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The preview pod is waylaid by the massive news that Blaize Talagi is departing the Eels at the end of 2024 as Sixties and Forty20 unpack and debrief an ugly outcome for the club. Why have they bled so many up and coming stars? Where do they go to from here?
There is also some footy to talk about this weekend with five games on the docket. The men are taking on the New Zealand Warriors with all three of the Jersey Flegg, NSW Cup and NRL heading through customs to fly to Auckland. The Flegg are gunning for a spot in the finals while the Cup and NRL are playing for nought but respect.
The HNWP and NRLW face the Cronulla Sharks with both squads looking to build on important wins from last weekend. For the NRLW in particular, it is a chance to make an early claim at the top of the ladder and put themselves well ahead in the race for the finals.
Until the ceo, Hof and chairman are turfed this only gets worse. No one wants anything to do with them. I wonder if those at parra have the courage to do what needs to be done
Who sacks them Ron ?
They are the bosses, McElduff was reelected for a further three years earlier this year.
Everyone is calling to sack the board, but they are virtually unsackable these days, which is what we all wanted when the constitutional changes were made. We wanted stability, and we got it, but it comes with its own set of problems.
I assume (with no specific knowledge) that there are provisions for the board to remove a board member by vote (That’s the norm under the corporations act). Surely the rest of board could pull together votes to get mcelduff and Jim turfed. I think the reforms are a good idea but I doubt we are completely stuff with this mob – there is usually a solution if the rest of board goes looking hard enough
McElduff maybe chairman and ultimately carries the can, but the other board members are culpable as well. And to remove a board member they’d have to show that he didn’t fulfil his fiduciary responsibility, given the club’s financial position, that’s an awfully hard case to make. The corporation’s act wouldn’t cover how the team is going, and even if it did they would simply point to the GF appearance just 18 months ago as proof that the club is on a slight downturn but still in an overall strong state.
I have no idea what the procedure in the eels constitution would be but generally you don’t need to prove breach of fiduciary duty to turf a board member. It’s just based on votes reaching the prescribed threshold in the constitution. But it’s all speculation at this point so I just hope that the decision makers have the courage to remove the cancer(s)
News reports today: Charlie Guymer has asked for permission to speak with rival clubs. 🗞️
He is not under Isaac moses either. The issue is players have seemingly lost faith in our club.
The longer we all dance around the real core issues / elephants in the room, the higher our chances are of becoming the new Wests Tigers permanently.
Why do all the young players not want to stay?
What do young player know or believe about our clubs future that we don’t know about?
Why are young players getting NRL debuts and ‘repaying’ our club’s loyalty…. by wanting to exit the eels ASAP?
There’s got to be more to all of this…
Apparently he’s pissed that the other three are gone. He’s under contract till 2026 and the club have said they won’t release him.
It’s sad mate. All his best Jnrs team mates leaving and he probably sees no future with us. I know all this stuff hurts us now but this massive culture & moral decline WILL lead to inevitable changes, it might get uglier before it gets pretty.
Next thing will be…
The Eel will want a release from our emblem. Lol 😂
I think this has more to do with Guymer’s manager than Guymer. Reading quotes from the manager in the press (and I’m relying on the press to be reporting factually for once) he went to Parramatta before MA and Blaize announced they were leaving. Manager said he had interest from a number of clubs after Guymer’s debut and Parramatta need to do something about it.
While I know managers are there to promote their client’s interests I think the tactics used often belong in the gutter. It seems in this instance Guymer’s manager is trying to take advantage of the situation we are in. How much Guymer is agitating, as opposed to the manager, who knows. Perhaps those of you who are closer than me in Brisbane have a better idea.
I do know several ex-players don’t care much for managers. Gordon Tallis keeps banging on about the player is the boss and should be telling the manager what they want. How easy for a youngin coming through to do that I don’t know. Luke Lewis says he only heard from his manager when it came time to renew his contract ensuring he received his commission. In the end he got rid of him and did his own negotiating.
I expect there will be a few more managers trying to take advantage of us over the next little while. And that’s without even thinking about one manager having most the juniors in his fold.
And having just read the club’s statement about Guymer on the website I blame the player manager even more. I feel sorry for some of these young kids and their families.
And the club should stand their ground. There are 9 clubs each year that don’t play finals, you don’t see their players wanting out because they can do better in the short-term.
It seems it’s monkey see monkey do at Parra at the moment, he has a contract, honour it. Stiff shit for him, at least with Guymer, the club weren’t stupid enough to give him a PO.
Guymer is a good example of what Parra should be doing with contracts, identify the players they see as the future, forecast a likely debut season and extend their contracts well beyond their likely debuts. If they don’t like it, then they can piss off well and truly before they make a name for themselves and make a fool of the club.
It’s the old saying, “fool me once”
Thanks for the podcast gents, tough times to be talking about the Eels.
