‘I don’t know’: Moses baffled as Eels denied in controversial Easter Monday classic

Thanks for being with us tonight.

It was quite the way to end a long weekend of NRL football.

If you’ve got used to watching NRL every day over the past five days, don’t worry, you won’t have to wait long to wait until the next instalment – with the in-form Panthers hitting your airwaves on Thursday night against the Bulldogs.

We’ll be here for that, so until then, thanks for being with us and have a great week.

Benji Marshall is asked about the sin binning of Luke Laulilii.

“I didn’t agree. Simple as that,” he says.

“It must have been [influenced by the injury].

“Because if he didn’t get injured, it would have been the same result.

“I didn’t agree, but whatever, we just had to deal with it.

“I thought they did a good job of taking advantage of that and scored two tries down there in that time we had 12 men.

“I didn’t agree with it.”

He is asked whether he will appeal if Laulilii is charged.

“I don’t have an answer for that, to be honest,” he says.

“I’ll have to think about that more thoroughly and have a look into it before I say something stupid.”

Wests Tigers coach Benji Marshall is speaking now.

He says he’s proud of his team.

“I thought the way they’ve applied themselves to start the season, the way they trained in the pre-season, I was pretty relaxed the whole time, to be honest, and confident that regardless of the way the result went, they would fight their way back into it to either be a chance to win it or win it,” he says.

“It’s a tough way to lose for Para and I take my hat off to them because they had a lot of injuries.

“They moved a lot of their players around and they fought their way back into a game that we had in control there for a while.

“So they had a good team and I thought they had a really good performance given who they didn’t have.

“So it’s a tough way to lose, to be honest – and if we’re on the other side of it, I would have been content with it because of the way my players fought back into the game and gave themselves a chance to win it again.

“I’m really proud of our effort.”

He praises Samuela Fainu too, for winning the short kick off and for letting the referees off the hook after they missed, what he said, was an offside.

“Samuela catching it – he’s been doing a great job for us in that department. He’s got the best hands in the club, in my opinion.

“To be able to get the ball back, then execute.

“Obviously, we didn’t get the look we wanted the first time, which I thought that offside on that one too, then the ref didn’t call it, and then the second one, I’m glad he caught it because it was bluntly, blatantly offside.”

Want to relive the winning moment from the match tonight?

Why wouldn’t you (Eels fans excepted).

Ryles is running out of troops, it seems.

“Moses would be the half-back… That’s a good question,” Jason Ryles says, after asking if the journalist who asked the question wanted to play.

“So, yeah, let me have a think about that.

“We’ll look at it this week – there’s a there’s a few balls in there at the moment, so we’ll, yeah, like to sit down as a coaching group, sit with the leaders and just see where we’re going to go with it.”

Jason Ryles says it’s disappointing that two season-ending injuries have impacted his team as a result of foul play.

“It’s foul play that’s injuring the guys and that they’re long-term injuries,” Ryles says.

“There’s been two season enders and one eight-weeker.

But those contests, they happen every week, same with the hip drop.

“And the players don’t actually mean to do it, we understand that, but it just happens…

“There’s a reason that those actions are outlawed because of what we’re going through now.

“I’m not sure what you want me to say or do, but that’s what we sign up for each week and we’ve just got to crack on.

“As disappointing as it is, it’s another opportunity for our next player in.”

Jason Ryles chips in about the refereeing decisions.

“For me with the ref, we don’t let that come into it.

“It’s not why we lost, it’s not why we lost.

“They’ve got a hard job, they get put in some pretty high pressure situations, and if we got the back end of our first half right we wouldn’t have had to worry about the ref.

“Got nothing to do with the ref.

“It’s just another situation that everyone can learn from, I hope.”

Mitch Moses is asked about the issues with the referee – particularly the knock on ruling on Jack Williams just before half time.

“He [Jack Williams] felt like he was held and had about four players on him, so he tried to get up and play the ball.

“And then a [hand] comes flying in, so I asked to challenge it, and then he [referee Peter Gough] said that he hadn’t called held yet.

“So there was no point in me challenging it because I was never going to win it.

“I don’t know how he… had about three… I don’t know.

“He pretty much told me not to challenge it because he told me he didn’t say held. So there’s no way I was going to win that.”

Ryles chips in saying: “If you scored it would have been a double movement.”

Moses replied: “That’s what I’m saying. Like if he had a crack there and then I just, I don’t know..”

Here is the Parramatta coach, Jason Ryles.

He is asked if he was pleased with the performance despite the adversity.

“Yeah, it was adversity, all right,” he says.

“It was obviously not the result we were looking for, but I just said to the players then, the performance is what really matters tonight.

“I think there was a period there where we had, I think three five-eighths, three or four different combinations in our centres, three combinations in our back row, and then we had three row wingers.

“To be in the game that deep for as long as we were and to show the fight, especially in front of our fans, that’s really important to us.

“The results are really disappointing, like really disappointing.

“But if we continue to show that each week, we’re going to win a lot more games than we lose.”

Here is Apa Twidle, speaking to ABC radio.

“I told my mum don’t fly over – because all my family live in New Zealand,” he says.

“Last night I found out my mum was flying over this morning.

“Lucky she came because I do everything for her and my daughter so it’s good to have them.”

I think some of the comments will be pretty interesting, truth be told.

It was a cracking game for sure.

Plenty of things to talk about in the aftermath, no doubt.

But a tremendous contest.

Adam Doueihi is speaking to Fox Sports now.

He says it was a “scrappy game” from the Tigers.

“We find ourselves 10 points behind consistently this season,” he says.

“We back our fitness … in terms of starting the game, we definitely have to fix that up.

“Today, down to 12 players, we’ll definitely take the two points and take it to Newcastle next week.”

Here is Jock Madden. The game winner.

“Credit to Fonua [Pole] for getting the quick play the ball,” he says of the match-winning penalty, talking to Fox Sports.

“Obviously I missed that field goal itself, but for him to get a quick play the ball and for them to be offside, credit to him.”

He adds that he just had to shut out all the atmosphere.

“I just stick to my process,” he says.

“You try and block out that noise and you just stick to that process.

He is, of course, thrilled with the result.

“It was awesome,” he says.

“The boys stayed patient throughout the whole game there.

“That’s just the side we are now.

“Obviously when you win it’s a good win around training.

“We’re not getting complacent at all.

“The pats on the back, we’re not feeling that at the moment. There’s things we need to work at in training … and we’ll go again this week.”

One of the most dramatic, thrilling matches you’ll ever see.

Two massive rivals. A packed stadium. Controversy. Brilliance. Astonishing.

What a game.

Dylan Walker is absolutely livid!

He’s been called for offside!

Referee Gough says you can’t challenge a call like that.

The kick was wide and touched as it was charged down.

Was he offside inside the 10?

I don’t know. I don’t think he was.

No, on second viewing, he was.

Heartbreak.

Jock Madden was set 30 metres out.

He decided against it.

He chipped over the top instead.

Jack Williams, in NRL game 150, drops it cold though!

The Tigers have it 20 metres out.

Moses attempted the kick from just inside his own half.

It was a dog of a kick, but it looked like it was going to come back and fade inside the post.

But it didn’t/