There comes a point in every bad team’s season where it all just gets too hard, and the floggings start to mount. For the Tigers that was a few weeks ago, and for their fellow spoon battlers the Eels, this week looks primed to be the start of that freefall. Injuries, discontent, contract murmurings, it is all starting to mount up. As a fan I’m exhausted and just want it to all be over, I don’t blame the players if they feel the same way.
I take about as much joy in writing about the 2024 Eels as I would scrubbing every seat of CommBank Stadium clean with a toothbrush, so forgive me if I keep this preview brief. With an interim coach, little possibility of roster movement and the players that we would like to develop mostly on their way out the door, all the Parramatta Eels have to play for is pride, and we know where that has got them.
Game Info
Date: Saturday, July 26, 2024
Venue: CommBank Stadium, Parramatta
Kick-off: 8:00PM AEST
Referee: Liam Kennedy
Bunker: Gerard Sutton
Weather: Cool, potential rain
Broadcast: Nine, Fox League, Kayo
Sixties Speculates (Odds quoted are NSW TAB)
The Eels are at long odds this week – and rightly so. Most of us expect that it will not be pretty against the Storm.
It won’t stop us being there to cheer for our Eels, and hoping that they can pull out something special for the King’s 200th.
Unfortunately, when it comes to the punt I cannot tip our team. Instead I’m looking at a market which caters to the prediction of this being a high scoring match.
I’m taking total match points of 60.5 or more. It’s returning a healthy $3.20.
Happy, responsible punting.
Sixties
Teams
Parramatta Eels
1. Clint Gutherson 2. Jake Tago 3. Blaize Talagi 4. Will Penisini 5. Sean Russell 6. Dylan Brown 7. Daejarn Asi 8. Reagan Campbell-Gillard 9. Brendan Hands 10. Wiremu Greig 11. Shaun Lane 12. Bryce Cartwright 13. Ryan Matterson. 14. Joey Lussick 15. Joe Ofahengaue 16. Luca Moretti 17. Makahesi Makatoa.
18. Ethan Sanders 22. Dan Keir.
He’ll try hard, at the very least
Daejarn Asi gets the nod to replace Mitchell Moses in the halves, with Origin 3 both ending Mitch’s season and providing NSW based Parramatta fans with their last moments of footballing joy for 2024. He’s had a couple of good games combining with Dylan Brown, but plenty more ordinary ones. Sean Russell replaces Lorenzo Mulitalo on the wing, with Blaize Talagi moving to the centres and taking Will Penisini’s jersey number for some reason.
The pack is back to the same as it ever was, with Charlie Guymer out injured the back row becomes Lane and Cartwright, with Matterson at lock. In 2022 that would have been a killer combination, in 2024 it strikes fear into unders bettors everywhere, and not because of their attacking prowess. Wiremu Greig takes the starting role of Junior Paulo, with Joe Ofahengaue back to the bench.
Makahesi Makatoa also gets a “last man standing” recall alongside Luca Moretti, while Joey Lussick is the beneficiary of Matt Arthur wanting out of the club despite his Cup form being closer to warranting a demotion to Massey rather than a promotion back to first grade. Matt Doorey is dropped to reserves, where he’s joined by Dan Keir, a sign of just how stretched the already limited depth of the Eels has become.
Melbourne Storm
1. Ryan Papenhuyzen 2. Will Warbrick 3. Jack Howarth 4. Nick Meaney 5. Grant Anderson 6. Tyran Wishart 7. Jahrome Hughes 8. Tui Kamikamica 9. Harry Grant 10. Josh King 11. Shawn Blore 12. Eliesa Katoa 13. Trent Loiero. 14. Sualauvi Faalogo 15. Nelson Asofa-Solomona 17. Lazarus Vaalepu 20. Cameron Munster.
