Eels left to dissect Hayne's brilliance
It was a moment rugby league pundits have lauded as one that will live on for generations.
A flash of Jarryd Hayne brilliance which turned around the "atrocious" performance Parramatta had served up for the first 40 minutes of their 24-20 comeback win over Manly on Sunday.
At Parramatta's warm-down training session on Monday, while piggy-backing his little brother across the swimming pool, Hayne left it to his teammates to dissect the 108-metre feat.
"You just see it in his eyes, he's seen a gap," Daniel Mortimer said.
"I started to get on my bike and before I know it he was cruising past me."
Eric Grothe Jr was buggered, looking around for answers when he saw Hayne sidestep two Manly players in his own in-goal before running more than 50 metres and offloading to Mortimer.
"Hayney's got a knack to see things before they happen," Grothe said.
"It's like everyone is in slow motion and he's in normal play. His vision is something I've never seen before."
After receiving the ball from Hayne, Mortimer was able to make a short dash before offloading to Timana Tahu, who went on to score.
Tahu could only come up with one word for Hayne - "unbelievable".
Although it seemed like a spontaneous play made out of nothing, it's something the Eels have been working on under conditioning coach Hayden Knowles.
The Eels have been regularly drilling their support play and offloads at training and it paid off against the Sea Eagles.
"We do it pretty regularly so when we get their measure in the game, it comes second nature to us," Grothe Jr said.
A halftime blasting by coach Daniel Anderson might have also helped.
Mortimer said the side lacked ball control, cohesion and composure in the first half and were frankly "atrocious."
"(Anderson) didn't say it in polite terms but he definitely got the message through," he said.
Tahu said it was embarrassing it took a verbal shellacking from the coach for the team to lift.
"It took a kick up the bum for us to pick up our act," he said.
"It's something Daniel shouldn't have to do, we're professional athletes."
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