The Tip Sheet is also available on Spotify and iTunes!
John Muggleton joined The Tip Sheet ahead of the wild Round 26 shoot out against the St George Illawarra Dragons. While neither he nor Sixties or Forty20 had any clue about the madness that was to soon unfold, they manage to have an excellent chat about the changes to the coaching staff in 2025.
In particular, Muggo’s connection to Scott Wisemantel gives him some strong insights into what Parramatta’s cross-code appointment can bring to the club. The boys discuss the unique perspectives that come with a background in union – including Muggo’s own time in the code. Which players stand to gain the most and how different will Parramatta’s attack look under Wisemantel?
I note that no-one has yet commented on Saturday’s performance. I guess it left us all speechless. I do think Sivo’s effort in becoming the fastest player in the NRL era to reach 100 tries is worthy of mention. I’d certainly keep him around as we move into our next structure. His drawback is that he is often injiured these days, but then so is Mitchell. Luka Moretti improves every time I see him. There are plenty of emerging young players who would give us a very successful period werr we to recruit them.
Noel, there is an Instant Reaction podcast post with plenty of opinions too.
I recommend you listen to this pod with Muggo if you haven’t already done so. He shares some interesting insights about re-thinks that are possible in rugby league and what Scott Wisemantel offers as a coach.
Really great podcast sixties thank you to you and 40/20 for the work you do. We do appreciate you gentlemen a lot. The insights & talking points on this podcast in particular were very helpful. Thank you again
Cheers Muz.
” The game changed and we missed it.. now we have to catch up”
Excellent analysis from Muggo.
Great chat and insights from Muggo. I liked the observation about not necessarily needing to exactly copy a side like Penrith. I’m quietly hopeful Parra will bring some (good) surprises to their game in 2025 via the coaches.
I’m thinking a few players who have had a very ordinary season will thrive with new voices and coaching.
And what a great observation re the influence of Price and Cronin on Parra’s success in the 80s. I do think Mick is underrated as a centre. Maybe because he made those around him better.
Agree with John Muggleton; Clunky (and impatience) has sumerised our attack for the most part.
Rugby always are well drilled, with skilled passing to the chest. Great hands due to the reps. Set plays are like clock work. For us catching and passing hasn’t been that good and we often look unconnected.
Scott will be a huge asset and it will be a good challenge for the current squad. Backs (exception Moses, Gutho) have not developed and have often gone backwards.
Blair will also challenge the group. High performance being the operative term. As opposed to underperforance that we’ve become accustomed to. Fitness needs a lot of work and lazy days off training will be stopped. Elkin wasn’t bringing anything new.
MOA – at least someone is named as defence coach. The most obvious job hasn’t been a priority. The edges have been abominable for years.
I’m looking forward to seeing the changes. Instead of the business as usual approach.
Good podcast and great points by Muggo. He summarised what most of us have been saying & seeing for years but in a much more detailed manner. I like how he gave example of how Jack Gibson also didn’t stay at same clubs for long. Even Wayne Bennet does this and you can see for some coaches it is more effective for them. It’s also important in my view for us eels fans to not just blame solely BA. Teams & clubs (not always but often ).. go stale without changes in the coaching staff and roster.
The eels as we can all see have too many unchanged faces on the roster, the playing style, roster body type & playing style, and game plan has not been innovated for a long time, it’s been severely exposed the more the new rules & officiating has caused more 6 agains, faster play, less rest.
You see the spring bocks side in rugby and it’s a HUGE power team. They are simply too powerful to stop near the try line. And a mix of stocky power players, giant tall bodies, then ultra quick X factor backs with blistering speed.
The boks have that power roster and playing style and smaller less powerful teams like the Wallabies and others get flattened by them, can’t keep them from scoring.
What I’m suggesting here is that BA’s not a fool, he was on to something and without the uncle nicks and abundance of off field money and endless depth of places like the roosters who can always get (of have already) the best players. BA had to focus on what he could get, and less teams were as aggressive resource wise going after forwards like us.
Now in an alternate universe, if NRL went the way of Union and kept its slower pace with more breaks, our roster would still probably flog most teams. At the absolute worst we would still be edging on top 8 this year. If we got rests like players do in rugby, Jnr Paulo, RCG, Wiremu, Tualagi, lane would all be smashing defenders to pieces especially those teams who have smaller players.
The issue is with rules & game style changing after most of our power forwards got contracts signed, it’s not like we couple just off load them. It’s a double edged sword.
I’m not saying ba is a victim or that we could have done things differently. But I do think the games changed heaps even in 2 years. I just think our playing style & roster was leaning the other way, it’s massively puts us at a disadvantage when there’s limited breaks in the game play.
This is where our club needs to not just blame solely the old coaches and places all faith in Ryles. We need more football brains up in the head office who can foresee the trends of the game. A good example is Gus & Ciraldo at bulldogs. The first season where they got the actual players they wanted on the roster it’s a top 3 defensive side. And was bottom 3 the year before simply because of having different players.
I’m severely concerned if the eels don’t look at this club from all different angles rather than just blame BA that either they’ll repeat the same mistakes again, or place too much pressure & decision making on to one person.. a brand new rookie head coach who’s taking over the steering wheel of a red hot dumpster fire of a situation currently at the eels.
