Confession time. After the recent loss to the Dolphins, I genuinely hit the wall as a supporter.
It wasn’t a case of giving it away, that’s impossible when you have Blue and Gold in your blood. But the last shreds of positivity were draining from me.
Throughout that match I was feeling flat, and as the team missed opportunity after opportunity, I couldn’t escape the belief that the dreaded spoon might be a reality.
To make matters worse, one of our regular authors, Shelley, submitted a column for me to edit that flew in the face of her usual positivity about the direction of the club.
The supporter tunnel appeared long and dark and it felt like I was running low on petrol.
Then I attended the BGA Ted Sulkowicz Memorial Golf Day on the Friday, with media duties starting from 6:30am. It was a brilliant event, and observing close hand the camaraderie and shared passion for the Eels amongst the former players and officials was exactly what I needed to drag me out of my malaise.
Monday rolled around, and it was back to training for the Eels. There was no going through the motions. The squad and staff were upbeat, and that positivity and purpose continued through the week, culminating in a Captains Run attended by Leagues Club and Football Club staff.
Belief was restored. A win was not just possible, it was destined.
The victory over the Knights was sweet, and the Instant Reaction podcast focussed on enjoying the win and breaking down the key moments/performances of the game.
Celebrating against the Knights
However, the next 24 hours brought a different perspective. My negativity of the previous round hadn’t just been erased – it was flipped on its head. It needed to be.
With the Saturday matches unfolding, I reflected back on the season thus far.
Across the first two rounds, the Eels were a rabble to watch. They looked like a group of strangers thrown together in the sheds, given a Blue and Gold jersey and told to go out there and do their best. None of the preseason work was evident. Zero.
Worse than that, there seemed to be minimal energy or joy in the performances. Getting flogged on the scoreboard will probably do that to you.
But consider what we’ve witnessed since then. There is a tangible unity in this group and the players are sticking to their systems. Even when things don’t go to plan, they load up and go again.
Two tries in his return game for Zac Lomax
A quick overview of the last four matches is worthwhile.
The victory over the Tigers was much better than the Eels were given credit for. Somehow the Tigers were praised for a fightback that only occurred after the Eels had two players ridiculously binned for ten minutes.
All momentum was taken away from the Eels and handed on a platter to the Tigers. It all came on the back of a Tigers initiated scrap, with a couple of knee jerk refereeing calls soon after reducing the Eels to eleven players.
Somehow the Eels regained the ascendancy, though the post-match discussion strangely focussed on the Tigers getting back into the contest and getting the rough end of the calls. Excuse me!
This game was followed by Magic Round against the Sharks. The Eels were far from perfect, but if ever there was a match in which the calls determined the result, this was it.
I don’t need to go back over what transpired, but it highlighted everything that is wrong with the bunker. Furthermore, the NRL backed the calls and we had the same official appointed to video ref duties the following week.
The NRL can say what they like, the penalty against Simonsson was absurd
Refereeing decisions aside, let’s shine the light on the game itself. The Sharks had 55% possession and completed at 85%. There’s a couple of match defining stats there. It meant more runs, and consequently more run metres
Yet somehow, against an elite defensive team, the Eels made more line breaks (6 to 4), more tackle breaks (32 to 30) and had a better tackle efficiency (89.53% to 84.7%). Little wonder Ryles was talking about green shoots.
Since that game, the Sharks have thumped Manly, then overcome the Storm. Those results shine an even better light on the Eels effort.
Then we come to the loss to the Dolphins. I was highly critical of the Eels following this game. It was a match filled with lost opportunities and one where I believed the Eels were far too lateral.
I won’t back down from my criticism of the lateral play or the missed opportunities. It was a result that got away, and the Eels have to look in the mirror for the answers.
However, the performance does have its positives that I hadn’t considered immediately after the game.
The Dolphins completed at just on 90%. That’s an amazing stat which led to them hoisting 16 bombs compared to the Eels three. Then, when the match was there to be won, their big name players in Farnworth and the Hammer provided the match winners in attack and defence.
Looking at the Dolphins recent form, it includes a win over the Panthers and a belting of the Storm. They should have beaten the Raiders and fell narrowly to the Warriors.
So, in retrospect, the Eels came into this weekend with a stronger form line than the Knights. They should have been favourites, and they won like they were.
Supporters might have wanted more, and Ryles even said that they had performed better in the previous two weeks and lost. No doubt there were points left out on the field, but five tries to one away from home was a decent result.
Let’s get back to the opening couple of rounds this season.