Our sponsors should be Catapiller, the club doesn’t mess about when they decide to dig a hole for themselves.
The only positive this year was the signing of Zac Lomax, boy we were kissed on the D with that one.
I still think we can make something of the 2025 season, losing Talagi is a loss but the sky hasn’t fallen because he left. The media are carrying on like he was our last hope.
I agree, it’s not a great look for the club but realistically, we were not in a position to attract the players we need for season 2025, with or without Talagi.
The club is caught in a tornado at the moment, all we can do is wait for the storm to pass and assess the damage.
While we have halves we have hope, we have Lomax coming and Ryles hasn’t had a chance to make a difference. We are not in the hunt for spine players, our forwards are still good enough to do a job. We are looking for a two decent outside backs. There are plenty of decent outside back in reserve grade teams waiting for a chance
Agree with sentiment above guys, very good and well considered and articulated pod.
The common denominators from my outsider perspective appear to be (a) concentration risk, (b) lack of business continuity planning, and (c) poor performance and culture.
The root causes of all these things sat in the “BA” generation. Note I’m not blaming BA, just saying it’s when he was at the helm when these issues festered. I’m not seeking to blame 1 person, it’s a wider and systemic failure.
Breaking these 3 things down;
1. Concentration risk – on many fronts we put our eggs in too few baskets. Two families in the club had 5 key roles relevant to our long term success – BA, JA, MA, plus Blaize and Ryda. Ultimately all 5 have left for the same root cause reason – BAs performance (manifested by NRL results) and ultimately him being sacked.
2. Lack of business continuity planning basically boils down to not understanding the interrelationship between a club that’s not performing and the inability to keep pathway players without a plan b (beyond paying more $s). This appears to be most pronounced in the lack of recruitment we’ve done to bolster the roster. Again as an outsider we buy cheap on market and anticipate home grown stocks to cover. We never had internal capabilities to cover key losses (at least timely enough) and this has led to both deteriorating results and the consequential inability to retain talent, even at premium prices. We were basically playing roulette betting on 00.
3. There were valid criticisms of BAs roster management and bench strategy. Players were not held to account for performance and he flogged big immobile middles to death with 60+ mins on the field for 26+ weeks per year. A culture of not trusting and blooding young players along with failing to recognise merit in favour of stability and/or loyalty would appear to have made us an unappealing team to be part of. This probably played a role in recruitment too – why would anyone want to come to Parra as a fringe first grader with potential, expecting that you’d get stuck behind some out of form NRL regular plonker who didn’t get held to account? Our strategy never really made much sense outside “wins” which came too often and papered over the fundamental issues we had.
In the field I work in (and I expect any field) you would need to reflect on your fundamental strategy and ask the question as to whether you were doing the little things right to achieve it. If the answer is no, then either change the strategy or change the execution. Either way you are going back to basics.
Blaize having a clause before even becoming a NRL player was plain silly, no other clubs would of had a star young player yet to make a NRL debut already have stupid clauses in his contract so he could use us to get into better clubs. It’s not enough for us to Blame Isaac moses either, the clauses are throughout contracts all over our roster and it’s not just with good players… it’s Jnr’s too.
No other words other than incompetency and Eels unfortunately being managed by people with low footy & business IQ, plus 60’s is right Isaac moses is not a man we should be dealing with to this extent. He is always bad news.
Also agree it’s stupid we had so many Arthur’s developing, then we lose them all if we sacked the father. Bad business decisions long term. They could have Saadi to the kids years ago, NO coaching job is guaranteed in footy. If you sign this contract, you cannot back out if your father is no longer coach, this is a Eels football club first culture, all decisions must come at what’s best for the whole teams future. Just some thoughts.
We wasted too much time & money on these kids, we could have developed other kids than the Arthur’s who would stay. Imagine how many good young halves & dummy halves we looked past that could be been developing with us instead of risking it all on a bunch of Brads kids who would leave as soon as his father is fired. Absolutely stupid.
All I can hope is our clubs leaders are simply inexperienced and WILL learn from this and do better. Imagine how many good young gummy halves and fullbacks we could of been developing instead of wasting it on a bunch of kids who’s loyalty to BA over the club means if you sack him we lose the best of our young talent, NO club or player should come before the Eels club! 💯
Sorry for the spelling sitting in the back of a car. You guys get the gist…
… how can we always make so many stupid decisions? Will we learn? Unbelievable
Hang on, the fans pushed Jake out, long before his old man was punted.
Great read MickB.
Well said
Twenty Four hours ago there was a subject that basically called for the “black listing” of a player agent, ,i.e. Isaac Moses. Now there is concession that 3 players from our SG Ball premiership team have also left and all have different managers. Isaac Moses was not mentioned once this time round nor was any people that may be responsible at the club. Cease and desist ? Or did some sanity prevail?
Again TCT continues to dance around the real issue but had the audacity to publicly name a player manager that the club needs to stop doing business with but not mention one person from the club that may also be responsible.