19. Tepai Moeroa 21. Chris Lewis.
Cam Munster looms on the extended bench for the Storm (Update: He’s in), and the decision to play him will come down to “why risk him in a game like this?” versus “ease him back with a game like this”. Tyran Wishart has been good as his deputy, and the talent disparity between the two sides is such that Munster’s appearance or not will make no difference to the result.
Grant Anderson is named on the wing, interesting as I swear I saw his leg bend two different ways last week. Long time prospect Jack Howarth is in the centres, and chances are good this is his breakout game. The Storm back row is everything the Eels isn’t; hard workers who can find space with tough running. Consider that their combined salary wouldn’t be much more than what Junior Paulo is earning, and you begin to see the problems this Eels team faces in a rebuild.
Hunting for Hope
The King deserves much better in his 200th Eels game
Honestly, looking for hope in this Parramatta team is a fool’s errand. Injuries have decimated a squad that was barely holding together, and those that remain healthy are in form ranging from a very generous “lukewarm” to “we’d probably have to pay freight to a second division English side”. The interim coach is on his way out, the incoming coach is already shopping players around, and the young stars are either leaving, looking to leave, or putting the club over a barrel after a dozen first grade games. It’s not Stephen Kearney and Chris Sandow level bleak, but damn is it close.
Seven games remaining in this season is an awfully long time for a team with nothing to play for (not even pride, honestly) to get up and avoid being smashed, especially when they weren’t doing a great job of that when the season was alive. Records might be broken with how fragile the Eels defence has been. This is the type of game where I’m looking up how big a margin you can bet on (the Storm are paying $17 for a win of 51+).
If there is any hope, it is that we can get some performances out of players motivated either by trying to impress the new coach, or trying to impress a new club having been told they can test the market. Daejarn Asi is playing for his future, remaining unsigned for 2024, as is Makahesi Makatoa. Blaize Talagi will probably add $100K to his asking price with every good performance at this point, while Brendan Hands and Joey Lussick are suddenly fighting for a job in 2025 that a month ago was likely Matt Arthur’s to lose.
There are also a few players that are going to put in regardless. I’m not sure Luca Moretti can lift a side on his own, but you know he’ll be giving his all. Reagan Campbell-Gillard deserves better and will put in his usual tough performance. Joe Ofahengaue has been good every week. Dylan Brown will always play hard and maybe a couple of pieces of brilliance keep the Eels alive for long enough for belief and pride to kick in. Maybe Wiremu Greig kicks on. He’s due.
Maybe the team does it for the King, their captain Clint Gutherson, playing his 200th game in Blue and Gold. That kind of experience will leave Gutherson under no illusion as to how the Eels lift, or rather don’t, for milestones, but maybe a herculean effort from the captain and some against type milestone match performances can keep the Eels alive.
Then there is the home ground. It isn’t a fortress anymore (and frankly I feel like most of the home fans might hate this team more than the away supporters do right now) but the Eels have still got a strong record at CommBank Stadium. The worst loss is by 38 points (Souths in 2020), the highest score conceded there being 46, and that was an Origin impacted loss against the Warriors last year. Maybe the mild energy of us diehards foolish enough to get out there for this game can keep the Eels in the game.
Or maybe the Storm all get food poisoning at lunch. That’s probably as likely as all of the above going right for the Eels.
Whatever
The rest of season 2024 is a waste of time for the Parramatta Eels and their supporters. Even the battle to avoid the wooden spoon or not doesn’t hold interest, if I felt any shame about supporting the worst team in a given year I’d have jumped ship in the early 90s, or the early 2010s.
The Eels are in a holding pattern until Jason Ryles gets his overhead projector out and starts drawing red lines through names and flogging those that remain all summer long. The hope of actual working defensive structures, players putting in and eventually, hopefully (in 2026) a club not in what is clearly a salary cap crunch of their own making, that’s the light at the end of the tunnel.
We’ve got seven horrible games of football to sit through until that light shows itself as the tiniest speck in the distance. This week shapes up as potentially the worst of them. If we can get through this, we can get through anything. Who knows? Maybe the NRLW team will be good this year.
