The last few weeks have been fueled by drama on and off the field, with issues ranging from coaching appointments to injury woes.
With Round 8 behind us, teams are starting to sort out their respective ladder positions, climbing, consolidating or unfortunately spiralling out contention.
State of Origin is fast approaching, so NRL fans can expect elite players to strike form.
Jason Demetriou
Arguably the biggest story of the week was South Sydney’s firing of Head Coach Jason Demetriou.
After ascending to the top job for the 2022 season, Demetriou looked to be heading towards success when he guided the Bunnies to a preliminary finals appearance. Things went south in 2023, when they plummeted from top of the table to missing the top 8. Along the way, assistant coach Sam Burgess raised questions about favouritism and JD’s approach to man management, with the result that both Burgess and fellow assistant coach, John Morris, parted ways with the club.
Jason Demetriou
Unfortunately, times have only got tougher for Souths in 2024, winning just one match in the first eight rounds, and leaving Demetriou with a record of just five wins from his last twenty games.
The demands of Rabbitohs fans for the coach to be sacked reached a crescendo following the 54-20 loss to the Storm last week. Given the strength of the Rabbitoh’s roster, it’s long been a mystery to NRL fans as to why they could be performing so poorly.
Interim coach Ben Hornby has made a number of changes to the Redfern team’s line up for tonights clash with the Panthers, bringing Isaiah Tass and Michael Chee Kam into the backline, whilst relegating Jacob Gagai.
It will be a tough task for Hornby to salvage a season which seems as good as gone for the Bunnies, Meanwhile, there seems to be a mutual interest from former coach Wayne Bennett and the club to reunite from next season.
Gutho
An already tattered Eels side faces yet another injury setback, with their inspirational captain and fullback Clint Gutherson set to miss around a month of football after minor surgery on his visibly troublesome knee.
Gutherson has struggled with the injury for some time, and the club has timed his surgery to take advantage of the round 9 bye.
The Eels currently hold a 3-5 record in the opening 8 rounds of the season, sitting in 14th place on the ladder. Star halfback Mitchell Moses was expected to return in three weeks, and the club was looking forward to fielding a full strength team. Gutherson’s injury means the Eels have no chance of having all hands on deck for at least a month.
Upcoming games against the Broncos, Storm, Rabbitohs and Sharks mean troubled waters ahead, and Brad Arthur will need to perform miracles to get his side through such a nightmare draw.
DCE Stays A Cleanskin
Daly Cherry-Evans managed to escape his first career suspension this week for his involvement in a dangerous throw on Shaun Lane.
The initial charge handed to the Manly skipper saw him potentially sidelined for 2-3 weeks, and would have been the first suspension across a 313 game career for the halfback.
DCE
Cherry Evans was successful in having his charge downgraded on Monday night. Haumole Olakau’atu accepted an early guilty plea for his involvement in the same tackle and will miss two matches.
Bulldogs Legal Drama
It was revealed this week that former Bulldogs player Jackson Topine is in the process of suing his former club for harassment and assault. Topine’s legal team claims he suffered “unlawful treatment” when he was forced to wrestle 30/35 teammates after arriving late to training. It’s further claimed that the incident led to him taking mental health leave at the end of the season.
Topine
Many have come out in support of the Dogs staff, with former player James Graham defending the NRL working environment as “unique” with physically demanding penalties for indiscretions such as arriving late to training commonplace
Appearing on NRL 360, journalist Brent Read disagreed with Graham, claiming that whilst punishment was deserved, what Topine was forced to do felt unnecessary. There has been no shortage of opinions on the matter, with Braidon Burns also allegedly forced to undergo the same punishment in his time at Belmore.
Game Of The Week
Amongst of host of exciting Round 9 games, I’m tipping the Saturday arvo clash between the Bulldogs and Tigers as my game to watch.
With key positional battles across the starting 13, many players will be using this game to make their case for Origin selection.
Koroisau
Of particular interest will be the battle of the hookers. Api Koroisau is competing with the likes of Reece Robson, Wayde Egan and possibly Jayden Brailey for the Blues number 9 jersey, whereas Reed Mahoney is up against established representative hookers in Harry Grant and Ben Hunt.
It may just be that result of this match will be determined in the ruck.