What worries me is that if Jason isn’t able to make us a lot more successful within 2 seasons (as in make us a finals / top 8 team again)…
They’ll probably (going off past history) probably leave him to stagnate and cast blame on him rather than hire him a elite head of football and a few new smart footy brains to help him from up in the head office.
The context of this is: the eels are a GIANT fan based, old, historic club founded in 1947.
And they’ve hired a rookie coach who has not coached 1 NRL game himself to come in as their saviour. I’m not suggesting Jason is coming in alone and won’t have strong people supporting him within his staff.
But the pressure of this is almost unbelievable and insane considering our last few coaches were also rookie coaches, and had not won premierships (obviously)…
And they are expecting brand new coaches without 1 game of experience as head coach to break a near 40 year premiership drought. It’s unbelievable when you consider all of these expectations on a context like this.
With all that said I support Ryles 100% and he has made good decisions with the people who will be part of our coaching staff…
I just wish our club came into things with a stronger position, or changed the way they do things because it has been almost 40 years! There’s high level experienced individuals who have miles more proven success & experience than say MON, or silly Mcelduf.. who could run rings around them!
Jack Gibson said success starts at the front office and although I do believe Ryles & Co will be successful in helping our beloved club. I’m afraid he will have less support from above himself, which is where our club desperately needs to improve if we are to ever become a genuine premiership winning club again.
Just my observation. I don’t want to see Ryles fail because he is expected to be a saviour while others are not held accountable for our previous failures.
That was an excellent interview with Muggleton. You both did a great job asking the right questions. I particularly agree with his thoughts on who the next immortal from Parramatta should be—someone who was always selected in their position, forcing other players out of their natural spots due to their immense impact. He also consistently pushed talented players at their peak, like Paul Langmack and Wayne Pearce, to the second row when he was available for representative selection.
This is why my choice for the next immortal and the greatest Eel of all time is Ray Price. He was where it all began for us. We won everything with him, and we haven’t won a single thing since he retired.
Good points avenger. Muggo also provided some good strategic insights into where our team can improve as well as where our next assistant coaches will be able to improve the football skills of our players. He is 100% right if you watch the rugby teams passing & less clunky set plays it’s night & day, we look like children in terms of smoothness & execution compared to how they attack and move the ball so smoothly. The eels are lacking the reps & better coaching on some of the football fundamentals to become better functioning team again. Fundamentals and simply better edge defence could improve us out of sight if they can make it happen with just 1 off season to unlearn all their bad edge defence coaching & habits.. Let’s hope for a better year in 2025.
Muz
I have a friend whose son was playing in the lower grades for Melbourne Storm. At the Storm, they follow a rigorous training regime where players perform the same drill from the 10-metre line, the 25-metre line, halfway, and so on. If any player drops the ball or misses a tackle, they start the process over.
Each drill must be executed perfectly a set number of times before moving to the next. Bellamy believes that repetition leads to a fluid and seamless approach in both attack and defence, focusing heavily on structure. This commitment to precision and consistency has kept them at the top for over two decades.
Hopefully, Ryles shares a similar philosophy.
Interesting insights mate. This is probably why everyone who plays there does a good job. For sure Jason will be implementingthis. We have boat loads of potential in our team still I believe who will improve out of sight over next two seasons. We will have former rep level first graders coaching our boys, this alone will be hugely beneficial for them. And we have near non existent defence on edges, they will be able to help them improve on this.
I definitely believe it. Bellamy can fashion average players into players that he needs.
They talk of work ethic over talent as the preferred criteria.
If you don’t work hard you don’t play 1st grade – NAS this year had to work his way into the team via Cup and had to lose 10kg. Bellamy told him.
Bellamy is known for his own handwork and attention to detail. He asks the same of his players and holds them accountable for the standards. And his players love him.
Price is definitely my choice too Avenger. I Muggo’s assessment system is difficult to argue with.
Price & co have neen overlooked at parra and I wonder if us not winning premierships recently / not being golden child club of the media has an impact over the biases & decision making. No doubt some of our parra legends from the golden years 60’s are suitable to be immortals imo. If Ray price or Peter sterling etc played for Easts or somewhere you would probably think one of them is already an immortal. People (non eels fans) don’t realise the eels teams of back then were legitimately some of the best teams to ever play rugby league in history. And we had the best players probably of all time. Game changers
Good chat. Tks. Interesting how Muggleton was matter of fact about our defensive issues being around for 6/7 years now.Particularly out wide. This has been in plain sight but we seem to come up with different theories. Most that I’ve heard are probably part of a bigger picture, but he mainly pointed to the centres and wingers being well schooled and working together. I’m sure that not knowing your job, laziness or fatigue on the inside also comes into it,. Unfortunately we never seemed to fix any of it for a good embedded playing system. Jennings and Opacic offered some hope, even Penisini in his first year, but it’s a coaching,system and team thing that one player can improve but not fix. Let’s hope the solution is coming.
I see Tom Opacic is back on the market. He’s 29. We could do worse than bring him back.