Go you Eels!
Prediction: Melbourne Storm 72 d Parramatta Eels 4
Man of the Match: Jahrome Hughes
Gol
Really good shout about Howarth. Great opportunity for him to break out.
One betting outlet is offering $8 on him to score 2 tries…. While it is a little unclear which side our 3/4’s will mark up, it almost doesn’t matter…
Love it Gol, sums up how the average Eels fan is feeling.
Sanders gone, Arthur going, Talangi (or his agent) jerking us around;! It makes that S.G.Ball win seem pretty irrelevant.
With any luck, the club learns from these mistakes, if they don’t then we need to all start writing letters to the club noting how disastrous their handling of jnrs is compared to all other successful clubs. They are evidently incompetent or lack football knowledge about what successful clubs do with their Jnrs.
I find it hard to believe newspaper reports that Ryles has guaranteed Talangi the full back spot if he stays
After a very good run we missed the finals in 2000 under the coaching of John Peard. One of our better players was Mark Levy. When Jack turned up to coach Mark asked Jack for a guarantee he’d only be chosen as fullback. Jack said he’d be picked wherever he was needed. Mark went to Penrith. Jack won the competition.
The only possible guarantee – the coach will pick each eeek the team mist likely to win the match. If that doesn’t suit, move on.
I assume you meant to say 1980 Noel. Don’t worry, I feel the strain of the drought too.
One big problem with our recruitment/retention across the board is that every decision makes sense in a vacuum; Sanders is hard to keep when your starting halves are rep quality, yeah Arthur wants to leave because we treated his dad badly, but collectively the result is that a lot of good players are leaving, they aren’t being replaced and the guys that were kept aren’t performing. The club doesn’t inspire much confidence or loyalty in young players it seems.
The underlying problem is still that we just don’t get enough out of our pathways, not nearly enough.
Name a problem that our football department has and I guarantee you that it could ultimately be fixed if our pathways system were better.
Seriously, name one football problem we have and our pathways failures are guaranteed to be the underlying problem.
You could name a side made up of players currently with other clubs, here and overseas who have been available to us at one level or another who would start favourites againzt our current roster with everyone fit. Recognising talent is a major problem.
That’s true, but if our pathways system was more productive there would be three teams worth of Eels juniors out there.
That doesn’t bother me, it sure as hell doesn’t bother the Panthers, they just go, “who’s next ?”.
That’s where we need to be, we need to get to the point where Isaac Moses comes to us and we don’t like what he’s selling, we can just say no !!!
Right now he, and every other manager for that matter, have us by the grapes, they know it, the players know it, everyone knows it. Until that changes we’ll get bent over a barrel every time a player comes off contract, and the only way that changes is if we produce so many good young players we simply can’t find a place for them all.
Our goal should be to win all five junior rep competitions and both NSW Cup competitions; as well as RM Cup & SS, EVERY YEAR and still lose players to every club every year.
If we even get close to doing that we’ll dominate like the Panthers do.
Interesting Brett. I don’t really know as much as many on here about our pathways so I’m always interested in reading about them.
I have asked in here previously (but did not get any responses). But didn’t Nathan Brown’s review touch heavily on pathways? If so how many of his recommendations have been implemented and of those that have, are they working. If they are will we see evidence of this in the future or if they aren’t, why?
Well that is the $64 million dollar question, isn’t it ?
The problem is that any changes only show fruit 5-10 years down the track. We won’t know if the recommendations were implemented or not, and whether they were effective. If I’m Jason Ryles, the first question I’m asking the club is about our pathways.
Wow, big call Gol. but fair enough. I wonder how big the crowd will be tonight…I am thinking maybe 12000? If lucky. I can see a score of 10-48
We are a dogs breakfast from the top to the bottom it seems with the only shining light being some good results in Reggies and Flegg……Noel is spot on here, that SG Ball win last season…and the key players were?
