That a 12-6 interval scoreline might have left the door open to another stirring Eels comeback hadn't occurred to Warriors coach Ivan Cleary, a pragmatist not given to such theories. "I didn't even think about it," he said.
Anyway, it turned out to be nothing like last week. "I thought we were still well in the game at half-time," said Eels coach Michael Hagan. "If we got ourselves into a decent part of the field, we were more than a chance of winning the game."
They did manage to get their noses ahead, through a well-taken 45th-minute try by a black-eyed Joel Reddy. Then, however, they leaked three in eight minutes around the hour mark. Their forwards tired, and Brett Finch - as he is sometimes wont to do - got frustrated, made some errors and appeared to make the odd comment to referee Shayne Hayne.
The Eels, said captain Nathan Cayless, were simply frustrated. They boarded their bus within minutes of the final whistle, and none of them wanted to answer phonecalls as they suffered on the half-hour drive back into the city. Nothing like the Bulldogs game; nothing like their last time here, a round-one play-off victory last year.
Hagan mentioned poor execution, but Parramatta's completion and possession stats were not too dissimilar to those of the Warriors. They just looked rusty.
But anyone attempting to advance the theory that gun trouble in Kings Cross - the aftermath of which meant Jarryd Hayne, Weller Hauraki and Junior Paolo sat out round one - could explain round-two defeat in Auckland would not get far.
After all, Hagan was particularly complimentary of the workrate of Hauraki, a previously unregarded second-rower from the small New Zealand town of Dannevirke. At the age of 23, he got his first senior start when Nathan Hindmarsh withdrew injured.
Hagan said it would take time for his side to produce its best. "They've got a bit of work to do to get into that week-to-week grind," he said of the suspended trio. But he added: "I think that [Kings Cross] has all been dealt with. We have got to focus on the football component. We were outplayed today, so I don't think there are too many problems in that area."
