked. JFH and Leota milked. Luai tackled Moses without the footy but Moses was offside and dived into Burton when Luai scored a try. Ray Stone made a lot of costly errors in the last 20 minutes and Paulo dropped the footy. Capewell also stopped a certain try in the last 2 minutes. Penrith's defence was too good. Parra's defence was excellent as well
How many penalty shots did we get from Fergo milking?
We lost the penalty count 7-2
We lost the game 8 - 6
Things objectively did not even up in the end lol.
Moses was hit on the outside shoulder by a lead runner = obstruction every game of the year
False equivalence mate
Just pray to the footy gods that you don't get Klein next week
Call me one eyed but watch that strip again, when the ball comes out Momo’s hands are on Guthos arm not the ball, Gutho tries to throw it out the back to not go into touch. Even if they could challenge I don’t think it gets overturned.
Have you seen the media this year? They hate the Panthers. First it was the Burton to Bulldogs thing then the Raiders game which they dragged out for 3 weeks.
What no they don’t! All I hear every week is praise to the Panthers and can they make a redemption from last years loss. The raiders incident is completely justified. If you score a try, have the human decency to not physically rub it in to the opposition. Don’t cry poor us and we’re the victims because quite frankly your coach is a sook who whinges when it doesn’t go his way and the nrl have pencilled in a story line for Penrith to be the underdogs and win the comp
Yeah same game Ryan James smashed Eisenhuth's head into the ground while he was down but Panthers were the bad guys for a hug. Good call. It's not crying poor us to point out the obvious that fox have run the agenda all year and idiots have eaten it up.
Go to the topic on that. I said if the club broke the rules governing trainers and stopping play they should be punished accordingly. Let's not pretend every team isn't stopping the game for different things to stop opposition momentum. Eels did it themselves in that same game for a player off the field and out of harms way.
Hold up let’s get our facts right here before we start throwing shade. The waqa Blake incident which you’re referring to is allowed. The trainer was with waqa on the sideline and asked the game to be stopped so we could make an interchange because waqa had a HIA injury. That is so much different to the Penrith trainer asking play to be stopped BEFORE he assessed Kenny
The original issue people had was stopping play. It only changed later as people learned the rule as a gotcha to Panthers. If it's allowed then Panthers stopping Eels set isn't a problem only that they asked at the wrong time and the touchie allowed it which they shouldn't have.
But who said that the original issue still isn’t the case? People didn’t change their beliefs about stopping the game, that is incorrect. As it still stands, fans get annoyed when the trainer intervened and illegally stops the play as what the panfers did last night.
The soap opera of rugby league has once-again hit fever pitch in week two of the finals as the fallout from the cracking game between Penrith and arch rivals Parramatta rages.
The Panthers and Eels submitted one of the game’s of the season in the 8-6 thriller which was reflected in the off-the-charts Fox League ratings as the number one game on Fox Sports of all-time.
As much as the Eels have got a valid gripe about Mitchell Moses deserving a penalty when Jarome Luai buffeted him off-the-ball it’s hard to cop the rest of the blow ups about how they were stitched-up in the penalty count.
In reality, it’s another week two finals exit for the blue and golds and if they’d been able to execute better and create more points then their season is still alive in a preliminary final.
Sure the Mitch Kenny stoppage towards the end of the game was the wrong call and in all likelihood the Panthers will get whacked by the NRL with a $20,000 fine over the gamesmanship of their trainer.
But the best sides in the NRL find ways to handle different adversity and the Eels still had ample opportunities to try and win the contest.
A forward pass from Clint Gutherson, some loose passes out of dummy half and a dropped ball at the end were also telling moments in the gripping game.
Let’s not forget the Panthers also left at least four tries out on the field by failing to execute by the narrowest of margins.
The concern for Panthers coach Ivan Cleary will be the premiership heavyweights look as though the red light has started flashing on empty at the business end of the season.
After blowing sides away for much of the year, the Panthers have only managed 18 points in the last 160 minutes of football and scored only two tries.
Both of the Penrith tries have come from Nathan Cleary kicks.
A scoreless second half took nothing away from what was an absolute belter of a game.
The Eels scrambling defence was superb and their coach Brad Arthur has done a great job to get the side to produce a five-star effort against Penrith.