The retention committee / HOF along with CEO need to be accountable here; we have been taken advantage of and allowed to for too long…like a hot chip amongst seagulls.
Bring back the cheerleaders I say….that will make for some sparkle.
They take advantage of us because they can. We have no leverage in the player market. Players and their managers know this.
We don’t produce enough talent internally, and the few that we do invariably get either criminally undervalued or chronically overvalued.
We either write them off far too early, or have rose coloured glasses where their weaknesses are concerned.
So inevitably players get poached and succeed elsewhere or we overpay to keep them because we get sick of seeing local juniors succeed elsewhere.
Too generous on the scoreline Gol, it’ll be 104-0 and we’ll all be crying watching it.
Go Dan Keir!! Give it your all! You are our perpetual man – we’ve seen you play every position in the KO effect. Shame it’s Gutho’s 200th because we never do well in milestone games
I remember the night Will Penisini debuted(or was it second game) and outpointed Justin Olam. We’ve come a long long way, unfortunately south.
This is why I don’t believe age is the easy excuse. Even our young players have fallen off a cliff. There’s some major cultural, coaching, and preparation issues plaguing us at present. Will P used to be a gun player for us.
I hope we screw their season by busting up their players and putting them out for the season.
I am with Gol. It’s been a tough year and it can’t finish soon enough. Then again just when we think the worst something happens and we are back sitting up straight. I always expect the Eels to win but tonight I am uncertain about the result.
Will the Storm come out and murder Parra or murder their game through complacency. I just can’t pick it tonight but one thing for sure I will be cheering for them. Go the Eels.
Watch gutho tonight. The media has been on his back, fans doubting him.
If there was one club who can be playing as bad as us AND pull off the upset of the year.
It would be the mighty parramatta eels! 💙💛
Also interested to see Dan Ker get his NRL debut !!
Shaun Lane can no longer call himself a first grader. To drop a balll with such a soft pass he should have walked off the field into the sheds and then left the ground. He is a disappointment
Everything about lane is infuriating. From his poor ball handling to his laziness in defence to is bad reads to his lack of agility on an edge. Needs to be moved on asap.
Sean lane and asi have to be the worst duo in the nrl – truly pathetic
Nice, another soft linebreak straight through lane. Then lane takes multiple tackles to get back onside. And then a try to papenhauzen a few plays later. Lane Liability is an understatement
Lane is worst than a reserve grade forward at the moment, in terms of form. I feel sorry for him. Sad but his career as a nrl eel might be coming to a end
Lane played too many minutes, Trent left him on when he was clearly gassed. He was gassed well before he missed that tackle.
Lane in not an 80 minute player anymore.
I sat through the game last night and I believe the eels did ok overall, with some exceptions, especially in the second half, with Lane mostly wandering around his so called position on the flank.
The big and poor overall effort by Lane was atrocious and that is putting it mildly. While there were some attempts on his side, mostly in that 2nd half he just ambled around and walking alongside his position and allowing the other side to run past him and the other side especially in that second half.
I watched the game on TV, in its entirety, first half was slow by him but he did make a couple of runs, but in the 2nd half where he played on the left side of the field, he rarely helped in the tackles, and generally he mainly allowed the other side players to run over & past him while he pretty much walked/wandered towards the sideline leaving a fair sized gap between our team.
I can remember Lane in his early days at the eels and he played very well at those days, but after next lot of matches he slowed down and simply appeared to be disinterested in playing. Seemed ok in first halves but he slowed down and let the opposition run through.
As I watched the game, by mid second half, the storm really took over and mainly played on the right side of the field which was an easy run through for the storm players, especially those players who had good line speed and ball movement. It really showed the weakness of Lane in his so called attempts to tackle the opposition players.
While the eels as a team at least tried to take on the Storm, there were some dud plays by the Ref who generally was ok, but did not help the eels though. Putting an eels player in the bin as the half time siren sounded the did not help the eels cause though.