Nat
I read that Wayne Bennetts 3rd party’s had expressed interest in the eels – eels had a meeting and decided not to pursue and stick with BA, honestly I know our roster stinks for depth – but no way are we likely to win a GF in the next 10-20 years (honestly) if the club is happy staying mediocre. Wayne will take that flat south’s side up into a top 8 or top 4 side again in 1 year. The idea that parra won’t flip the coin for a premiership possible winning coach, to not only attract more talent, but possibly break our 36 year drought is a joke. I’m a eels fan for life, but if any goof club had a chance to get Wayne, you know the serious ones would take it. The eels are unfortunately a bit of a joke and even if we had the roster in fit form, they don’t turn up weekly even in 21-23 known as the most inconsistent team performance wise – we can beat the premiership winners one week, lose to titans or tigers the next. Our club is destined for mediocrity unless they start taking massive action – it’s a sad sight to see that all of us fans can see it, except for our eels administrators & CEO. I wish for good changes to happen. But our club seemingly has no burning desire for excellence that other clubs seemingly possess.
Muz, the coach is the not the reason for not attracting players. It has been all about player agents, coin, length of contract and length of negotiation processes. The only way that such matters change with a new coach is if the processes are changed. Souths obviously have a range of issues and whether Bennett or anyone could fix them is wild conjecture. He’s had his share of things falling apart too. He’s had a great career with great teams but he’s not infallible. As outsiders, we don’t know why things fell apart, but they did. How about we aggressively pursue some recruitment targets and not just leave it at Lomax.
No premiership in 11 years…it’s time for a change for both the players and the coach. There’s a few experienced players at the Eels that seem too comfortable and need a massive rev up. The Eels won’t sign Bennet because there’s a chance he would expose many inadequacies at senior level. No doubt Arthur will be offered a new contract and we’ll all have another decade of being also rans.
So over everything Eels.
Hiring Bennett would be far worse than keeping Arthur.
No coach can win with a roster that falls apart with two key injuries.
Despite the talk of our near geriatric pack, I think they can hold their own if they aren’t swamped by the weight of possession against them.
There are only two ways to have a possession advantage, commit no errors and score more tries.
With Gutherson being the only shadow for the ball runner, the latter will be tough.
Surely a coach can give every player the job of chasing the ball runner. We are good at offloads, just not making ground with them.
If I am to be critical of Arthur, it’s the obvious things that still happen.
Stupid plays like short dropouts where we have got 3 back all year yet give up a try every second time we do it.
Then there is the problem of almost zero defence on the outside.
The structure is just wrong.
Are we to believe that the wingers are clueless or are they doing what they are told?
I’m starting to feel sorry for Waqa Blake. He has become the blueprint for every Parramatta winger that has followed him.
56 years, all clubs operate a very similar defence and as you’d be aware the Eels have used different defence coaches over the years. You’ll notice that every weekend teams will get caught out by being stripped for numbers out wide. You can literally see when Parra or any team has not numbered up correctly. The slide defence is as good as the players that execute it. I have more concerns with players missing tackles or not even being there to make tackles through the middle or on the edges.
Where rugby league is evolving is through teams who have explosive outside backs shifting the ball in their own half or even in their quarter. It takes advantage of defences being ultra compressed in the opponents half of the field. Wingers will be up to 15 to 20 metres in field, such is the compression. Getting the ball to ultra quick centres and wingers with space between the defence and the sideline is resulting in more long distance tries. If you read the eye test article, the Eels lack of pace has resulted in them giving up line breaks and tries from places on the field that they are less likely to occur from. I’m expecting that coaches will begin to change defensive systems to counter this.
Interesting last sentance. I thought Parra did a great job nullifying Manly’s speed advantage. BA’s game plan was working, poor defensive efforts in the middle and a brain explosion ended our chances. But Parra did show that it is possible to shut down speed.
Oddly, we looked like the faster team in the first half, we were stripping them for numbers.
I get the compression but the wingers usually get no one.
Sivo is an attacking freak but in this structure he can’t tackle.
Against Manly even Fittler commented on Simmonsen being lost every time he had to defend.
Thing is, when he went infield in the second half he made tackles.
Watching Manly v Canberra tonight I don’t think either of them would beat us with a full roster.
If we had beaten the Tigers and Manly we would be looking good.
They problems are obvious and solvable.
It’s time to get it right.
Unfortunately you can’t defend BA forever 60s but put simply his time is up. This is his team and his game plan that is well past its use by date.
We need a complete blow up of our system from top to bottom and you need a strong coach to achieve that, and Bennett is that. He mightn’t win us a premiership but hopefully put systems in place that will. And we have to start somewhere but currently we’re marching on the spot while all the rest have moved on.
I’m not defending BA, I’m stating the facts as I see them.
What you see isn’t facts, 60’s. It’s an opinion.
