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A week of turmoil culminates in the Parramatta Eels clashing with the team that beat team for the services of Wayne Bennett in the South Sydney Rabbitohs. With Indigenous Round as the backdrop for the Round 12 meeting, can Trent Barrett guide the Eels to a bounceback win?
Before that though there are two other games of footy to play with the Jersey Flegg and NSW Cup also in action on Saturday. The Flegg are coming off a global bye and need to find a way to upset the 4th placed Rabbitohs while the Cup are flying high and starting to make some legitimate noise in the upper bracket of the ladder.
If the exact same team come out with a great emphasis on effort and beat the Rabbits by a margin, it may well be conceived that the team may not have been putting in for ba at the end, whether it be a new voice or some players not receiving the notion that they were named a part time team – we will know after 80 minutes against South’s.
I see the Panthers have poached Isaiah Papali’i from the Tigers.
It would have been good to have him back.
One day I am hoping to see a headline that the Eels have purchased a solid forward.
More often than not they are going the other way.
Like it or not the team we have will have to do the job against the rabbits.
They are more than capable of it if they can show the spirit.
We need to change our focus on recruits from big power forwards to smaller, quicker more agile forwards ala Reuben Cotter & Cam McInness. We’ve got enough power forwards like Papali’i.
Brett, yes one or so would be good; but we have not had a mongrel type leader since Beau Scott went. Nathan Brown tried but it didn’t work. He seemed to go off the rails.
We have too many forwards not consistent- simple. Good teams have packs who play consistently- we don’t and the players were not consistently putting in for coach and club.
Nothing changes if we don’t move on Gen Manager of footy O’Neill.
We are a laughing stock it seems in recruitment
Yes, had a theory about N Brown, his ‘take no prisoners’ style worked for 2 or 3 seasons but either he or the coaching staff decided his career would be short playing that way. Injury likely figured as well. He started stepping, hitting and spinning, backing into tacklers etc, lost his mojo, also a few errors started to be normal.His final contract at $600k sort of made the Papali’i matter look a bit strange. At Manly, the old Nathan has re-birthed, but for how long?
We’ve got rid of a stale coach let’s bring back a vibrant theme song . ‘ The Eels are Flying ‘ all steam ahead for the new Eels.
If you think that all we need to do is rid ourselves of BA to win a premiership you are deluded.
Where did I say anything about winning a title. Your only sulking because Bradley got rissoled.
Maybe the myth of clubs winning after losing their coach might turn out to be occasionally true. It is very interesting how both teams fortunes have somewhat followed each other since last year’s game.
I’ll be watching the game with some mad South supporting friends in Rozelle. I’ll be calling any South’s tries as surely the result of a grievous mistake by the officials.
Go Parra!
Rozelle, nice part of Sydney Shaun. Will you be watching it at the Three Weeds?
The Orange Grove tonight John. Though like Matterson we’ve had a few late scratching due to illness.
👍
My hopes for this season have narrowed to avoiding the wooden spoon and finishing above the Bulldogs.
The measure of success for a football club is how many premierships you win. Nobody including supporters, footy journalists or the NRL are looking at our balance sheet and saying this is a good football club. These people like clubs such as Panthers, Storm and Roosters. Souths when they are winning.
The Eels are failing on the football field despite the solid position the football club is in. We are failing because our recruitment and retention is not keeping up with the changes in the game and the shortcomings in our roster
We have too many players on options and certain Player agents are monopolising the club. We need independence in recruitment and retention.
People are celebrating the demise of BA. There may have been a case to let him go. However why would you let him go when there is nobody better to replace him with. The process that missed out on Bennett has also failed our retention and recruitment.
Can understand the appetite to move on from the coach, the system and tactics weren’t tweaked to move with the change in the game. However, the head of recruitment and the retention team are equally to blame in the situation we find ourselves in.
For some reason we extended good but older players on long term contracts with multiple options, delivered a roster well short of 30 players for more than one season, failed demonstrably to replace the players that left after the GF, and have overseen a junior base that is way behind our peers. We get beaten constantly by teams with less than half our junior base. The review of our juniors was never made public probably with good reason is the suspicion.
