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They don’t get much bigger than Jim Sarantinos when it comes to special guests as The Tip Sheet welcomes the CEO of the Parramatta Eels on to the show to talk about a broad range of topics for the Blue & Gold. Sixties and Forty20 discuss key topics involving the club from top to bottom with Sarantinos including the NRLW, NRLW and junior pathways as well as recruitment and retention and the opportunities for the Eels off the field.
For those that tune in for the usual Tuesday run sheet, fear not – we have you covered. The boys will break down all of the happenings out of Parradise and the NRL and take a final gander at the looming second game in State of Origin.
Join the show at 6:45PM on YouTube!
Great job guys in asking the tough questions around retention and recruitment. Jim answered well especially with the way Ryles wants to build through the style of player he sees suits the coaching structures and the talk around development and new signings there was encouraging.
Again very good viewing
Cheers Chiefy. We tried to structure the questioning to cover a number of key areas and we did submit questions from our followers on socials. All of the questions had been finalised by us on Sunday night as we had to determine what we could fit in within an hour. Many of those suggested on socials were similar about recruitment and retention and John also amended one of our questions to include the Lachlan Galvin question which a number of people in live chat were suggesting. I thought Jim was very informative.
I’m of the belief that when Galvin asked for a release midway through 24, it was always going to be the dogs. At that time, the 5/8 position here was blocked by Dylan and there was no way of knowing Brown eventually would leave
Good discussion and credit to Jim for fronting up and answering honestly. This is not a dig at Jim personally but in his response to recent learnings on recruitment and retention he talked through how they have learned to get in early on juniors and progress them through contracts (dev, train/trial, top 30) so as to retain our best. If our retention team is only learning this very fundamental strategy in the last 12 months no wonder we found ourselves losing D Brown, Blaize Talagi and Ethan Sanders in the past 12 months.
Again not a dig at Jim, the head of football and others should be answering to this, but if you only now realise having your 2 best junior halves coming off contract together a year before your senior half is able to exercise an option to test the market you shouldnt be in charge of managing an NRL roster. Surely any competent management would see you need to extend one of those juniors beyond Browns option year as insurance and succession should he leave…or alternatively not allow such an unfriendly club contract to be constructed…so many of our issues are self inflicted.
I’m heartened by the approach now being taken and I believe we are finally on the right track with identifying and locking down our best, it’s taken too long but hopefully we get it right from here.
Another issue with that was the option contracts. Nobody knew what Dylan was doing.
Hopefully n9w we are heading in the right direction
Chiefy, Matthew Beach came out and publicly declared that there’d be no more contracts with options.
Yes, that’s good news
To be fair to Jim and the club, Blaize had moved past that type of contract that he was discussing. The argument around he and Ethan was whether there was anything we could offer them at a senior level with both Mitch and Dylan on what looked like long term deals in their preferred position. What the club has done with the contracts that Jim was discussing was to lock in around 18 or 19 of the most promising young pathways players to contracts that give them a clear opportunity to develop, and to understand that the club is committing to that pathway with them for the next two to three years. It also prevents other clubs from grabbing them for their pathways. To me it looks like a systematic change, and it goes alongside those players also seeing the continued involvement of the staff who’ve been guiding them.
“What looked like long term deals” is the key part – neither were truly locked up, Dylan in particular was off contract November 1. It was poor management and only now realising that is poor from head office.
The systematic change is good and I applaud them for it, my point is only realising it in the past 12 months is poor reflection on management and a reason we’ve had roster and junior retention issues for so long.
I’ve criticised 60’s in the past for not pushing Mark O’Neill with tougher questions, but I get it — being part of the Supporters Advisory Group puts him in a tricky spot. It’s almost a conflict and makes it hard to go hard.
That said, Jim came across like a politician campaigning for re-election — all broad motherhood statements, no real insight, barely any emotion, and he left us with more questions than answers.
Time to get facts straight Avenger. Firstly the Supporter Group Alliance is new. I only joined on the guarantee that being part of the SGA wouldn’t be a conflict of interest and that I could be critical of club decisions where I felt it necessary. As an example I said that if the club continued to take games to Darwin I would not be supporting such a decision. Our interviews of Mark have never been a conflict of interest, either in the past or moving forward. One person has made a broad statement and that is yourself. Get specific. What did you feel was left unanswered?
Thanks for the clarification, 60’s. how about providing more insight into how we missed out on Galvin? You and many others, myself included, were under the impression we had him signed. Not looking for dollar figures, but something more substantial than the usual “we tried our best” line. It was only the biggest story of the year which even trumped the DCE news and we were embarrassed.
