SYDNEY - It was a moment 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 yesterday, while piggy-backing his little brother across the swimming pool, Hayne left it to his teammates to dissect the 108m-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 jnr was looking around for answers when he saw Hayne sidestep two Manly players in his own in-goal before running more than 50m 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 there in the game it comes second nature to us," Grothe jnr 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.
"It took a kick up the bum for us to pick up our act," said an embarrassed Tahu. "It's something Daniel shouldn't have to do, we're professional athletes."
- AAP