I would suggest that the coach allowed Lane to stay on the field in an attempt to get him mobile, he mostly only ran in to assist already players in tackles, who had already gone into the tackles, when he was close to the tackled players, more like a slow show.
Of course, Lane is contracted for next year plus I suspect anoption his way for 26. The best outcome would be he rediscovers confidence and drive. Second bedt, he has an interest in travel
The eels did ok there in some parts looked good particularly in Brown finally trying to take over the team it looked like.
The eels attack looks like:
Gains meters consistently but has no speed to break through around the Ruck and around edges
The eels 4-5th tackle set options:
Looks like spread the ball sideways to try slot a winger in a corner or we fail to score points
I’m not a fan of saying one person on the field takes all the blame here – our players worked really hard tonight. Agree?
What I will say is that our R & R, old coach, and general players fitness & body composition management has completely missed the mark for this season and last.
We not only have no speed to burn like other teams. We bulked up our former players who had speed to be now slower (Russel for example).
Our players look like they aren’t physically conditioned in both body composition (weight + strength & conditioning wise), not to mention we are simply over weight to handle the cardio load of this faster paced game of rugby league being played.
Some fans can bag the players all they want and think they aren’t trying – they absolutely are. It’s not the players fault they’ve been bulked up to be power players with less emphasis on defence and stamina.
The roster is weighed down by having minimal cap distributed into fast back 5 players – if you had Sean lanes 700k or Mattos 650k in 1-2 electric fast outside backs.
All the sudden some of those offloads tonight or breaks in the middle of the field – and we score long range tries. Plus we would have saved more tries having faster paced players scrambling in broken play.
We are the king of roster that if a line break or mistake happens and a team gets the ball they can run the length of the field because we have zero legit quick speed in the whole 17 except for Dylan brown who’s a halve and shouldn’t be his job to be the only quick man in a NRL team.
All I’ll say is this – I believe the club is legitimately the worst balanced squad I have possibly ever seen in as long as I can remember. How our coaches & HOF ever thought you can keep signing forwards and place zero value in buying high value FAST game breaking back 5 players is completely inexcusable.
There is no evidence I’ve seen of any team dominating the NRL ever, who had no fast players and unfit over weight players who are designed only for running impact and zero fitness to be realistically able to defend for a full NRL match.
The good signs I did see tonight is that Dylan Brown Showed up for his captain, Blaize did some good dirty work in his own end and played tough, Gutho displayed great efforts, also some of our young forwards especially did some good hard work.
Damn we need a clean out. How is Asi playing NRL ?
The very first person we need to kick to the kerb is Trent Elkin. The team is massively unfit.
Little birdie told me that Penisini has been told his days may be numbered if he doesnt get himself in shape.
He needs to lose about 10kgs, he has really let himself down in the fitness area this year.
Ryles is going to smash him and it’s way overdue.
Gutho was excellent tonight. He is probably one of my favourite players but mate…
He turns up to the presser and couldn’t even be bothered to put a pair of pants on???
I may be an old fart but it just shows you the standards and culture of the place.
Terrible look.
Just wouldn’t happen under Bennett or Bellamy or even BA.
Penisni can’t tackle to save his life and his reads aren’t much better. He needs a big kick up the backside in off-season as second half of last year was also punctuated by his horrific defence. Unfortunately the team is full of players who are more accurately reserve graders in the modern game. Until we shift some of them we will lose more than we win.
Mate I don’t know who will be playing next year in the parra jersey but they will be fitter than they have ever been.
That is the number 1 non negotiable goal.
If they don’t want to go through it, get out now because they are going to hate it.
It absolutely amazing how standards were allowed to slip in the last 12 months.
We dominated possession, we literally had to make no tackles on our line for most of the first half and still ran out of gas.
It’s like field position doesn’t matter for us anymore, that’s no speed of X factor that we have that can help us score tries when we get up there. Maybe more attacking kicks with 50/50 chances near the try line are needed since we can’t score off set plays
What game were you watching? You do realise Penisini was wearing number four not three and was defending on the left not right.