Also, what’s the situation with Lane? How is it that a player can just take time off and still be on the books — doesn’t that undermine our capacity to sign a replacement now seeing Jim thinks we are still a chance of making the semis. ? I understand there may be mental health considerations, but other clubs seem to handle these situations far more decisively.
Lastly, what’s the minimum pass mark for 2026? I accept that Ryles gets a free hit this season, but surely there has to be a clear line drawn moving forward.
Is the specific enough for you?
I thought the Galvin answer was reasonable.
Regarding Lane, he has his right to privacy as do all employees. Are the club supposed to sack him due to mental illness? Maybe the club has some form of dispensation, or not. But to me at least regardless of whether there is cap relief or not, I like the club approach. It sends out the message that they are caring and look after their players welfare. Overtime that is a positive message to attract not just players but the best staff too who want to work in great conditions.
I thought it was a good interview and better to have access to the CEO than not!
Well answered Hiroshi
Avenger, Hiroshi just nailed it. I had excellent mail that was external to the club and near impeccable. From before anything came out public to the Saturday of the weekend that the Galvin decision was made, it was only ever about Parra. The Eels aren’t hiding anything in that. Only Galvin knows (and Gus).
As for Lane, you can’t go trampling into mental health issues or make public statements. He is being supported by the club as they should. But, how long does that extend for? I’d say it would be treated like an injury. At some point if you can’t play, you talk about medical retirement, but that’s just me and I don’t think the club can make a public statement like that.
As for 26, we asked about performance. We got an answer.
At the start of the year there was a member forum with Jim, Rylesy and Matthews Beach and Buckets. Did you submit any questions? Did you submit any questions for us?
No one is disregarding his health, so there’s no need for the accusatory tone. Lane’s wellbeing will always be our responsibility, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of our core priority — winning football games, no matter how insensitive that may appear.
In hindsight, it’s clear we were played in the Galvin situation. We lowballed him early on, which only made things worse. That misstep falls on Mark O’Neill, who somehow manages to survive our ongoing ineptitude like a nuclear cockroach.
Nuclear cockroach, love it that’s a classic. As far as Lane goes , he was fine when picked in top grade but when dropped he develops all these problems. Go figure.
No accusatory tone there. I’m saying the club can’t go trampling over mental health issues. Did we lowball Galvin? What do you know about our offer?
Supporters Advisory Group, gee that’s an impressive title. I’ll cop all our managements smother when we can all say where in the Supporters Premiership Winning Group.
Another factor other than MONs performance issues. Was having the coach have the same manager as a number of players. Those players were made priorities for resigning. Then the players that were key players to the coaches playing style were given long contracts on huge money leaving no room in the cap. The coach always chooses his players to keep or to let go.
It’s not a criticism it’s just how it works.
Player options and contract lengths often coincided with the coach’s contract as leverage.
MON should have been all over this and Jim and Sean. No other club has got itself in the foot as often as we have and often the same errors are repeated time and time again….Insanity.
I don’t think we have that issue now.
*shot itself in the foot*
If you have a look at the roster and the player agents there actually isn’t an over representation of any agent. It’s very diverse.
Now it is!
As it was two categories Orr players or the coaches priority to retain.
Orr players
Brown
Matto
Russell
Lane
Wiremu
Bailey Simmonson
Dunster – with Nitro now
One could easily argue that these players were persisted with due to their agents connecting with the coach.
Now we have a more diverse player agent mix.
Hi Pete, that looks like a bit of a rogue’s gallery doesn’t it! It will obviously change dramatically.
I would never defend the Orrs. There was something I had a small involvement in back a few years ago that I won’t forget, and I also hold them accountable for Brown.
However, let’s be clear, it wasn’t only Orr clients that aligned their contracts to BA’s. There were quite a number of key players that negotiated deals in that way.
Now, to each of those players, I have combined issues of length of deals and size of contracts. But let’s look at them individually.
Brown – ridiculous option contract. Matthew Beach has publicly stated no such option deals will be done in the future. Ryles wanted to keep Dyl and the revised contract offered was very good.
Matto – is still a good player when he’s on the park, and was playing consistent footy when the deal was done, but was he worth or has he been worth the money or length of contract? You know the answer and you would probably have got a similar answer from BA when the deal was first announced.
Russell – is he on huge coin? No. Has he been one of the most consistent performers in 2025? Yes.
Lane – Deal was done after a break out 2022. Extending was the only choice. Again this was a pointer to wrong length of deal.
