The Tip Sheet is also available on Spotify and iTunes!
Were the Parramatta Eels beaten before a ball was kicked in Round 22? A season worst effort and a 46-16 hiding at the hands of the Melbourne Storm add some serious credence to the thought as The Tip Sheet unloads on poor effort, bad selections and substandard depth across the backline.
Sixties and Forty20 look beyond the loss to the Storm as a critical mass of suspensions have piled undue pressure on the Eels. Dylan Brown, Ryan Matterson, Maika Sivo and Reagan Campbell-Gillard lead a NRL high 22 weeks of cumulative suspensions and it has reached a critical mass for the club.
It leaves the Eels balanced precariously in the race for the finals and with little alternative but to win out over the next month of footy.
A reminder to all commenters, please keep the discussion civil. It was obviously a terrible loss and there is plenty to be critical of but don’t make it personal towards players, staff or other members of the community.
It’s over!
What has happened to Matthew Komolafe? Why did Parra give up on him so early? They dumped him down to Flegg and haven’t been given another look in.
They didn’t give up on him Iron Mike. He had multiple preseasons. Have you watched him in Flegg this year? To be fair, he’s struggled.
Cheers mate
Hes hopeless
There wasnt an Eels supporter advocating the elevation of Waqa. His NSW Cup form was diabolical and thats being kind. His performance in Townsville was reflective of his Cup form yet to everyones absolute surprise hes retained to travel to Melbourne. You cant make this stuff up. There are always options particularly when finding a replacement for one so devoid of providing anything but negativity.
His presence has totally destroyed The Eels left side. I dont blame Waqa. His selection is the major issue.
Ogden and Paulo to start was another predictable result. That was proven last week yet “here we go again”.
Time for a change Eels as those making these decisions are surely taking the Mickey.
Officially resigned any hopes of watching the Eels play finals football for 2023, and will still watch and cheer for whatever respectable finish we can muster under the circumstances of what has been a wretched year of ‘luck’ (the draw), injuries and self-inflicted wounds.
I just think we are too tired and busted from all of the above – as impressive as Munster’s side-stepping and jinking was, I can picture Eels outfits in recent memory who would never have let him get close to the line, let alone allow that solo try to happen
All I can hope is that D Brown comes back with a hard, focused work effort and a redemption which he carries into 2024, where himself, Gutho and Moses become a formidable leadership group on the field and we right the ship for another serious tilt.
What happened there? It’s bad when Gutho misses a tackle twice in a line break. It says it all when Asi puts in the perfect kick to the perfectly in position Blake and the rugby league ball bounces east not north.The Eels need to play with a soccer ball. And poor old Waqa gets pinged for slowing the ruck, I re-queued it and counted 2 seconds, yes 2 seconds and the Storm were doing 4 all night. When you’re down, you’re down. And please someone tell me I didn’t see Junior flat footed more than once, can’t be, can it? Stop.
Spot on mate!
Honestly this club is embarrassing.
Another year of failure for a club with everything at their disposal to succeed.
Massive junior participation , leagues club support, one of the biggest fan bases and a state of the art home ground yet here we are another year of mediocrity.
There are so many reasons for this years failure that you could literally write a ten page essay on it.
A Poorly managed roster that even fans were poking holes in before a ball was kicked.
The coach is a one trick pony who can only coach one style of play. He is obsessed with this power game and teams have worked out how to nullify it yet there is no change.
Every successful coach develops ways to test referees and manipulate rules. BA decides to deliberately lose the ruck in the hope the refs will save us.
He wrongly kept picking Jake in the NRL last year so the halfwit fans turned on the poor kid. Then BA lets him leave even though it left us with absolutely no back up half at the club. The results have been disastrous.
Brad’s team selections, bench rotations and inability to fix the edge defence is pathetic for a coach at NRL level and the club should be looking for a replacement.
On top of all this we haven’t recruited anyone that will improve the roster for next year so it’s more of the same crap.
After 40 years of failure surely the fans deserve better.
Same old clive , know all know nothing .
Same old Anonymous, too gutless to put your name to something😂
Actually if were BA i would looking to get out to a club with a decent recruitment staff ours is a basket case .
Are you intimating BA has nothing to do with R and R? I doubt any NRL coach would not have a say in their squad. I totally concur with many of Clive’s assertions. Our retention/signings have been inept in the extreme and the people responsible need to move on. If that includes BA so be it. Clive you are basically writing what many Parra fans have been espousing and more power to you. When the well considered, intelligent crew at TCT are in despair that really says something.
And I am so sick of people asking those of us who are passionate enough about Parra to make valid critiques on sites like this to go and support another team. My support is total and will never waver. I just happen to believe that things are not well in the State of Parra and there must be change.
I believe that BA has input on who he’d like to recruit and retain or whether he could work with particular players identified by recruitment. However, when it comes to negotiations and contracts he has less say – which makes sense because if it was his job to do that, why have others in the R & R team?
Regardless, I am going to write on the topic.
Thanks Sixties. Looking forward to the read.
Have you ever had someone from the club explain the clubs stance on TPA’s?
The talk is we don’t use them at all. Surely this isn’t the case. It would mean we are operating with a far smaller cap than other clubs but it would explain our current situation.
