Eels shocker continues club’s finals hoodoo
CAMERON King sang from an old Parramatta song sheet on Saturday night.
“That,’’ the gutsy Eels hooker conceded as he emerged from a shattered dressing room, “was an opportunity thrown away”.
And so, the hoodoo contin- ues. Already boasting the longest premiership drought of any NRL club, the Eels didn’t so much lose to North Queensland at ANZ Stadium as simply continue 31 years – and counting – of finals heartache.
Normally, though, Parramatta bomb out from next week. Big time.
Over the past two decades, they have loss either the preliminary final or grand final seven times.
In fact, in 2005 it was the Cowboys who upset an almost unbackable minor premiership Parramatta side 29-zip.
And so it was again on Saturday night. According to the Fox Sports Laboratory, the heavily favoured Slipperies made 13 errors, completed at 67 per cent and missed a whopping 31 tackles.
“So right now, it’s raw,”
King said.
“I’m just so disappointed because I feel like we had so much more to give.
“The rest of this finals series, it will be hard to watch because it feels like an opportunity thrown away. That’s a tough pill to swallow.”
Centre Michael Jennings agreed with his teammate.
“Errors inside our own half – they killed us,’’ he said.
“We’d spoken about how the Cowboys are a side that doesn’t make errors, how they then play some good footy off that.”