An emotional and somewhat cowardly 24hrs from our ‘online supporters magazine’
I shake my head.
Well go elsewhere then. You won’t be missed.
It’s a free website, no one is forcing you to read. For your own sake and for the sake of everyone who reads the comments here, why don’t you just go somewhere else?
Go sook some place else if you don’t agree with them.
People are allowed to have their own opinions, especially on their own blog & podcast.
And I’m allowed to have mine. We all love the same club. Plus I am maintaining traffic to the site and helping our good sponsors.
We’ll manage just fine without you,
I certainly had a feeling of numbness when the news about Blaize dropped as there have been so many body blows of late that this latest one just didn’t seem to have the same sort of sting to it.
The club management is an embarrassment at the moment and all of it is its own self doing. To sack BA mid season with no successor in place was one thing, but to try and sell the strategy on the basis that they went hard after Bennett but failed was mind boggling amateur. So we had a situation where a player in his debut year has a player option and has a choice between going to a generational team or play in a number of positions in a bottom of the table team and we’re surprised by the outcome? The club statement only added to my numbness. Soon after they’re forced to quell, if they have, another story about a one and a half game veteran wanting out. They must really be selling some sort vison there and I expect that they’ll be more of those types of club announcements to come.
If BA was perceived to be the biggest problem and was dealt with quickly, how have the R&R team gone unnoticed, They’re hiding in plain sight and how they landed Lomax is nothing short of a modern day miracle. How can R&R improve with the same people in charge.
The only thing that we can be sure of is that there is more pain to come before this mess is sorted. What a job Ryles has ahead of him.
It seems to me with Guymer and six clubs making inquiries that in Guymer’s mindset he is worth more money. I thought I read he is on $80,000 as a minimum. If this is true then after two games and good reports he feels he is worth more.
So is it because the other three are leaving or is it more about money. Someone has elevated his value. What do we do? If we want to keep him because we see him as a good prospect then review his contract. Just remember potential is never realized until it is actually delivered. Ethan, Blaize all have potential but will it really be delivered. They still have a lot of learning ahead of them. The club is in crisis over player retention, if we have signed the right coach this crisis will pass. The question to consider do we as fans have the patience to wait? Everyone wants to blame the Board but they are not out on the field. The blame for Parra’s current demise are the coaches and the team. Are they professional men with pride or just a number. It seems to me there something wrong with the team and it’s harmony. As for losing young pathway players – they believe they are ready for first grade and expect to be there. What’s the problem with this – ego! They belive they are ready when in fact they are not. I find it hard to believe Ethan will replace Fogarty. As for Blaize too much could be expected of him replacing Laui. We wait and see what unfolds.
We need an investigation into the so called football department.
Is it a competence or corruption issue?
Is it a staffing resource issue?
Is it how the department is structured ?
Should the junior league or the NRL be taken away from the HOF and we appoint separate managers of football for each and a separate recruitment manager?
My ideal
Director of Football on board Brian Smith or Daniel Anderson type
Football operations Manager New
Assist manager Junior Football clubs and Pathways
Assist manager NRL and Cup side
Recruitment Manager
The Knights have just implemented a similar structure and are currently rebuilding.
This might just be a pipe dream. That would never happen. But, we cannot keep dishing up mediocrity off the field.
Pete, it’s almost like O’Neill is working on behalf of the tigers to out-fail them.
I do like what 60’s said mentioning how ppl at the club do feel bad and what not, they are human and care.
I’m ok with failing or making mistakes, I’m ok with set backs.
I think what’s making most of us fans UPSET is there hasn’t been any self awareness displayed yet to the parra fan base.
We haven’t seen any self accountability displayed by the club.
This would dramatically shift the patience & mood into a more positive direction for them.
At the moment every fans angry and thinks the club are all idiots.
All it would take is some self accountability, admit publicly they have made some mistakes, identify two areas (say roster depth, or contract clauses).
Then say sorry and admit they will make changes accordingly and then share a new updated vision for the club.
Just like a stale NRL team, a clubs office can become stale too.
If the eels want to be fair for the fans, whose memberships & ticket sales help PAY for their wages.
They need to show some leadership and accountability.
First step is remove the people in charge of these absolutely disgusting recruitment & retention contracts and decisions.
Explain to the fans that they will do a better job to ensure we have more sufficient depth moving forward, and we will not let weak contract clauses dictate our future Jnr star players.
At the moment all we get from the Eels is nothing. No accountability, no sackings in the front office, just excuses and jargon, mixed with reactionary responses to the chaos.
They’ve displayed no signs of self reflection or self accountability.
They might get lucky and Ryles saves faces for them. But the Eels board, CEO, and especially HOF have a lot to answer for.
I’m still convinced we are totally screwed if ALL the same people remain in the front office, Jason Ryles is going to need a miracle with these buffoons in charge…