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Have the Parramatta Eels finally found their heir to Clinton Gutherson? The Tip Sheet covers reports that the club is close to securing talented Penrith prospect Isaiah Iongi on a 3-year deal as Sixties, Forty20 and Clint offer their perspectives on the potential signing and other roster developments.
Kennedy Cherrington celebrated an important miletone as she became the first Eel to reach 25 games in the NRLW. She also led her side to a tough victory over the Wests Tigers on Sunday night as the show looks at how well the ladies are travelling.
The NRL and NRLW weekend wraps cover a hard forught weekend for the NRLW while the NRL saw the Storm steal an important march on the Panthers in the race for the minor premierip in a game that also saw Nathan Cleary get hurt.
In a relatively quiet week for NRL news, the Roosters re-signed Spencer Leniu and Connor Watson while the Sea Eagles have linked up with the Castleford Tigers to boost their development pathways.
If we actually officially have gotten him.. Iongi is a better fullback option then Blaize especially since he is a specialist with more games under the belt, more speed, and better footwork. Blaize is good and has lots of long term potential as a raw talent footballer, but he doesn’t fit the mould of a meter eater or speedster which all modern fullbacks seem to be. Iongi (like hopgood), comes from the Penrith mould where your work rate & meters are expected to be very high. Historically in recent years many of our best buys have been former panther players (RCG, Waqa, Hopgood, even sivo, carty was also a panther). all of them become very solid first grade players for us.
The players we get from the Riff usually are better than players we develop at parra unfortunately it seems like.
Unpopular opinion: if we can’t develop or retain quality Jnrs, should we just use Penrith’s jnr development & unwanted players as our recruitment strategy?
It seems like a large % of the actual quality players we get come from the panthers. They probably have many more hard working good players stuck in cup who would jump ship for a pay rise.
Sixties, could you contact me off group please. I am looking to get rid of a number of items going back to the old badges that I have. Also have a perfect colour booklet with players.
Can send them if you want them.
I was at the game last week. What a shamozzle. Sitting amongst a bunch of Chooks supporters didn’t help my state of well being either…..
On RCG I see it cutting 2 ways.
1. The point that everyone has made – only 1 year on contract and can exit without carrying much of anything on the cap.
2. The other way is the opposite – exit the forward(s) who are lowest value for money. Which for mine would appear to be Junior and Lane on form / output over the last 2 years. While it means we likely carry a cost of them on the cap, at least we can spend part of their residual on some wild card options. We know Paulo and Lane aren’t producing, so why stick with it? We might even find the next Papalii. Plus when RCG comes up for contract renewal, we should be able to extend him at a cheaper and more economical rate commensurate with a middle forward in their twilight years. If RCG exits, that ain’t happening.
With my amateur “fan” knowledge I’d go option 2 every day of the week, unless by exiting RCG we get a player swap that is better for us and otherwise not on the market.
Mick for some reason the eels have made it very clear they want paulo. He’s a co captain and we seem to have this loyalty to some players sometimes for years past their best even when we are paying significant overs. There’s talk that RCG asked himself if he could look around to get another deal some place after ba left. Who knows. Paulo is also on so much money, I think 950k.. nobody realistically wants paulo or lane. Not for 950k like Paulos on, or 650-750k like Lane. They are shopping lane and so far no takers. Paulo is probably worth 500-650k max now. I also agree I think we should keep RCG. But it sounds like nobody wants the other forwards because of how poor they’ve been compared to their salary’s. Maybe Jason is looking to have less budget allocated into forwards like BA and will use the 750 from RCG to get a cheap forward who can do a job and an extra back or hooker. Ryles will be like the storm & chooks probably and have less budget tied up in forwards. He may even think Guymer and Jo o’ can fill the void in the middle next year. Both are lighter and defend better in the middle. I wish we kept RCG but we have to trust in Ryles plan I guess. He is a former rep player and knowledgeable man, he probably has a new plan/direction for us. It sounds like nobody wants any of our forwards besides RCG. If they don’t move him we can’t bolster our roster anywhere else. It sucks.
Muz, I recall at last contract negotiation that Junior was possibly linked to longer term off field involvement. I have no idea what that means in relation to obligations, whether they be contractual or verbal agreement, but maybe the club is somehow bound by this. He is a Parra junior and there was that narrative about Parra for life(let’s forget about the 3 years in the cold, doesn’t count, we asked him to go as our cap spreadsheet didn’t add up).