60s I agree 100 % .I’m Arthur all the way get through this season with something but next season in his last throw a bit of money at the team and after maybe 12 games see how it goes but as someone said don’t give into media or social media pressure the media can make or break someone and they do
60’s I agree the development is major issue and needs fixing
But look at The talent dolphins have already attracted from other clubs
In its 2nd year of being a nrl team
They already have more depth than the eels
They are looking like a side that might end up this year finishing above the eels in the comp
Or finishing with with similar points to the eels end of year
If you held a poll out of 20 top NRL players
And the top NRL expert analysts
60-90% of them would agree Bennet is a better bet for the eels to have a chance at a premiership
He would never load the club up with big slow forwards and allow no outside back depth
He actually wouldn’t even sign probably at our club
If they didn’t agree to let him have a strong say over this area
BA has had 10 years and a team full of internationals
The other question is:
Would the roosters, the storm, Brisbane, south’s
All keep the same system and same coach for 10 years with only 1 GF loss appearance?
The other issue is our playing style
We don’t even use 2 dummy halves
All the premiership winning teams do that
I am a supporter of BA
But the issue where they say they can’t get good outside backs
Look at dolphins
In 2 years they have better backs them we have have more or less
The club top to bottom is not acting or thinking like a club that wants to win premierships
The fact we have a ageing roster too and all on long contracts
I don’t think other good clubs would of ignored these facts
Even tho I despise them – even the clowns in fox league after our GF appearance
All more or less said out window is closed due to ageing players
Or players leaving with no replacements as good as the ones who left
The writing was on the wall for everyone accept us
You are right BA & can’t out-coach aging roster or lack of depth
But they are desperate it’s been 36 years
The club has become a meme for mediocrity unfortunately
They should try anything at this point
Even if it’s just to attempt to recruit better talent by having a super coach there for 3 years
We don’t have jnrs good enough to win a comp
We don’t have the appeal either to attract premiership winning players either who can take us there & win
Wayne would get players wanting to join him leaving clubs that would not sign up to BA & Mark o‘’Neil
This is all facts and I am not trying to push an agenda
I believe if you polled 100 eels fans, 100 nrl players
Maybe 90% of them would agree to every point just mentioned
It’s unfortunate but a reality it seems like
Muz, hang on, did you just say that BA has had a team of internationals?
60’s we have 2 two main props that represent their country, both our halves represent their country’s, a centre who reps Tonga, our other old one waqa repped Fiji, our winner sivo repped Fiji, Ofa plays for tonga too, when we had Ice he played for NZ, Marata who played for NZ.
Its not a fair stretch to take note of how many rep players we’ve had in our team over the last 3-4 years.
We have had some pretty good teams, not many teams props and halves are all origin level & INTL rep leg NRL players.
I feel for our forwards coping the flak atm. It’s obvious that they are buggered doing more work than most packs as they compensate for our outside backs who just don’t/can’t do their share or the hard yards.
I wish I had the attention span for a long post, but I like this particular dot point. Our set starts are below par, then when we start dropping the ball, missing tackles etc more pressure and on the forwards. A couple of posters have suddenly zeroed in on Hopgood(a young bloke you might note).. I have been saying for ages, we get a real footballer from the Panthers system and he gets gassed every game because h s giving 110% amongst a flagging engine room.
Yep, and Mose’s supreme kicking game gave us field position behind even the worst sets. Our forwards have suffered without Moses.
This is the reason we have been capitulating recently. We could see this was an issue years ago, but it’s only now that it has become diabolical. Why was it not addressed earlier? Also, our only real ball runner in Dylan Brown is not getting any support when he makes a break. This is basic u10 stuff that we can’t get right.
JWH 35yrs old 300+ games. last game 15 runs 160m. 21 takles No misses. 50+ minutes. (1 penalty rare I know)
Reg “I’ll die for BA” 10 runs 80m 24 tackle 3 missed
Junior 11 runs 96m mostly sideways. 19 tackles 2 missed
I could go on but these guys are much younger than JWH and paid a heck of a lot more.
Don’t die for BA just give me 20 carries every game!
It will be interesting if the team was training hard this week or rested ? I suspect they were given easy training.
Lol I’ll die for Brad and 80 meters lol
Chief, time to go mate, you just can’t help yourself.
Players off contract this year
Daejarn Asi, Zac Cini, Morgan Harper, Makahesi Makatoa, Ofahiki Ogden, Bailey Simonsson, Tevita Taumoepenu
7 players off contract –
Players off contract 2025
Reagan Campbell-Gillard, Bryce Cartwright, Matt Doorey, Haze Dunster, Wiremu Greig, Clinton Gutherson, Brendan Hands, J’maine Hopgood, Joey Lussick, Toni Mataele, Luca Moretti, Joe Ofahengaue, Sean Russell, Blaize Talagi, Kelma Tuilagi, Sam Tuivaiti
16 players off contract – November 1st.