The most successful cap model has always been using Juniors to make up the majority of a squad, add some hard heads in key positions then target marquee players with the help of TPA ‘s.
We are trying to cobble together a roster of mid tier players, bargain buys and under performing juniors.
Brian Smith and Crusher Cleal brought through more outstanding juniors between 98 and 2001 than BA and his staff have in his entire tenure. It is a disgrace.
Clive, you’re barking up the wrong tree about BA and juniors. He is one of the most invested coaches in the NRL when it comes to pathways. He ensures that he and his staff are hands on with coaching them too, in both junior rep training sessions and in the JETS program.
I’ve also heard that there are no TPA’s but I’m not sure how up to date that is. In the past I tried to pass on details of a business that wanted to provide a TPA for a player. When I sad what I was ringing about I was told to not say the name of the company and that it needed to go through the player agent, not the club. That was a few years back and it’s my only experience with TPAs.
I’m not suggesting that Brad doesn’t put a lot of time and effort into the Pathways mate but the results just aren’t there.
I’d be really interested to see a list of juniors that have come through the pathways and made it as a regular NRL player in Brad’s time as coach. In the current team only Dylan could be considered as an elite player and Will is showing great progress but after them it’s very average indeed.
There also doesn’t seem to be any foresight into which positions we are short of depth in. Every year we seem to be in a mad scramble at this time of the season to try to fill weaknesses that everyone could see at the end of last year.
In 21 it was hookers, 22 it was props this year its outside backs. Honestly it’s laughable.
“At least they didn’t concede 50. Parra can still win the comp” he says as a single, lonely, tear rolls down his cheek.
Outstanding work there Shaun. From all of us. We will not give up.
Last night was terrible and a reflection of several issues that have finally burnt us.
The only positive was the right side of the team, Mitch, Carty, Penisini and Russell were confident and played as expected. The left side was a sieve, and the middles were weak, Moretti , Hopgood and Matterson at least put in solid efforts while around them struggled badly. Gutho,seem to miss more tackles than any game I’ve seen and timing was off.
How the recruitment team felt having basically 26 players registered and apart from that lack of depth little interest seems to be paid to the backline which was empty after the first choice 3/4 line. If there is a committee overseeing recruitment, they remind me of a committee that was sent to design a horse and came back with a camel.
There are players in Cup that are to be moved into top 30 next year after being on development deals, let’s be honest they are struggling and will make no difference. A game where everything seemed to be not working, tactics, selection and effort and as Sixties said, from coach, assistants, trainers, admin need a long hard look in the mirror as we stumble into the end of the season as basically they let everyone down.
Dylan Brown can’t come back quick enough
Amen
Can’t disagree with any of what you’ve written. Very, very ordinary effort from far too many in such a crucial game. Genuinely thought they were at least a 50:50 chance pre game but the players seemed to consider the odds much slimmer. Then again they likely accepted that the left side issues would again be present and there would be no miracle cure within six days.
Will be ,lucky to make the final eight now .
3/4 weeks I’ve turned off after 60mins.
After a bit of reflection I could forgive the Cows game. It’s a tough trip up to Townsville, left edge had been completely rebuilt etc. This week however was unacceptable. You look at the teams on paper and Melbourne is full of nobody’s, journeyman and a handful of stars that should have been our focus to shut down. Yet we get flogged. Honestly how many of the Melbourne squad would you have picked to start over our lads? Welch, Grant, Munster and pretty much anyone over Waqa. Across the rest of the park we were on paper stronger. Our resilience isn’t good enough across the breadth of the season for 80 mins.
I agree this clean ruck style is garbage. We are the only team that does it, and we have a big forward pack that BA relies on to play big minutes with generally limited bench rotation (albeit by necessity he’s been better this year). Those things to me scream car crash, as we are inevitably going to have fatigue in the middle with holes opening up. It’s why squads with the likes of Damien Cook, Harry Grant and Api Korisau have been problematic for us. The Grant double and Hughes tries were just dreadful defence.
Gutho is entitled to have a bad game, he puts in and has been a difference maker for much of the year. Paulo I can barely remember a good game. He’s failed to step up when the squad has needed him. If we didn’t have him in the squad, we could afford 2 quality outside backs off his salary.
BA might be still thinking that he is coaching the Rhino’s boys team and still telling the boys to play it clean instead of being rough and do ‘men’s’ thing in the ruck.
Blake has to go..I also believe that Paulo now is a Bench player.He is a shadow of himself
Junior 54mins , 15runs = 151 metres , 28 tackles 4 offloads 0 errors 2 misses , what game did you watch , he had a dig , did you get him confused with ogden ???
I’m a Junior admirer, and you expect a lot from your elite players. He did rack up those stats, but I’ve noticed he gets caught on his heels a fair bit, the ‘keep your feet moving’ thing when 1%ers either get nailed or not. Yep, he’s a big unit, throwing that frame around might hit the lungs harder, probably why you never see Rueben Cotter on his heels. When RCG is there, he and Hopgood probably fit in with Junior’s style, a combination issue that gets overlooked while many of our more obvious combinations are a bit dodgy right now.
Yep Junior is a power athlete that should be used in 20min spells to provide impact yet Brad is using him in a role suited to Smaller more mobile players.
Anybody know how Woody went today in KOE Cup?