Hodgson gets pass mark as Eels grilled for late implosion

Brad Arthur was not happy with his side’s execution in the season opener, but he did find one positive from the Eels’ loss to Melbourne.

The Eels showed some teething issues in attack which will need to be fixed immediately after their loss to the Storm. Picture: Cameron Spencer / Getty Images

Brad Arthur was pleased with Josh Hodgson’s first proper game as an Eel, but the Parramatta coach took a swipe at his side’s composure after a late implosion led to a 16-12 defeat to the Storm on Thursday night.

Losing Reed Mahoney from the side which reached last year’s grand final always loomed as one of the biggest concerns for Parramatta going into the new season, given his long passes out of dummy-half always put his halves over the advantage line.

Hodgson set up Parramatta’s second try of the night but his Eels debut didn’t go to plan with the Storm getting the win in golden point. Picture: Cameron Spencer / Getty Images

Hodgson was more than solid in his first NRL appearance since he tore his ACL in the opening round of the 2022 season – even if plenty of his passes were borderline forward.

The former Raider controlled the game in the opening half and then took advantage of a misread by Cameron Munster to set up Junior Paulo for what looked to be the winning try midway through the second half.

“That was Josh’s first proper hit out for us. He got through 80 minutes and he worked really hard,” Arthur said.

“I don’t think that he did anything wrong which contributed to any of our execution.”

Maika Sivo came up with a moment of madness when he kicked on the first tackle when the Eels were on the attack with a few minutes to go. Picture: Cameron Spencer / Getty Images

While Hodgson looked solid in the middle, the Englishman didn’t record a single running metre to engage the markers, and Parramatta’s halves failed to get involved given they didn’t get much early ball.

Arthur lamented what he thought was a skinny 10 metres, but the fact is Mitchell Moses and Dylan Brown only combined for 10 runs when that is arguably their greatest strength.

The playmakers missed the chance to ice the game at the end with Moses having a field goal attempt charged down, and it was almost fitting that the one time they did link up was in golden point when Brown spilled a poor pass from Moses.

That was the chance the Storm needed as Harry Grant scooted over to score to punish an Eels side which never quite gelled in attack and must now regroup ahead of four more brutally tough matches.

Moses has been in the headlines all week as his contract saga drags on, but he almost stole the show with what would have been the winning field goal. Picture: Cameron Spencer / Getty Images

“I’m really happy with our effort, but I feel like we did enough and put ourselves in a position to win it,” Arthur said, frustrated with his side’s lack of attack.

“We just didn’t execute well enough. It’s not like we made a heap of errors – there were some big moments at the backend which we didn’t get right. We were in the position to win it, but we needed to ice a couple of those moments.”