He was very good tonight in defence unlike our left side. Point out a time tonight when he was defensively poor. If not keep your dumb comments to yourself.
I mean right not left. Makes my comment as factually correct as the dumb one I am replying to.
I mean right not left. Makes my comment as factually correct as the dumb one I am replying to.
Did you watch the game?? He played right side and was constantly beaten by howarth in contact. I stopped counting the amount of times howarth beat him one on one and then poked his nose through our line to give storm momentum/field position. The stats suggest he missed a third of his tackles but the eye test was suggesting that even if it wasn’t a downright miss howarth and co on that storm edge worked him over easily. More generally however, his defence is putrid. He usually defends far too tight to his half and gets skinned on outside by most teams. Needs to put in a lot of work on his defence over preseason.
Also your comparison of our right side defence being better than left is illusory. Both are dog shit. Left is just worse cause we have lane and asi next to eachother in defence on that side with a rookie centre in blaize outside them.
Agree. Penisini has shown he can contribute in pretty well most aspects of football, you don’t just lose talent but you can veer off course. I said zonks back that a player like Hopgood for example, 3 years in the premier system about to crack NRL, we get him, put him on the field with a bunch of emerging pretenders and what will happen? I just hope players like him, Talagi, can see the bones of a re-set team.
Just on last night, we get whacked for 2 consecutive 10 mtr penalties, and the Storm’s line speed is never questioned, once on the 4th tackle he called Grant inside 10 but no whistle. Once NAS was so far offside under the posts, the ref called Joe O for baulking! The Storm’s defence is very good, even better when they. can leave early most of the night and harass a clunky team into error.
For some reason I cant reply to your other comments so I will do it here.
Penisini was in no way an issue defensively in this game. I challenge you to point out 3 of his terrible defensive errors in this game and not just you making a generalised comment (which is just your opinion and nothing based on fact) but a specific instance (time in the game named) where he failed defensively.
Now as for your comment
“Also your comparison of our right side defence being better than left is illusory. Both are dog shit. Left is just worse cause we have lane and asi next to eachother in defence on that side with a rookie centre in blaize outside them.”
Do you think about what you write? Can’t you see you are making my argument for me? You say my saying our right is better than our left is illusory and then go on to say the left is just worse……brilliant insite, yet again Ron.
Our team is massively unfit and over weight I have been saying this for ages they haven’t been prepared right not only in fitness preparation but over weight. They haven’t been prepared in all aspects with the thought in mind of making them players who can run back and defend for 80 minutes and compete in all aspects of the game, speed and athleticism not only has been overlooked in recruiting, that’s can’t be the excuse. Our actual players already here have been made out on weight and bulked up into power type players. It’s a complete strategic blunder on all fronts, we have the literally most unfit and slow team in the comp and some players have only gotten less fit than last year.
Muz, I’d be looking to overhaul the whole strength and conditioning team, although apparently Elkin is already going. A few years ago it was BA flogged them too much in preseason and they were too tired, now the last 2 years they had a reduced schedule and they are unfit – in the eyes of some it’s all BA’s fault though!! They need to look at poaching some of the best in the business from somewhere.
I think our team might be a lot more competitive next year even if Ryles can get our players fitter and better prepared, roster clean out is obviously needed but some players will do better with some weight off and better cardio. No Fitness and no speed in the back 5 is obviously why we leak long range tries weekly
We are not hopeless tho – not like wests tigers
I’m faithful some of our players will come good with some better preparation & weight loss not to mention a off season of better defensive coaching
Still some good players in our team who have some untapped potential (Imo)
Interesting to see Madge out there. What interest would he have watching a random game like that live?
Both clubs need an assistant coach, I wonder.
Madge would be a awesome assistant coach imo but you would think he would probably only give up nsw for a head coach position
I don’t know how he could be Origin and assistant coach..