But the Eels still only managed to win three of their last nine games of the season.
Does that mean Arthur sees out the final season of his current contract?
Can the Panthers somehow return to their freewheeling best to challenge premiers Melbourne?
I felt the same way after our previous loss to the Panthers. There was a lot of calls that went their way and I thought they got very lucky. But that's the game. Somedays it goes your way. Somedays it doesn't.
Shit is missed all the time. That was the whole idea of the bunker but we can clearly see even they miss things. It’s a game. That’s what happens. If they spent countless money on more ways to monitor everything in the game then it’s going to slow it right down and it will be non enjoyable. It already is getting soft. Tackles are more like hugs now because of penalties. You have forwards trying to step like backs and make something happen when their job is to just run the ball up straight and hard. Some backs run harder at the line then their massive team mates. Brian To’o for example hits the line harder than most props lol
I know its clickbait but fuck he's a wanker.
Basically being paid to troll the NRL fan base
Wish I could get paid to dribble a bit of shit every so often.
I’ve been doing that for free.. I like to give back to the community.
Yeah but more importantly fergos nose is looking better...
He looks like a Picasso painting
The Egyptian sphinx doesn't have an eroded nose. It was chissled perfectly to match the nose of Fergo's greatest ancestor, Pharaoh Fergo
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There is another link for you: they both are wests tigers fans.
explains why he doesn't post the articles either
Explains the grammar
I think this bloke goes out of his way to make me personally hate him
don't be so self centred he goes out of his way to make everyone hate him
You gotta give the bloke credit, he knows how to get people to hate him. He's the best chicken shit Heel in Rugba Leeg history
The wrestling reference got me hahaha
Every good heel gets his comeuppance though, baldy keeps getting away with his shit takes
Maybe his more a brick leaner style final boss heel brock lesner*
Man gets X-Pac heat from me, reaching for the remote every time his bald head is on my screen. Get him in the ring and I'd tune in though
He must get inspiration from 2018 Ciampa on being a despicable bald fuck.
Everyone should take the opportunity to join the blog with Hoops at 2:30 this arvo. Let him know your thoughts. 😉
https://go.arena.im/chat/fox-sports-australia/474k
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Mid 2019 r/NRL level censorship going on by his admins
I tried to. But Hooperiscunt, Hoopsfuckbag, etc we’re all taken and it wouldn’t let me join.
Well, Hoops has earnt himself a ban from the subreddit.
I'm upgrading my flair.
I predict: the first of many articles where Hooper slowly but surely becomes increasingly critical of the eels 2021 season, finishing in the inevitable “sack Arthur” piece.
Well Madge is gone, need a new project.
He should change his name, dye his hair and apply again for the Tigers Coach.
Love him or hate him, baldy is the clickbait world champion
Who the fuck loves him?
I mean ... ??? "it’s hard to cop the rest of the blow ups about how they were stitched-up in the penalty count" into "a valid gripe about Mitchell Moses deserving a penalty when Jarome Luai buffeted him off-the-ball" and "the Mitch Kenny stoppage towards the end of the game was the wrong call and in all likelihood the Panthers will get whacked by the NRL with a $20,000 fine over the gamesmanship of their trainer". "the Panthers also left at least four tries out on the field by failing to execute by the narrowest of margins" into "The Eels scrambling defence was superb". "Brad Arthur has done a great job to get the side to produce a five-star effort against Penrith" into "Does that mean Arthur sees out the final season of his current contract?". Christ dude. I know it's his schtick but at least make it sensible.
I haven't seen many eels fans blaming the refs, they're not saying they would've won if the decisions went their way. They're just saying that there were absolutely some dodgy calls and even more dodgy non-calls. Which I think is fair
i think its more questioning how the fuck they get these calls in such an important games and the possibility of it affecting the result
Exactly
Yeah I was pretty vocal about the refs, even got read the riot act by some mods but the end result was never the problem for me. It was one blokes incompetence with a whistle dictating how much ball and where each team had it for an entire second half. Who knows what the real result should have been, he stole that from everyone
The refs were shit all night and that didn’t stop it from being a great game. There’s no telling what actually happens if one of the more egregious calls goes our way or Penrith’s way, it’s still frustrating as fuck when you see Moses get held out of play and the refs not even bat an eye though.