Honestly ask yourself, are the Eels performing better now? Though the return of our halfback has been instrumental, it’s not just the Moses factor, as we can see the development in the young players and the contributions of others.
Iongi is just 11 games into his career
There are so many players in the Top 30/Supplementary List squad who are in their NRL career infancy and in that light the competitiveness of the team must be acknowledged.
Here are the players with less than 20 games who have been selected in 2025:
Isaiah Iongi – 11 games
Ryley Smith – 10 games (2025 debut)
Charlie Guymer – 8 games
Gideon Kautoga – 12 games
Jordan Samrani – 5 games (2025 debut)
Sam Tuivaiti – 7 games (2025 debut)
Toni Mataele – 1 game (2025 debut)
Ronald Volkman – 7 games
Dan Keir – 7 games
Jake Tago – 8 games
Dean Hawkins – 18 games
Toni Mataele
At the start of this season, some of the names listed above would have been completely unfamiliar to many Eels fans (obviously not those that read preseason training reports).
Then there are the highly regarded players yet to debut – Joash Papalii, Richie Penisini and Saxon Pryke. Joash has been the 18th man numerous times this season and a debut seems inevitable.
If we consider others with less than 50 games, the depth of inexperience is further highlighted.
Arthur Miller-Stephen (1)
Haze Dunster (19)
Wiremu Greig (26)
Luca Moretti (27)
Joey Lussick (36)
Matt Doorey (37)
Brendan Hands (40)
Three other players, Sean Russell (50), J’Maine Hopgood (55) and Kelma Tuilagi (62) have barely gone past that 50 game mark.
That’s 24 relatively inexperienced players out of the Top 30 and Supplementary list of 36.
As an aside, at the end of this season the Eels will lose the experienced Dylan Brown and there is a cloud over the futures of Ryan Matterson, Shaun Lane and Bryce Cartwright. It’s obvious that recruitment for 2026 will or must target experienced players.
Considering the start to the season, and the injury toll which has stripped the backline of key players such as Moses, Lomax (just one game of #Momax in 2025) and Simonsson, the Eels are heading in the right direction.
The coaching staff and the roster have only been together for eleven rounds of premiership football. There will be tough losses ahead, and some calls might yet be made about key players performing below their best.
However, even if it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, the club is definitely travelling forward and that tunnel is nowhere near as dark as some might imagine.
Eels forever!
Sixties
All true, but my goodness there’s a long way to go.
The green shoots that perhaps only Ryles and his staff could see before are surely more visible to supporters now.
Mate, it was quite obvious to me and a lot of other fans that before Ryles and his new staff got here all we had were tumbleweeds. With the addition of one or more quality signings like Lomax and Ado Carr combined with our junior potential the same progress as the Dogs can be achieved.
Totally agree. The greater resolve in defence can be seen, and I’m liking the way the team is throwing the ball around. Errors and silly penalties is still something they need to work on, but aside from that, the green shoots are definitely evident.
Looking forward to watching them in 12 months time. I dare say things will be very different right across the board.
Missing key players didn’t help the start of the season. But it was the lack of effort from our experienced players that really lead the decline in performances and poor attitude early on.
This team is better than 17th and i feel we can beat Knights (and Titans). There is no coincidence the NRL has us playing Knights in the last game of the final round. How did they know?
If you look at some perplexing decisions made by officials usually based on ‘the narrative’ of the day. It begs the question and Parra are not part of the
narrative. Not yet anyway.
Defensively we are showing glipses of improvement and we had to.
The biggest disappointments early on; Brown, Lane, Joe, Matto and Carty. These guys all on big dollars had an opportunity to lead the future of the club but seemed more anchored to the past.
I feel we can outsmart the NRL narrative of spoon bowl mark 2 but we need to string some wins together.
Pete I think the missing key players early season as you mentioned, AND the Dylan brown saga fully derailed our early season chances
Once that all cleared up, we’ve doubled our average points scored per game average I think almost
So we’ve almost doubled how good of a team we are if you put it into simple terms
We definitely don’t sit bottom 4 if brown contract saga didn’t happen and Moses didn’t miss any games
Muz,
I think Dylan Brown Knights signing definitely had an impact over the first couple of weeks. Even Dylan admitted that during his Friday night post match interview.
I’m still disappointed he’s leaving but probably not as disappointed as I expect he will be about it in his retirement years.