Greig – Once more deal was done after a promising season. He hasn’t kicked on with injuries being a factor. Not on big coin.
Simonsson – I won’t argue with Bailey’s deal. Injury hasn’t been kind but he was the best on park for Parra before his 2024 ACL. I have no problem with the club sticking with him and the new coaches rate him.
Dunster – as you said no longer with Orrs. Haze signed his deal after being named Rookie of the year. He’s been beyond unlucky with injury. And the injury started with what was a diabolical hip drop. Length of deal has since become the issue because Haze, despite his best efforts, has not been able to get on the field. His time on the field this year in Cup was high quality and very promising. But once more injury struck. As the saying goes, the best ability is availability.
Our biggest problem was losing our fighters and scrappers; Stone, Marata, Mahoney, ICE, Opacic. These guys were, our competetive players. We kept for want of a better word the “softer” players aligned to Orr.
60’s will never hold Mark O’Neill accountable for his repeated failures in landing marquee signings. He can’t even take credit for Lomax — that was driven by the previous coach. Meanwhile, how is it that Cronulla consistently pulls it off with a fraction of the resources we have?
I’m fine with Ryles being given time — even as long as BA had — but O’Neill’s track record has been dreadful. It will be three seasons without finals and it can’t just be put down to bad luck. We’re favourites for the spoon and it’s not even July, yet all we get are empty puff pieces.
Avenger, you throw this accusation at me with monotonous regularity. So be it. Nothing of what I have done around the club over many years has been a puff piece. The thing is, I never go into details about it nor will I ever, but has had nothing to do with TCT content. I have long accepted that taking that approach will bring with it the types of opinions that you have, because the “public face” is The Cumberland Throw, a supporter site that focusses on football content. It doesn’t mean that myself or others won’t criticise the club on the site, nor avoid private conversations that are highly uncomfortable.
As I see it, you have the option of putting forward your questions or opinions directly to the club, as I do regularly, or get involved in things like fan forums, which the club started this season. For this podcast, we advertised the opportunity to submit questions and we received many of a similar type which we compiled into various questions that summed up the overall thread.
Avenger, you have never been censored in your opinions here, and your criticisms of coaches, players, admin and myself have been there for everyone to read. If you consider this to be a puff piece site, so be it. We stand by what we’ve done for the last ten years.
I appreciate not being censored and I’m grateful you’ve taken the time to read and respond to my comments. That said, a looming 40-year premiership drought and three straight seasons without finals football is simply not acceptable.
The pathways appear to be heading in the right direction, and the resources are there — but we now need bold, aggressive recruitment to support the process. Mark O’Neill must be put on notice again. It’s not as if he’s working with a strapped salary cap. On top of that, recent player surveys suggest our club is one that players actively dislike dealing with. Why is that the case?
Well said 60s
Good interview but the main positive I took out of that is in regards to how they have restructured our junior systems with retention, identification and training that is most definitely a move in the right direction.
The thing that really scares me is we have mostly the exact same guys who contributed heavily into getting us into this mess are trying to rebuild us out of it. In my opinion this a huge risk.
At the moment it’s mainly hope that we can turn ourselves around into a threat but time will tell. I still think we need a big hitter in the front office who is a proven winner and knows what a modern day premiership winning club looks like.
The club actually made a massive change. Sean McElduff stepped down as the chairman of the football board. He was on the Recruitment and Retention Committee.
He had no choice. It’s in the constitution that he had to step down. The club just followed their own rules
Indeed. Look at roosters – they just signed the raiders recruitment guru for next year. What have we done? minimal other than put out puff pieces about our facilities and have mcedluff stand down because we was constitutionally required to. We need better people on board. It’s a risk having same people rebuild a club that were complicit in bringing the club down . I’m not saying sack them all. But there are clearly more skilled people out there.
One thing Jim did say which was encouraging was that club is looking to be more decisive and ship off players earlier if they feel like they made a mistake. Hopefully that’s a signal to more ruthlessness as there is fat still to cut from the squad.
Again, get your facts right. He stood down early. His role was due to finish at the end of this season.
Even if that is right (and I don’t doubt your superior understanding as to timing of his departure), that says nothing about upgrading personnel in other aspects such as recruitment . I don’t even care about Lacey Galvin as he is a lock to me and was obviously seduced into going with dogs by whatever Gus, Luke Vella etc said. Luke vella has been meeting With Galvin him for months at Canterbury leagues club (even while he was at the tigers). Gus said as much inadvertently on one of his podcasts early this year.