Noel, I don’t know about Tom. I’m thinking that maybe, even in the two years he’s been gone that the game has changed so much.
He didn’t have a great run over in the SL and that’s why they didn’t offer him another contract.
Although, he is certainly a better centre than Jake Tago and we signed him for two years so don’t know what they are thinking.
He’s not only a better centre than Jake Tago he’s a far better centre than Morgan Harper. While Blaize has the potential to go far further in the game than Tom ever will Tom kept the left edge defence organised which, to this point Blaize has been unable to do. He signed in England for a reported $250 grand a year, so he’s lower tier. I don’t know where we’re up to with the recruitment of backs. I certainly think, if we recruited him Tom would be value, even if only as someone to inculcate defensive skills at Cup level. Anyway, just a thought.
Noel you make some great points.
I reckon he would be a shrewd investment at the right price.
I really rate Muggos opinion in relation to defence.
My only question is – as these problems have been around for 6 or 7 years, why haven’t they been fixed????
We, as fans all saw it, yet the club seemingly carried on blindly.
Disappointing.
Great question Spark.
It probably just became an echo chamber. With the same answer given no matter what the problem was.
Every week I’d watch a few other games and there weren’t many teams with the same brittleness as us. It stood out like dog’s. The better teams looked like they had 15 on the park compared to our paper thin efforts, except when our /completions were red hot or the opposition bumbled for 80.
Spark it’s my view ba wasn’t supported sufficiently by our club like some other leading teams are who have more football smarts up the front office..
At elite clubs if a team stagnates or fails in an area they either hire the best in that area to fix it or change coaches or change roster.
Ba was a good forward coach as his strength and had some good areas he could help people. Edge defence never got solved under him and as far as I’m aware the eels never tried to poach new top defensive coaches from other clubs that could help him fix it.
It might be a more simple / practical idea but from word I’ve got is that the eels aren’t very aggressive at this type of thing and don’t make decisions quickly on recruiting & moving people on not only in the NRL roster but this “comfort” so to speak had loads of assistant coaches, admin people & trainers employed for a long time and it was rarely shaken up or cleaned out to try and force change and hopefully create new outcomes.
We don’t have a high expectation winning culture up in the front office, evidently their view of success is that it’s good enough to be average. People can keep their jobs. If the eels want significant change they need new leaders at the top who demand a higher standard or coaches, roster staff and trainers simply do not keep their jobs.
Jack Gibson used to drop players if they didn’t do their jobs. He also used to say success starts at the top. For years we’ve kept some players in weekly due to reputation, even when they are clearly not doing their jobs. If the eels are to change this premiership drought curse they’ll need to get more disciplined and hardcore. If players don’t defend, if trainers don’t improve metrics in certain areas of the players game I.E defence, we drop the players into reserve grade until they fix it, and we move on assistants and consultants if they cannot improve certain areas like edge defence sufficiently after one off season and one full season of NRL – we need to fire them.
This is how successful club’s & organisations work. i can guarantee if you get a job even at McDonald’s and your productivity doesn’t improve after 12 months, if you keep making the same mistakes and don’t improve you’ll also face the sack.
We are supposedly a powerhouse sprite club with a giant membership subscribers, a first class stadium, current & former rep players, we can score points against even the best defensive teams. They should not accept this mediocrity on edge defence like they have for years. This wasn’t necessary and should not have been tolerated for more than 12 months, let alone 7 + years of the same problem. Especially when even the average beer drinking fan at home can identify our main problem, every team can see it and exploit it for years, yet we didn’t do enough to improve it even 1% it looks like. It’s been shocking for over 5 years out wide. Almost guaranteed to leak tries every time a team goes there in our 20.
Muz, there are a few points in there but for mine, BA had a few problems as well.
His loyalness to underperforming players was legendary.
I don’t believe he surrounded himself with enough talent coaching wise and this was probably his choice. He had some real clunkers over the 11 years.
At the end of the day, the responsibility stops with the head coach and he should have fixed the frailties in the defence years ago.
Brad held us together under great adversrdity. He built a formidable side under the ru l es of the day – arguably we should have won in 2021. The game changed. He didn’t. We’ve sunk. We need new leadership. Hope we’ve got it. At this point, end of story
Yeah spark fair points. Maybe towards end let some get too comfortable
Great question Spark.
It probably just became an echo chamber. With the same answer given no matter what the problem was.
The edge defence seems to be poor in most grades I’ve seen, defensive systems probably being taught across multiple grades. Interested to see if just one off season with new defence coaches can improve their fortunes. One off season may not be enough but the bulldogs 180 with new roster and new coaches inside 2 seasons provides me hope we should improve. At the bare least I’ll be just happy to see out wingers stop running in like headless turkeys.
Thanks fellas,
Really interesting points put across by Muggo. I seem to learn something every time I hear him speak. Even though he is better known as a defensive coach I found his talk around the attack and how there may be some different shape required and having the centres use some different skills the most interesting. Given he has a relationship with Wisemantel I wonder if they will have the odd chat every now and then to bounce some ideas around.
Thanks again, really enjoyable listen.
You’re welcome Namrebo. It’s always interesting for us to hear different takes too.