Namrebo i wish Dylan all the best but as a long time fan I definitely felt disappointed
But hopefully he can stay healthy, and remain in decent form this season as he has been in recent weeks
I think he is going to the wrong club / wrong coach, he will get shafted or blamed over there if they fail to lift in 26’
I can’t see how Newcastle is a good career choice for anybody
Near Arthur won’t get bears job, no other clubs are interested in BA, don’t need suprised if he ends up at Newcastle in some capacity
Yes, agreed. I have no ill will towards him and hope he plays well the rest of this year. I have family in the Newcastle region who are mad Knights fans. I still think Dylan has no idea of the microscope he will be under there. My rellies have him winning comps for them at least every second year – minimum. If they don’t it will all be on him, not the other sixteen players in the team.
Yeah Muz, not only the Brown saga. But BA, Gutho, Reg, Sivo were all larger than life at the club suddenly No-more! That no doubt took its toll on all remaining players. Will and Russell both very close to all the above probably felt it more. But Matto, Lane, Joe and Carty all been through it before should have been stronger than we’ve seen.
It’s a rebuild and I’m liking the progress made. For mine it’s all about ’26 onwards. We’ll be very competitive next year. This year we’ll be on a bit of a roll near the end. We are better than 17th and we’ve shown that even the biased Fox commentators have admitted it.
Brown to 7 at Knights will solve all their problems?? AOB will get punted first.
*Brown to 7 at Knights * Lol won’t fix their problems I meant to say lol
I’m quite ok with where the Eels are at.
Looking at some of the other clubs in the bottom half of the comp and Parra, despite being second last, are in a better position. Ryles has made massive changes (some expected, some not) and it would take time for the players to gel and get new systems right under match conditions.
The season may be still up and down but I still think the the team will be more consistent in the latter part of the season and build to a much better season in 2026.
Tks sixties. All fair and reasonable. Our spine went haywire, and one of our spine went. You could imagine how much the new coach was looking to these lads to carry his plans, but the best laid plans….
The past 4 games have suggested tangible improvement, we now need to get some mileage on the clock and tighten up on consistency and composure.
One left field observation…I’ve watched Jamal Fogarty’s kicking game deliver great benefit for the Raiders, they work hard on yardage gain to get him kicking shorter but higher so their kick chase becomes an attacking weapon. Xavier Savage covers 25/30 mtrs in a blink. I noticed Lomax was needing to sprint pretty hard to compete in the air, he seemed to be lunging in hope whereas Savage seems to be more in control…I’m thinking we’ll get better and better here.
I think We are only (now second last) last because of Moses & Ado car were unavailable early this year + browns contract saga distraction and his career worst form all happening to us simultaneously.
I know we are not perfect but we are top 8 or just outside of it if Mitch Moses plays every game.
To give context we would only have had to win 2 more games this season to be sitting in the top 8.
Could we have won 2 more of the games this year if Mitch Moses was steering the ship every time? I think so.
If you take this into consideration, or even look at it from a more bearish angle, if we had won only ONE more game this season if Mitch played each game – that puts us into the 9th – 12th zone.
If you take this into consideration, we are actually vastly improved from last year I dare say. AND, we are doing it with many players who have limited experience meaning the possibility for growth in our squad is exponentially higher.
I know lots of people piled on us earlier this year, including some BA loyalists, but the fact of the matter is like it or not we’ve got more heart & grit in this team than anything we saw from parra in the last two years.
And we’ve honestly been average at transitioning prospects into proper first graders who can play both sides of the ball, this year we’ve successfully done it with more than just one player! We’ve got a hand full (3+ players) who are showing themselves to be first graders in very quick fashion.
As sixites said, the coaching staff have only coached 11 games together too. There is absolutely plenty of upside to be achieved here for us moving forward.
They’ve helped improve our flanks defensives more in 11 rounds than we saw in probably the last 3-5 years. Some will point out it’s just JAC & Fox’s presence, but pay close attention to our slide now – huge systematic improvements.
Even players like Sean Russel are starting to look like class defenders. Not once in the 3 years of Sean’s first grade appearances did i remember anyone giving him raps on his defence.
Now we’ve got Kautoga who’s only got 12 games of NRL experience probably defending better than Sean Lane and Carty who have got over 300 NRL games experience between them.
Haters will try to point out the negatives, but the results speak for themselves. The coaching staff are doing a fantastic job.
And yes, I still expect some ass kickings and rough periods like sixties touched on, but I have a feeling this NRL roller coaster is definitely on the upwards trajectory.
I personally feel like we have the best NSW cup team as well – it’s important to note panthers had the best cup teams during their reign. Jason’s helped turn our cup team from bottom 3rd last in 2024 to equal 2nd in 2025! We are headed in the right direction.