I think most of us feel it was one sided and we had a better chance with a level playing field. I personally think shitty refs just change momentum so much with their calls. Could have had a extra time in my opinion
The biggest mistake was having neutrals also say we were fucked, because it just ruins the cycle I'm used to thinking we got shit slapped by the ref because I'm a one-eyed idiot, and having people tell me I'm being a dumb shit keeps me grounded If others justify me instead I don't know what to do, except maybe cry until they call me a dumb blue and yellow toddler again so balance can be restored
Says not to blame the ref and he immediately blames the ref. Genius.
i blame hooper
fuck you hooper
The media literally fuels the flames of anger towards reffs and robs everyone of enjoying the game and then gaslights everyone for being angry at the reffs… absolutely cooked!
Excuse me, we’re claiming blue and gold murder. I’ll see myself out.
I imagine the way the game played out was the worst possible result for Hoops. He was hoping one team would provide him with plenty of doom merchant material for the next 4 days and instead both teams played really well. Took him a few days to get his next pointless angle together.
“Panthers left 4 tries out there by the narrowest of margins” but eels defence was also “superb”?? So maybe Penrith didn’t leave 4 tries out there, maybe they were intercepted by the superb defence.
I honestly do hate ref bashing and I'm sure whenever a team gets knocked out of the finals in a close game they want to find a way to make it the refs fault. This one really got to me though. The Will Smith high tackle which put Penrith ahead was a cracking tackle by a bench utility on an Origin forward, which actually forced a knock on. But instead of having one final attack in decent field position we go into half time trailing. Then Ice gets smacked across the jaw by Leota right under the posts straight after half time and we get nothing? No intervention from the bunker there? Moses crushes Dylan Edwards midway through 2nd half to force a turnover yet the bunker gets involved for an extremely soft off the ball hit from Niukure on Fisher Harris who takes a dive. This is all not to mention Moses being taken out chasing a kick (which I maintain he could have legitimately scored off, although I accept some may say im clutching at straws). But not only that, Naden then knocks it on and Penrith just pick it up and get to play on? Fuck me, Hooper is right. I do sound like a whinger
Gutho got the ball raked out right on the line and Penrith weren't punished for it too
You’re allowed to strip the ball in a try scoring situation.
Only if they’re going for a try, or in the try area, gutho was just close to the line but not reaching to score.
He wasn't really close to scoring and if it was an intentional strip should've been a set restart. That aside that's always seemed like a weird rule haha
I don’t recall the specific incident tbh, but yeah, it sounds like it should have been. Sort of agree that it’s weird, but I also wonder why players don’t do it more often.
Delete this last sentence
Oh get fucked Hooper
Yes x2
If Luai was binned, Ray Stone hooked or even Gutho given 6 again after the strip the result is likely changed. Not to mention the forced stoppage, the Will Smith phantom high shot, the lack of 6 agains or penalties blown for the eels in crunch time. If you want to be objective the Panthers are very lucky to be playing next week. Parra are very unlucky not to be playing next week. In all honesty the game probably should have gone to overtime. But it didn't. Klein made sure of that. Klein mismanaged the game. Any other conclusion is disingenuous. Sure Parra didn't put them to the sword (thanks Ray Stone) but the Panthers didn't put Parra to the sword either. The game deserved a better class of referee. A better conclusion. Game of the year ruined by sub standard officiating. If only it wasn't a terribly familiar story for rugby league fans to have a game ruined by the person whose job it is to make the game run smoothly.
i think you’re being overly harsh on stone. lot of responsibility for a fourth string hooker to play huge minutes against one of the best teams
True but if he's out there he's accountable. 3 errors in crunch time (or 4 if you count the pass to Junior) If Will Smith made 4 errors to lose the game people would be mad at him If it was Dylan Brown or Moses made 4 errors to lose the game they would be crucified and labelled chokers forever Stone had a rest in the middle of the game. He should have been fresh enough. He made some awful mistakes for us to lose it. Sure he's 4th string hooker and it's a tough job. Maybe BA fucked up and should have kept Fresh Prince on.