Brad Arthur off contract 2025.
If BA is going to be here 2025. Then why no re-signing or extension news of these contracts?
Why Lomax not coming this year? Is a new coach in the wings 2025?
Pete, maybe parra knows the players are ageing, and maybe BA is his last year to prove as well.
I don’t mind all those players coming off contract – the club could clear out a lot of them
Or offer some of them less money next contract
Zac cini, Dunster, Doorey, and more
All of them could be moved on to get decent players
What makes me mad is ppl say “there’s no outside backs, eels are trying”
BS… bulldogs got backs like Conor Tracey & Crichton
Tigers just signed Turuva from Penrith
We sign players like Morgan Harper instead and ignore ever other good player
Tristan sailor from the broncos for a back looks amazing
There’s so many opportunities
There’s no defending them
I understand maybe the cap is tight
But offload the dead weight players who aren’t first graders wasting our time
If we are employing backs who aren’t even good enough to be starters for tigers, bulldogs or titans
What does that say about our club & approach ?
I don’t buy into the thing where BA wants great outside backs but can’t get any
Why can bulldogs, tigers, any other club – even bad ones, buy them?
But eels can’t? The issue is our strategy
BA allocates his focus of budget & strategy towards forwards
The club might even be fighting for the wooden spoon this year if moses or gutho gets injured again later this season
There is no balance in the side at all
I highly doubt this is 0% influenced by BA’s forward dominant strategy
I don’t buy into the narrative BA wants the best backs in the world
But for years we make zero plays at and of them
Even the bottom feeder bulldogs & tigers in recent years can Recruit backs better than we can
There’s always good players on the market
It seems like parra would rather 2 bomb avg players
Then 1 proper first grade player
The proof in our horrible defence outside and lack of speed shows this
Muz, it is super frustrating. We had a crack at Tracey and Blake Wilson from the Dogs.
We were linked with Jayden Campbell, Staggs and Farnsworth in recent times. Duck eggs on all fronts
I thought about Tristan Sailor too, he can cover wing and fullback.
Is our club really this unattractive to players or are we the most incompetent recruiting club in the NRL. Some still blame the Salary cap scandal for our cautious ways, I had no grey hair when that happened,
The introduction of the Dolphins sapped a lot of player talent from the market, just at a time where we needed to fill holes in our roster.
Saying BA doesn’t want the best backs in the world is like saying a motor racing driver doesn’t want the fastest car, I don’t agree with you there but I do agree with most of your post.
And Joseph just look at the quality of outside backs Titans / Dolphins and now Canberra have used. I am not a Ricky fan 🪭 but I watch them and they play tough – doesn’t always work and they had Ann aging roster but Stuart has now got a young Fullback / 5/8 and new half and look at them last night.
I’m almost tempted to say they looked v good…they moved the ball around and I even look at the physical side of their defence – halves etc.
Our pack firstly have looked ragged; and I don’t solely blame them but we have so much experience there.
I’m actually keen to see how we go without Gutho as it will show me how much our experienced players either step up or not.
Our depth / recruitment is a shambles it would seem. But our board again don’t seem bothered…
Spot on Milo.
Ricky cannot attract players. So he’s building his own with young guns and Superleague players. I don’t like Ricky but he does have a strategic plan for the future. Our plan appears to be hope for the best…Hodge lodge of recruitment.
Milo, you could argue that every other NRL team has better and faster outside backs. It’s actually embarrassing that teams not considered a hope of making the finals boast better outside backs.
TCT identified the lack of depth and quality of our outside backs before last season kicked off, here we are in round 8 in 2024 and we look worse.
Our forwards, yeah, I don’t know what’s happened there, I didn’t see that coming. They look flat and disinterested. I know we have an aging pack and I thought this would be an issue in the future, I never considered the future could be now.
Our fortunes could change, we do have the best halves in the game and the most wholehearted custodian I’ve seen in a Parra jersey. Young Penisini is a keeper and our forwards should come good at some point.
We may even snag a couple of mid season signings. We can only hope.
Tevita Taumoepenu is playing Cup for Souths this week.
So we are maybe at 26 players.
Just have to watch Cup to see there are plenty of nrl quality players being blocked from FG by high quality players.
People are starting to get a bit tired of our inept recruitment and rightfully so.
Been obvious for years now.