The restructure of the whole football operation is needed,but seems to be ignored with the board somewhat satisfied with the performance of the HOF and his cohorts. Basically not good enough.
What’s happened to Shelley’s column and the match review?
Seems to be have been taken down for some reason – can’t imagine why
Yes, I was thinking the same thing????
It looks to be taken does without any explanation. . .
I don’t think it’s a bad thing to be allowed to keep speaking about BA. I don’t think moving on and forgetting him in our conversations is a good idea. Why don’t we get behind Barrett and hope BA coached him to be a better coach, for our club. A lot of ppl are interested in who the next coach is, let’s get begin baz for now and expect BA coached baz during their time together.
I agree tho we need to move forward, I just mean let’s not forget BA and what he’s done for the club.
Let’s put our good energy & support behind Trent Barrett.
I’ll let you guys in some info – I’ve personally spent time with baz and had a beer before with him and a few of his friends at his local.
Trent is a terrific bloke, and I’ll give you guys a hint – he seemed to predict the hooker situation was going to be a problem for us this year.
Baz has a better footy brain than Ba in some respects.
And I do not believe Baz will keep playing Lussick for 80 mins.
1). I didn’t get the vibe baz rated him highly as a hooker (just based on body language) he didn’t directly address it.
2). Baz Will be playing to try get himself another good job or keep his spot at parra.
My thought is baz will do better than BA possibly by not persisting all year with 1 AVG hooker…
And he also will be trying everything to prove himself as a coach and get the most out of our team.
Sometimes a change (even if the coach isn’t historically as good)
Can help bring a new Spark to a team or help some players regain form.
Let’s go parra and good episode guys.
Thanks as always 🙏
You are a wise man Muzz. I agree with you, get behind the team…it ain’t over until its over..Newcastle went on a run of ten or so wins in a row in 2023 after their season looked shot – and qualified for the finals
With the return of Moses and the King, and SOO just around the corner who says Parra can’t do the same.
If the players throw their bums in the corner as quickly as some of the ‘supporters’, we may as well pack up now!!!.
Agree mate. Moses & gutho will be pumped upon return.
Baz might be fighting for his own career too as coach.
Eels may flick him at the end of the year too if we continue to flop.
Baz won’t be comfortable and being too loyal to players, baz has less emotional attachment to the players as BA.
If anything; I predict baz will make some more cut throat decisions if our results keep on flopping.
Baz won’t persist on the 80 min hooker thing all year on lussick like BA.
This is a huge positive for our side, we looked Dangerous last year with hands coming in as 2nd dummy half.
Let’s get behind Baz and the troops.
Let’s hope players have seen BA was removed and they themselves as players could be next if changes don’t take place.
Hey mate, remember what I said RE Baz isn’t a fan of lussick or 80 mins hooker?
Look what happened, he put hands on and we started tearing them up and scoring.
Baz has got them moving the ball and looking like the old eels.
Will we win? I don’t know.
But we damn look better during the second half of the first half than we had in a while.
Ball movement, line breaks, no lussick.
I know personally that baz don’t like the 80 mins 1 hooker as main option.
Let’s go eels – let’s hope we win!
During the week Michael Chammas lamented the fact that the Parramatta Junior catchment wasn’t as big for league players as it used to be because the demographics had changed. For example, he opined that more Chinese and Indians had moved into the area who didn’t have a natural league background and hence were detracting from the size and quality of our potential junior talent and pathways.
I’d be interested in your thoughts if and when you next talk to Steve Georgallis (or anyone connected with the pathways) to see if these communities are being (or could be) tapped to produce future talent? I know when V’Landys first became chairman he talked about broadening the talent base into some of these communities but haven’t heard much in this since.
Surely we should be looking at these communities as an opportunity?
Craig Bellamy is asking for an end to five day turnarounds. He is citing the recent trips to Brisbane and Manly.
It is hard to disagree with his sentiments. I think he is correct. However given the physicality of the game why do we have 5 day turnarounds at all. Furthermore what constitutes travelling. The Eels going to Canberra?
Find a way to get rid of all 5 day turn arounds. It’s not necessary that the Broncos play every Friday night.