But if we are dead set about continuous improvement we need to do that in front office as well as on the footy field. This off-season will be a real litmus test. No need for panic buys just to spend money but every decision on recruitment/retention/moving people on is gonna be scrutinised heavily.
Thanks fellas,
Interesting chat with Jim. It is somewhat disappointing that a club as large as ours has only now started to look at a whole of football club approach when it comes to playing rosters. I wonder how much of what is being implemented now was recommending in the review Nathan Brown did a few years back. If I recall that included stuff around juniors and pathways. It seemed to go the way of most government reviews, announced with a lot of fanfare never to be heard about again.
Nonetheless it is good to see Jim admit things needed improving and things seem to have been put in place to try and achieve that. Now we just have to wait and see.
Namrebo, the review resulted in quite a bit of change. James Shephard was appointed, and a number of different coaches moved into pathways. There was also change in Parra Juniors with Adam Fairley also appointed as General Manager and Managing Director. We have spoken with Adam at length every year in a dedicated PJRL podcast.
I think Jim did a very good job of explaining the learnings and current directions.
Thanks Sixties. Appreciate the information. Not a criticism, but the info you provided was about people moving into positions. Could I assume with that there was an organisational restructure to help these appointments do their role? I’ve never really seen anything published about that. It may have been and I didn’t recognise or see which is my bad. But the things you mentioned should be trumpeted. Again, perhaps they were and I missed or forgot – “she who must be obeyed reminds me constantly I forget more than I remember “.
However, as I stated, I’m happy to hear Jim admit things had to change and that they have. Now we have to give it time to see if it works. That said, my dad is in his late seventies and has stated he wants to see one more premiership, that he can share with his grandson, before his time is done. So we need to get it right.
Yes I just mentioned the individuals as it was an easy example to provide. You probably have to follow the media posts about pathways and junior rugby league to be on top of it. We’ve tried to cover it over the years, but people are naturally more attentive to NRL. The junior league stuff got media attention with Brown’s review because of the nepotism word, which some tried to point the finger at BA with, but it had nothing to do with Brad. You talk to any junior league body. The first criticism is about favoured clubs, individuals etc – for example I put it out there on socials about the Panthers finishing near the bottom of the table in Matts and Ball. I was inundated by private messages about certain players not getting a look in, coaches who played favourites, clubs that you had to play for to be looked at. Sound familiar. Such perceptions and opinions are commonplace. To be blunt, I’ve got enough going on outside of football so I don’t have the time to go through our archives or that of the Eels and Eels juniors to pull out strategic plans that have been available. But the reviews resulted in change.
Thanks again Sixties,
As I said, I’ve probably read and forgotten all the stuff the club put out responding to Brown’s review. The joys of ageing!
It would be interesting to hear Nathan’s thoughts on how the club has gone about change post review now that he’s back there.
Appreciate the your efforts as always.
There’s no doubt the revamp on junior recruitment has been a success after the changes and that was acknowledged by Jim. However, the one consistent is the NRL being considerably below par in identification, recruitment and contract negotiations. How that escaped change is a serious question, and obviously not one that can be asked directly to the CEO in the Q&A.
We will likely be padding a boat with one oar and going around in circles until that crucial position is upskilled.
Good morning sixties and thanks for the interview, as avenger alluded to can we find out what’s happening with Shaun lane ? He’s on $50 k a month roughly and it’s costing us salary cap space for this year and if he’s not planning on playing again transition into a welfare position at the club where he can be of benefit to our men’s / ladies teams
Ivan, the club wouldn’t be in a position to speak publicly. The best they could say right now is that they are supporting Lane. We could have asked that. I chose not to go there because I expected such an answer. There would be nothing to learn and we had an hour to cover as much as we could.
Hey 60s,
Next time can you ask him is there any appetite to get 09 Grand Final awarded to us a travesty how we got robbed of a comp.
I like your thinking. And Netflix to make a doco on the whole thing.
I feel that pain and frustration! Unfortunately we’ll never get the joy of winning on the day.
Gents,
Fantastic episode – great access to the decision makers at the club, thanks for sharing it with us! Hats off to the club and Jim for making themselves available for such a generous amount of time for questions. Loved the broad range of topics that were covered. I thought Jim’s answers were exceptionally detailed and offered great insight into the behind the scenes at the club without putting the clubs position and processes at risk in what he revealed.
I truly believe the club is on the right track behind Jason Ryles and that the foundations he is setting in place are what is needed for continued success. No guarantees of course but couldn’t be more impressed with the recruitment class of 25’ and the direction Ryles is taking the club.
More of this content!!
Cheers,
Ollie