Mitch Moses was left scratching his head, blindsided by a rulebook technicality that left everybody wondering how the Eels captain could have handled the situation that occurred late in the first half.
Three minutes shy of the break, prop Jack Williams exploded down the right flank in a barnstorming carry that brought him within touching distance of the try line, before Adam Doueihi and Apisai Koroisau dragged him earthward.
Williams scrambled to his feet and rushed to play the ball, but he spilled it forward, with the Tigers clinging onto him.
Referee Peter Gough pounced on it as a knock-on, declaring the tackle wasn't complete, with Moses immediately in his ear demanding answers.
"I want to challenge. He's getting up to play the ball,” Moses said.
"You want to challenge? I hadn't ruled the tackle complete. It's a lost ball,” Gough replied to Moses, stating that he wasn't going to win if he called for a challenge in a protest.
The full picture emerged when Moses unpacked the exchange at the post-match press conference, peeling back the layers of a conversation that had left him in an impossible position.
“Well, he (Williams) felt like he was held and had about four players on him, so he's trying to get up and play the ball. So I asked to challenge it, then he (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,” Moses explained to the media.
“He pretty much told me not to challenge it, because he told me he didn't say held. There's no way I was going to win that.”
Coach Jason Ryles then waded in, raising a thorny hypothetical had Williams gambled and lunged for the line, creating a double movement that may well have swallowed up any chance of a try.
"That's what I'm saying. If he had a crack there, then I don't know,” Moses said.
Ryles didn't use the refereeing controversy as an excuse for their loss to the Wests Tigers on Easter Monday.
“For me, with the ref, we don't let that come into it. That's not why we lost,” Ryles said.
“They've got a hard job. They are 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.
"It's just another situation that everyone can learn from, I hope.”
The injury ward, meanwhile, continues to fill at an alarming rate.
With Isaiah Iongi (ankle) out for two months, as well as J'maine Hopgood and Matt Doorey out for the season with an ACL injury, winger Bailey Simonsson became the latest casualty, with his evening ended in agony with a dislocated ankle after being tackled in the air by his opposite number, another incident deemed foul play.
Three separate acts of illegal contact had now carved through Parramatta's roster with surgical brutality.
"It just happens that it's foul play that is injuring the guys. There are two season-enders and an eight-weekers, and now another one,” Ryles stated.
"Those contests happen every week. The players don't mean to do it, we understand that, but there is a reason those actions are outlawed.
"I'm not sure what you want me to say or do, but that's what we sign up for each week. It's just another opportunity for our next player up.”