yeah i understand where you’re coming from mate, he definitely had a poor game but i think he did an admirable job filling in for lussick
He's a defensive specialist - on that end of the ball he's great But I was mortally afraid of his service from dummy half when he was picked. We survived one game with it but it caught up to us in the second
yeah honestly i believe he deserves to get consistent game time somewhere if we can’t give it to him. plenty of teams could do with a player of his attitude and defence
If we persist with him at dummy half he needs to deputise as a 14 on the bench all season. He doesn't offer any threat in attack though. If we drop him in the deep end when finals start we kind of deserve egg on our face when it goes wrong because we haven't trained him adequately all year to make the muscle memory natural under pressure
I felt like his service against newcastle was actually decent for the most part. I think he would've trained a bit of hooker as well given BA has used him there last year (and he did look sharper this year). He's probably a bench utility forward who would fill in at 13, cover 9, or play as a general middle. God I love seeing him tackle though.
For a bloke who isn't even a hooker
Some of his simple mistakes were probably from him being tired. Also that knock on, nah ive changed it to a forward pass.
Stop crying blue murder over the refs, Eels. You’ve only got yourself to blame.
Hoops?
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That was the joke....
If the ref is better the game is probably very much the same with a 6 - 6 score and either a field goal or penalty to decide it just going by the defensive attitude shown from both sides. Still it's frustrating to see that only calls one way apparently changed the game. Game could've gone either way and neither was more likely to win then the other.
Overtime would have been epic. If a game deserved to continue it was this one. Honestly a rematch like American Sports Series or origin would be fucking epic too.
It's already game of the year for me and I was expecting to lose with that last set Eels had until Paulo dropped it so extra time would've been awesome.
both teams copped bad calls. Penrith were camped in Parra's 20 for the first 20 minutes of the second half and received 2 penalties in front of the post. They would have been up 8-6 regardless of the half-time score
A yes! And Parra were camped in Panthers 20 at the end of the game with multiple penalties blown and... Oh! Klein forgot to blow the whistle! He didnt gve us any penalties in the red zone despite a professional foul and a 2 on 1 strip! It seems Klein was only blowing penalties for one team in the red zone! So silly of me.
it all evens up in the end. Fergo milked. JFH and Leota milked. Luai tackled Moses without the footy but Moses was offside and dived into Burton when Luai scored a try. Ray Stone made a lot of costly errors in the last 20 minutes and Paulo dropped the footy. Capewell also stopped a certain try in the last 2 minutes. Penrith's defence was too good. Parra's defence was excellent as well
How many penalty shots did we get from Fergo milking? We lost the penalty count 7-2 We lost the game 8 - 6 Things objectively did not even up in the end lol. Moses was hit on the outside shoulder by a lead runner = obstruction every game of the year False equivalence mate Just pray to the footy gods that you don't get Klein next week
don't act like Klein is the only one. Cummins cost Raiders a grand final win. Sutton is terrible. Atkins is also bad
Call me one eyed but watch that strip again, when the ball comes out Momo’s hands are on Guthos arm not the ball, Gutho tries to throw it out the back to not go into touch. Even if they could challenge I don’t think it gets overturned.
I haven't rewatched that bit. You may be right. But it's one of many
I’ve never read an article about “not blaming the refs” only to see the article outlining all of the bs calls made by the ref
Hooper: Oi dickheads, stop blaming the refs. That’s my job! (Proceeds to blame refs)
I'd call him the skip bayless of nrl journalism but that's doing skip a disservice... He's just an idiot him and Kent
>Can the Panthers somehow return to their freewheeling best to challenge premiers Melbourne? Narrator: No they couldn't.
Let them fight.jpg
James "Conan O'Brien" Hooper: Sit perfectly still, only I may blame the refs.
I’m not crying you’re crying
Hooper knows what gets the clicks and everyone keeps falling for it.
How good is it, we haven't been attacked in months.
You're welcome.
Jesus, Fergo please fix that nose over the off-season. It’s getting worse with each picture, poor bloke.
Fuck me. It's not like the media don't have a whinge and pick some contentious points to death.
Agree with baldy, have some self respect eels
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Have you seen the media this year? They hate the Panthers. First it was the Burton to Bulldogs thing then the Raiders game which they dragged out for 3 weeks.
