Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Graham and Muckert to return against Manly
Parramatta's injured troops may return en masse against Manly the week after next.
Brian Smith said in an audio interview on the Official Parramatta website that Ashley Graham and Chris Muckert would both likely line up in Premiere League against Manly. Corey Pearson, while named on a five man bench again this week, is more likely to return for the Manly clash and Lee Hopkins was also probably just "a couple of weeks away" from returning from an eye socket injury.
As regard to Ronald Price, who is out with a knee injury, Smith said that although the doctor still wanted to see more MRI scans "at this stage it certainly doesn't look like he is going to be requiring drastic knee surgery and missing the entire season".
Smith said he thought the match against Canberra was probably the Eels best performance of the year, let down only by some glaring defensive errors caused by poor communication.
"Most of the poor execution… was in the defensive area - just missed some simple tackles or we had guys trying to take the world on, on their own, rather than working in combinations"
"When we lost that communication and combination we tackled poorly and let them break our line too easily."
"I don't think we were a disgrace... I was a bit cheesed off with the lapses we had in executing our defensive line but I think we can build on that."
Brian Smith said in an audio interview on the Official Parramatta website that Ashley Graham and Chris Muckert would both likely line up in Premiere League against Manly. Corey Pearson, while named on a five man bench again this week, is more likely to return for the Manly clash and Lee Hopkins was also probably just "a couple of weeks away" from returning from an eye socket injury.
As regard to Ronald Price, who is out with a knee injury, Smith said that although the doctor still wanted to see more MRI scans "at this stage it certainly doesn't look like he is going to be requiring drastic knee surgery and missing the entire season".
Smith said he thought the match against Canberra was probably the Eels best performance of the year, let down only by some glaring defensive errors caused by poor communication.
"Most of the poor execution… was in the defensive area - just missed some simple tackles or we had guys trying to take the world on, on their own, rather than working in combinations"
"When we lost that communication and combination we tackled poorly and let them break our line too easily."
"I don't think we were a disgrace... I was a bit cheesed off with the lapses we had in executing our defensive line but I think we can build on that."
