PARRAMATTA made so many mistakes that it didn't matter how many Warriors winger Manu Vatuvei made. He was never going to play the Eels into the game.
Vatuvei may be among the riskiest players in the NRL - and a natural target for opponents - but even though he made his usual handling errors, he still finished in the black with two tries and a few big runs.
No team can go to Mt Smart Stadium, turn the ball over repeatedly and expect to win. The Warriors will punish you. They are big, strong and athletic and will wear you down until you've got nothing left. The Eels were gone by midway through the second half, after Vatuvei and centre Brent Tate had each scored tries within two minutes to blow the home side's lead out from 12-10 to 24-10.
It wasn't as if Parramatta hadn't been warned. In the first round last season, they went over there and played an opening 40 minutes that rated as their worst of 2007. They were gone by half-time of that game, trailing 24-0, and went on to lose 34-18. Yesterday, they spread their mistakes more evenly over the two halves, but all that did was stretch the game out as a contest a little further before the Warriors finally cleared out.
Had five-eighth Feleti Mateo not been playing for the Eels, they would have lost by even more. He was easily their most dangerous player in attack and didn't get a lot of support from halfback Brett Finch, who opened the season strongly in last weekend's comeback win over the Bulldogs but whose passing and kicking games were off yesterday.
Parramatta missed their star forward Nathan Hindmarsh, who was out of the game with a virus. But even his presence - which would have at least tightened the defence a bit - wouldn't have been nearly enough to turn the result around, so untidy were the Eels as a whole.
The visitors probably thought they were travelling OK after getting to a 6-0 lead by the 20-minute mark - and they did look good until then - but as soon as the Warriors started keeping the ball alive in that irresistible fashion of theirs, the game turned on its heel. The last 60 minutes belonged to the home side.
Parramatta are big enough to compete physically with any team, but when the Warriors get into that groove of coming out of quick play-the-balls, running hard, offloading in tackles and supporting each other to the hilt, they start to look huge and the opposition small. The Eels should have done a better job of killing the ball, but when the Warriors get on that sort of roll and the passes stick they can carve up any opposition.
Passes to ground or forward, kicks into touch on the full, knock-ons, missed tackles, wrong options, stupid penalties … the Eels made it hard for themselves yesterday.
The Warriors made a few mistakes themselves - mainly through Vatuvei - but not nearly enough to give Parramatta a run for their money in that department.
Now we've got the intriguing match-up of the Eels at home to Newcastle on Friday night - each team coached by the other's former long-time coach. The Knights are a new-look team and still very much a work in progress. But, after scoring back-to-back wins to open the season, self-belief shouldn't be a problem. The Eels will have to clean up their act if they hope to win.