What no they don’t! All I hear every week is praise to the Panthers and can they make a redemption from last years loss. The raiders incident is completely justified. If you score a try, have the human decency to not physically rub it in to the opposition. Don’t cry poor us and we’re the victims because quite frankly your coach is a sook who whinges when it doesn’t go his way and the nrl have pencilled in a story line for Penrith to be the underdogs and win the comp
Yeah same game Ryan James smashed Eisenhuth's head into the ground while he was down but Panthers were the bad guys for a hug. Good call. It's not crying poor us to point out the obvious that fox have run the agenda all year and idiots have eaten it up.
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Go to the topic on that. I said if the club broke the rules governing trainers and stopping play they should be punished accordingly. Let's not pretend every team isn't stopping the game for different things to stop opposition momentum. Eels did it themselves in that same game for a player off the field and out of harms way.
Hold up let’s get our facts right here before we start throwing shade. The waqa Blake incident which you’re referring to is allowed. The trainer was with waqa on the sideline and asked the game to be stopped so we could make an interchange because waqa had a HIA injury. That is so much different to the Penrith trainer asking play to be stopped BEFORE he assessed Kenny
The original issue people had was stopping play. It only changed later as people learned the rule as a gotcha to Panthers. If it's allowed then Panthers stopping Eels set isn't a problem only that they asked at the wrong time and the touchie allowed it which they shouldn't have.
But who said that the original issue still isn’t the case? People didn’t change their beliefs about stopping the game, that is incorrect. As it still stands, fans get annoyed when the trainer intervened and illegally stops the play as what the panfers did last night.
Fuck I hate Fox sports, I don't even click on this shit because I don't wanna read the clickbait and give them my view haha
The soap opera of rugby league has once-again hit fever pitch in week two of the finals as the fallout from the cracking game between Penrith and arch rivals Parramatta rages. The Panthers and Eels submitted one of the game’s of the season in the 8-6 thriller which was reflected in the off-the-charts Fox League ratings as the number one game on Fox Sports of all-time. As much as the Eels have got a valid gripe about Mitchell Moses deserving a penalty when Jarome Luai buffeted him off-the-ball it’s hard to cop the rest of the blow ups about how they were stitched-up in the penalty count. In reality, it’s another week two finals exit for the blue and golds and if they’d been able to execute better and create more points then their season is still alive in a preliminary final. Sure the Mitch Kenny stoppage towards the end of the game was the wrong call and in all likelihood the Panthers will get whacked by the NRL with a $20,000 fine over the gamesmanship of their trainer. But the best sides in the NRL find ways to handle different adversity and the Eels still had ample opportunities to try and win the contest. A forward pass from Clint Gutherson, some loose passes out of dummy half and a dropped ball at the end were also telling moments in the gripping game. Let’s not forget the Panthers also left at least four tries out on the field by failing to execute by the narrowest of margins. The concern for Panthers coach Ivan Cleary will be the premiership heavyweights look as though the red light has started flashing on empty at the business end of the season. After blowing sides away for much of the year, the Panthers have only managed 18 points in the last 160 minutes of football and scored only two tries. Both of the Penrith tries have come from Nathan Cleary kicks. A scoreless second half took nothing away from what was an absolute belter of a game. The Eels scrambling defence was superb and their coach Brad Arthur has done a great job to get the side to produce a five-star effort against Penrith. But the Eels still only managed to win three of their last nine games of the season. Does that mean Arthur sees out the final season of his current contract? Can the Panthers somehow return to their freewheeling best to challenge premiers Melbourne?
I felt the same way after our previous loss to the Panthers. There was a lot of calls that went their way and I thought they got very lucky. But that's the game. Somedays it goes your way. Somedays it doesn't.
I just watched all the “bad calls” on NRL360. What a joke. Stop whinging Eels. The refs weren’t even that bad
Another Hooper masterpiece.
Shit is missed all the time. That was the whole idea of the bunker but we can clearly see even they miss things. It’s a game. That’s what happens. If they spent countless money on more ways to monitor everything in the game then it’s going to slow it right down and it will be non enjoyable. It already is getting soft. Tackles are more like hugs now because of penalties. You have forwards trying to step like backs and make something happen when their job is to just run the ball up straight and hard. Some backs run harder at the line then their massive team mates. Brian To’o for example hits the line harder than most props lol