The game was going so well for the Wests Tigers.
On the right side of a couple of close refereeing decisions, and more importantly, up on the scoreboard – even with debutant Justin Matamua heading to the sin bin, they led the Parramatta Eels 12-6 and would be back to a full complement of players just after the interval.
Instead, disaster struck – first through Maika Sivo on the wing, before he turned provider for Reed Mahoney – and Luke Brooks’ defensive effort provided a pretty apt metaphor for his relationship with the Tigers in the past few years.
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Parramatta spread the ball straight after the restart, Sivo sprinted down the wing and kicked hopefully back to the middle, and Brooks air swung while trying to kick it away.
Reed Mahoney was there to pick up the crumbs, score, and do the old lawnmower celebration.
It was probably the Tigers best showing under interim coach Brett Kimmorley, but that will be scant consolation to a fan base now desperate to avoid the wooden spoon.
“I thought in the first half when we were going set-for-set, we were probably winning that battle,” Brooks said afterwards.
“But then – too many yardage penalties really hurt us, then we had the sin bin.
“It was pretty disappointing, some pretty soft tries.”
There was some late fireworks as a David Nofoaluma double in back-to-back sets cut the lead to single digits with four minutes left, but that was where the fightback ended.
“I think early on they really gave it to us physically,” Mahoney said afterwards.
“They got up 12-0 on us and we just stuck to our plan, and worked really hard in getting back in the grind – key players stood up tonight.”
It was the first return to Leichhardt Oval for Mitchell Moses since swapping his orange jersey for a blue and gold one, and the locals let him know about it.
“The warm-up was very interesting, I was getting absolutely peppered in that corner over there,” he said with a laugh.
He more than got his revenge, scoring a try and being involved in plenty of what Parramatta did well throughout.
“We probably should have scored a lot more tries than what we did – we had about three disallowed, so we’ll learn from that,” he said.
“We just needed to bounce back from that pretty embarrassing loss last week to Souths.”
It doesn’t get any easier for the Tigers next week, who will face the defending premiers Penrith on Sunday.
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