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\n Junior Paulo was among the Eels injured brigade who supported team-mates in Newcastle.
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Parramatta hired a mini-bus to transport injured players to Newcastle on Saturday to watch their team-mates battle bravely to a 28-22 loss to the Knights at McDonald Jones Stadium.<\/p>\n
Though they trailed 6-0 after two minutes, 24-10 midway through the second half and 28-16 with 10 minutes remaining, the under-manned Eels fought hard to the final siren and went close to scoring in the last minute and possibly forcing extra time.<\/p>\n
Parramatta\u2019s bulging casualty ward includes halves Mitchell Moses and Jonah Pezet (both hamstring), pack leader Junior Paulo (knee), outside backs Will Penisini (groin) and Bailey Simonsson (ankle), and forwards J\u2019Maine Hopgood and Matt Doorey, who have both sustained season-ending knee injuries.<\/p>\n
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\n Junior Paulo was among the Eels injured brigade who supported team-mates in Newcastle.
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Fullback Isaiah Iongi (hand) returned against the Knights, scoring a try seven minutes from full-time to keep the Eels in the contest, and hooker Ryley Smith (sternum) made his comeback in NSW Cup against Newcastle in Saturday\u2019s curtain-raiser.<\/p>\n
Eels coach Jason Ryles was at pains not to use their injury toll as an excuse for the loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a very young side but we\u2019ve been really focused on what we can control, and that\u2019s our prep, and our best prep each week,\u201d Ryles said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re trying their hearts out, and they\u2019re getting some lessons with the big boys, and that\u2019s all part of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut to sum up the other part of it, which I don\u2019t like to talk about too much, we had a mini-bus bring our injured blokes up today, so that\u2019s kind of where we\u2019re at. To produce the effort and the fight that the boys did out there today, I\u2019m really proud of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Centre Sean Russell had a try disallowed in the 33rd minute because he was off-side chasing Ronald Volkman\u2019s kick, and the Eels squandered several other try-scoring opportunities because of forward passes and sloppy finishing.<\/p>\n
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Croker saves the try and saves the game<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was disappointing in the end,\u201d Ryles said. \u201cI thought we tried really hard, the effort was there, we fought really hard, but unfortunately, execution let us down at the end of the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI reckon we left probably four tries out there that were genuine tries, so another week of lessons, little moments in games that are so important, that are fundamental, which hurts.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s part of the journey, unfortunately, and we\u2019ve just got to keep fighting hard and keep working hard to make sure that we don\u2019t let that happen.<\/p>\n
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Isaiah Iongi Try<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the other side of the ball too, they probably scored a couple of tries that were a bit easy and a little bit of a free passage, so we need to keep working on that as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ryles said Moses, who missed NSW\u2019s 22-20 Origin victory over Queensland last Wednesday after suffering his hamstring injury at Blues training, would give himself every chance of returning against the Bulldogs at Accor Stadium next Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll just have to wait and see how he goes,\u201d Ryles said.\u00a0\u201cHe had a run today and he got up to 80 per cent, so he was pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stand-in skipper Jack Williams was pleased with the \u201cfight\u201d the Eels demonstrated, despite being without so many senior players, but was disappointed they could not celebrate winger Brian Kelly\u2019s 200th NRL game with a win.<\/p>\n
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Brian Kelly Try<\/p>\n
\u201cLike Rylesy touched on … \u00a0we\u2019re down on troops, but I think it\u2019s going to be better for us in the long run,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving those guys exposed out there, like we were, we had plenty of opportunities to ice moments and we didn\u2019t take them, which probably comes down to individual preparation and not getting your job right.<\/p>\n
\u201cMyself\u00a0included,\u00a0we\u2019d\u00a0like to have a couple of moments back, but\u00a0in the long run,\u00a0we\u2019ll\u00a0be better\u00a0for\u00a0it. But I\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0fault the scrap that the boys put in, or the effort that we all tried to put in for Brian\u2019s\u00a0200th.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Parramatta hired a mini-bus to transport injured players to Newcastle on Saturday to watch their team-mates battle bravely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-454329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}