The Dragons took down the Eels 24-18 in their Week 1 finals clash at Jubilee Stadium on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
The win sees the Red V march through to the second week of the postseason and set up a first-versus-second clash against the Warriors.<\/p>\n
It was largely the work of Jonah Glover which spurred the Dragons to a key postseason win with the Dragons five-eighth notching a second half double.<\/p>\n
Willie Talau\u2019s squad consisted of eight Jersey Flegg eligible players, but the side\u2019s inexperience mattered little with the Red V holding on for a nice win on home soil.<\/p>\n
Parramatta opened the scoring through Joey Lussick who burrowed his way over out of dummy-half under the sticks to make it 6-0 just seven minutes in.<\/p>\n
Araz Nanva went through a gap for the Eels again soon after, but play was pulled up with officials ruling a forward pass in the lead-up.<\/p>\n
Nick Tsougranis made his presence felt upon his return to the field pouring through a hole from inside his own half before handing it off to a supporting Nathan Lawson.<\/p>\n
Lawson went to ground as he took the ball in however and left the field in the aftermath with an apparent leg issue.<\/p>\n
Haele Finau came onto the field as a result of Lawson\u2019s departure lining up on the right wing \u2013 an unfamiliar position for the utility.<\/p>\n
The Dragons managed a response 25 minutes in with Jonah Glover sending Raymond Faitala-Mariner through on a nice, angled run down the right-hand corridor.<\/p>\n
Glover knocked over the extras from a short distance inside the right touchline to tie proceedings at six-apiece.<\/p>\n
The Eels threatened to hit back prior to the break down the right flank only for a desperate Tyler Peckham-Harris cover effort to put an end to the raid.<\/p>\n
Glover put the Dragons ahead just shy of the break knocking over a gift penalty goal from in front to make it an 8-6 Red V advantage.<\/p>\n
Parramatta added a penalty goal of their own off the back of a high tackle ruling as the half-time siren sounded to lock things up heading into the intermission.<\/p>\n
The first points of the second forty belonged to the Red V with Glover cutting off the right foot to slam the ball down before converting his own try to push the side\u2019s edge out to 14-8.<\/p>\n
The Dragons surged further ahead moments later with Cody Ramsey sweeping around off a right-side shift and putting Tsougranis through a hole to score and make it a double-digit difference.<\/p>\n
Glover went within inches of a second as the clash approached the hour-mark after forcing an error of a Lachlan Ilias kick but was ruled to have knocked the ball on.<\/p>\n
He secured his try double moments later however slicing into space down the right-hand corridor and burning the cover to dive over and make it 24-8.<\/p>\n
Parramatta found a needed four-pointer entering the final 10 minutes with Samuel Loizou the beneficiary of a spilt Ronald Volkman bomb to cut the deficit back to 10 for the visitors.<\/p>\n
An ill-timed Dragons yardage error handed the Eels another opportunity and they took full advantage off the scrum win with Volkman sending halves partner Lorenzo Talataina over off a neat inside ball.<\/p>\n
Te Hurinui Twidle\u2019s conversion attempt was waved away however as the scoreline remained 24-18 the way of the Dragons.<\/p>\n
Connor Muhleisen came up with a key effort play as time ticked away taking advantage of a piece of Parramatta absentmindedness to dive on a loose ball which sat unattended at dummy-half.<\/p>\n
The Dragons found a way to hold Parramatta out and advance to a huge Week 2 clash against the minor premier Warriors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dragons took down the Eels 24-18 in their Week 1 finals clash at Jubilee Stadium on Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-123310","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-national-rugby-league","11":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}