{"id":617129,"date":"2026-04-19T13:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T13:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/617129\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T13:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T13:04:12","slug":"jeers-to-cheers-eels-flip-script-to-punish-bulldogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/617129\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeers to cheers: Eels flip script to punish Bulldogs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A week after having their desire publicly questioned by coach Jason Ryles, Parramatta have responded by belting Canterbury in a 38-20 NRL win.<\/p>\n<p>With the heroes of the club&#8217;s last premiership win in 1986 watching on at CommBank Stadium on Sunday, Ryles&#8217; depleted side &#8212; missing eight NRL regulars &#8212; rose to the occasion to cause a boilover.<\/p>\n<p>It was a marked difference to the side which was booed off a week earlier after being handed their biggest home loss in more than 30 years by the Gold Coast Titans.<\/p>\n<p>Mitchell Moses was influential but halves partner Ronald Volkman was just as electric as the Eels claimed a third win of the season.<\/p>\n<p><img class=\" lazyload lazyload\" data-image-container=\".inline-photo\" height=\"320\" width=\"570\"\/>Dylan Walker celebrates a try during the Eels&#8217; win over the Bulldogs.\u00a0Photo by Darrian Traynor\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This time last week, we were questioning a lot of things and the turnaround came through our defence and our attitude,&#8221; Ryles said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no better feeling than seeing the joy that they (the 1986 side) get out of the current crop performing the way they did.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t so much the result, but I think it was how they did it and the grit and the resolve that the players showed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Canterbury lacked attacking spark and Cameron Ciraldo&#8217;s decision to use back-rower Josh Curran in the centres after Enari Tuala was ruled out with a hamstring issue before kick-off raised eyebrows.<\/p>\n<p>Curran made four errors and the decision was all the more puzzling given Ciraldo named winger Jonathan Sua on the bench.<\/p>\n<p>Sua eventually saw gametime when Jacob Kiraz limped off in the second half with a medial ligament issue.<\/p>\n<p>Ciraldo described the performance as &#8220;crap&#8221; and said Kiraz would go for scans on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>STAY IN THE KNOW WITH ESPN<img decoding=\"async\" data-lazyload=\"true\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/r1589538_608x342_16-9.png\" class=\"round lazyload\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Stay across all the big sports news &#8212; sign up to our weekly newsletters here!<\/p>\n<p>SUBSCRIBE<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We started with good energy and intent, but any sort of error and penalty we had, we showed no resilience,&#8221; Ciraldo said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Parra were really good &#8211; exactly what we expected them to be &#8211; and deserved the win but we were way off our best.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Dogs have won just one of their past four NRL games after failing to capitalise on a hot start when Bronson Xerri weaved down the left edge and offloaded to Kiraz.<\/p>\n<p>Matt Burton missed the conversion before Parramatta hit the front when Volkman found Addo-Carr, who tiptoed down the sideline to score.<\/p>\n<p>An illegal strip from Lachlan Galvin allowed the Eels to push ahead with Volkman jinking his way through the middle of the Bulldogs&#8217; defence on the next set.<\/p>\n<p>Addo-Carr then smashed Curran to jolt the ball loose with the Eels going on a raid down the left.<\/p>\n<p>Winger Brian Kelly grubbered ahead for Joash Papalii to touch down in the 34th minute to give the Eels a 18-4 halftime lead.<\/p>\n<p>Kiraz came off early into the second half and Burton soldiered on with an ankle injury.<\/p>\n<p>Galvin kept his side in it when he powered over Moses to grab the first try of the second half with 28 minutes left to play and cut the Eels&#8217; lead to eight points.<\/p>\n<p>But three blunders from Curran put Parramatta back in the boxseat.<\/p>\n<p>First the makeshift centre fumbled at the play-the-ball under pressure from rookie Eels centre Araz Nanva.<\/p>\n<p>And then at the end of the ensuing set Curran dropped a Moses bomb into Dylan Walker&#8217;s hands and the Eels utility crashed over.<\/p>\n<p>Moses extended the Eels&#8217; buffer with a 70th-minute penalty goal.<\/p>\n<p>The Dogs tried a short kick-off and Curran tapped the ball back to Eels interchange hooker Tallyn Da Silva who raced 50m to score.<\/p>\n<p>Sua and Xerri scored tries in the final 10 minutes for the Bulldogs but it was a case of too little too late.<\/p>\n<p>The only sour note for the Eels was hooker Ryley Smith being ruled out with a suspected sternum injury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A week after having their desire publicly questioned by coach Jason Ryles, Parramatta have responded by belting Canterbury&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-617129","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\/617129","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=617129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}