*Jac & lomaxs presence* 😅
We definitely need some good experienced signings if 2026 isn’t going to be another year of just growing and embedding experience into the team.
Moses and Lomax getting the nod for origin is bitter sweet. Will see how much the sides composure and competitiveness hinges on Moses next week. And hopefully Joash gets a shot, I’m keen to see what he’s got to offer.
Mick we definitely need another alpha / experienced middle forward or two at the bare minimum you have to think.
Mick I wonder how we would use Joash. He looks too short to play wing. It’s hard to see where he slots in with Iongi uninjured?…
Fair question Muz.
I don’t know much of him other than what I read here. So the TCT guys would be much better qualified to comment. That said he wouldn’t be dissimilar to Fa’a logo (so?) from the Storm or To’o (at least in height). So he could probably get by on the wing, just preferably not up against Saab.
Otherwise I guess it’s at 14?
Pingback: Parramatta are still bad, but Ryles has given them a direction - The Rugby League Eye Test
Great read! Always the positive spin and vibes are what we admire! As fans we should all take note and appreciate your unwavering commitment and support of the team!! Tough times often but well worth it on the other side.
Pingback,
That is fabulous analysis and very encouraging.
Good analysis via ‘pingback’ to the RL eye test analysis – thanks for posting link.
Seemingly some improvement is not just in the eye of the (fan) beholder.
“However specifically this year, giving up those extra possessions has caused them problems. In 2024 just nine tries came from a preceding penalty or set restart. This season they have 18 of them combined. You can see how this ties back to possession being the issue, not metres per run. The 2024 Eels were slow and tired quickly, giving up tries from fatigue and not extra possessions. Last year Parramatta conceded 16 tries from their own half after 11 rounds. This year it’s just 10 tries allowed from the wrong side of half way and five of those occurred in Round 1 in Melbourne. They’re stopped the long rage bleeding but are allowing opponents to get closer to the line far too easily.”
This year our errors are causing most issues. This can be fixed. We are definitely on the improve.
Back to what Pete hist touched on after reading the Pingback link.
This also lines up with myself and others stating the constant errors from the players like Hopgood and penisini etc is litterally killing us.
Errors are not only from those players obviously but I keep saying it, everyone who hasn’t got blue & gold googles on keeps on saying it too.
If parra can select a starting team each week that doesn’t contain some players making 3-5 knock ons or errors each etc.
We will literally completely turn a corner in my view – Jason Ryles banging windows in frustration tells you that he feels potentially somewhat the same.
The long range tries from last year are massively reduced if we exclude rd 1 Melbourne game from our numbers to go off.
What’s killing us now is errors. I want to see Jason swing the axe short term on players who keep on making 3 errors for example per game.
Call me impatient, but I’m nearly certain we stop losing those close games. I don’t want to see Will and Hopgood errors costing us every week and nothing happens to them.
I’m a fan of both of them. But our club’s success is far more important than to hurt those blokes feelings short term while their handling form is too poor for first grade starters.
I know our centres depth is limited. But if somebody can defend close to the same, make a bit less run meters, BUT not make 5 knock ons and give away penalties?
I would prefer our chances to win games with that.
Samrani playing centre at some point if will gains form in cup? Matto & Walker to fill in lock roles while Hopgood gains form in cup?
It might sound radical for some now. But go watch Jason Ryles every time these specific players do the same things every week, he is going crazy up in the coaches box. He will have to consider trying something new if this error ridden from doesn’t change for them IMO.
Muz, low completions/errors have always been a big issue for us, in the BA era we alwaysfound it difficult to defend errors, and when we turned in those A grade defeats of Storm and the Riff we completed off the charts, in the 90/95% region.
You might be surprised to know that Hopgood is equal 5th in errors, equal with JAC and no-one is calling for reserve grade for the Fox. Above him are Penisini, Lomax, Russell and Iongi, so let’s not get too finger pointing.
I am frustrated as you with this aspect, and have commented regularly on it, I check the stats every week and our completions are all over the shop. We start poorly and against Wests I couldn’t believe we got through first 20 minutes almost without blemish…and we won. We outplayed the Sharks I reckon, we completed at 76%, but they hit 90% and won.
Ryles will be on to this, it’s one of those things where concentration, confidence and team fluidity are like planets lining up, and it would be great if we could keep our best 17/19 fit and healthy.
Hopgood makes a massive contribution in defence and Will is a major contributor in our improved defence on the right wing
That written, Samrani in the centres is well worth a look.