Friday. The end of week one of Eels preseason training.
The first item on the reporting agenda is the return of Tallyn Da Silva. I’ve been inundated by messages about the former Tiger, and given that the Eels currently only have two dummy halves in their senior squad, it’s understandable that they are keen to see him start his first preseason with the club.
Given that Ryles has shown his hand and used both Ryley Smith and Tallyn Da Silva in his 17, there is a question mark over who will be the NSW Cup dummy half. Will the club fast track Lachie Coinakis? Will they use a NSWRL contracted player in that position? Will they look at converting a specialist player from another position into a utility role?
As Tallyn took the field today he told me that his first day back was Wednesday. There was no field work scheduled on that day so I wasn’t on site to see that.
Thursday came and went without seeing him out there but he was in the thick of the skills work today, though not the heavy contact activities.
Speaking of contact, that brings us to the next item on the report agenda. Defence! The session concluded with most of the players donning match day jerseys for tackling practise.
I was trying to look for whether specific players hit a bit harder than others and to be fair, they were all responsible for creating the sounds of impact – be it the collision into a body or a pad or the noise of air escaping the lungs!
This was all about the individual technique. Hit, drive, take down, one on one. It started with one on one hitting an opponent and his bump pad, then driving them backwards. From there, the tackle was made without the cushioning of a bump pad, with the tackled player taken down onto gym mats.
Finally, the ultimate defensive drill involved being placed into groups of four, with one player charged with tackling all of the others in a random order determined by Sam Moa. There was most definitely a conditioning component in this final task.
Earlier in the morning the stage had been set for a defence focussed session.
There was a range of defence drills, much of which still involved ball movement, and with the tacklers focussed on their positioning and their foot movement.
The outside backs also dedicated time to defending high kicks.
That’s not to say that there wasn’t any attacking footy. There was an element of consolidation of skills and systems in that regard. Unstructured footy within limited space, be it three on two or similar advantaged numbering, has been a feature of the week.
Similarly, Nathan Brown has overseen the young players learning attacking shapes through the ruck or on the edge, with support runners taking different lines and the ball players choosing who to hit with the pass.
Lachy Coinakis is benefitting from the time spent with Nathan Brown
Other basic shapes off the ruck into contact and then the play the ball seemed to be more about learning the systems and developing the speed of the play – that aspect of Parra’s footy should be familiar to all supporters and this preseason will probably be all about doubling down on that and adding to their options.
There have been opposed drills this week where it appears that the focus might be specifically either attack or defence, with Sam Moa or Jason Ryles organising or leading the defensive stuff or Scott Wisemantel or Nathan Brown likewise looking after attack. However, like the game itself, there are two sides to the game, and whilst a drill is being led by Ryles and Moa, Brown and Wisemantel could be looking what the players are doing with the ball in hand, or in their offensive positioning. The beauty is found in the eye of each coach.
Outside of today’s drills there was an element of traditional conditioning, with players repeating runs over a specific distance, with some on slightly different distances according to positions played. That said, it was a minimal component of the session.
Sam Tuivaiti
I will begin to offer opinions about different players each week. The observations might be relatively superficial or they might be about something for fans to watch out for. Regardless, the goal is to get to know some of the younger players.
Today, I wanted to make a comparison between the size of players in specific positions. At one stage Sam Tuivaiti and Ryda Talagi were running alongside each other which made this possible.
With a first grade debut under his belt, Sam has his age, height and weight listed on the Eels official site. At 20 years of age he’s 191cm and 117kg, though I reckon he could be taller than 6ft 3 in the old imperial system.
Ryda with Joash and Apa
By comparison, Ryda has only played five NSW Cup games after rising from SG Ball last season and is just 18 years of age. This means there are no listed stats for him on the Eels official site. However, he might already be a shade bigger than Sam. Photos on Eels media over coming weeks might help fans to judge that.
The other prop that I wanted to throw into the comparison is Teancum Brown. Big Tee has just one NSW Cup game under his belt after being an important mainstay of the Eels Flegg team over the last two seasons. Similar to Ryda, there are no height or weight stats on the official squad listing.
I reckon Brown might be close to a similar height and weight to both Sam and Ryda, though I didn’t have as many opportunities to observe him side by side with them. All three appear to be tall props.
Week one done!
Eels forever!
Sixties!
Another fantastic report mate. Defence is certainly an aspect that we improved on during the year but we still have a long way to go before we’re a premiership contender. If we can shave off another 150 odd points throughout the season we’ll be a top 6, possibly top 4 side. If we can shave off 200+ that will put us right into premiership contention
Once Junior returns he may not look like the monster he is surrounded by these three giants. There’ll be so much he can teach them with how to play as a big man. Speaking of size there’s been a few photos floating around of Joash where he appears to have dropped a few kgs. Watching him at training do you think this is the case or could it just be angles and potentially a bit of “sucking it in” for the cameras?
Ham, without paying close attention I still actually wondered that myself. I’ll try to find out.
The matter of Cup 9 is vital; we’re going to lose a hooker at some stage and someone will need to step up; in 21 for the preliminary final against Penrith we had all three NRL quality mines in the. club injured at one time; not only did Ray Stone have to fill in, Brad asked him to play the eighty minutes. Ray gave it the mighty effort you would expect from that thorough professional and his tackling in the centre of the fuck was a great. bonus in a very tough contest but his two errors were vital in such a close game. At the time I thought Will Smith’s ball skills may have served us better; Brad didn’t seem to favour Will.
The player we had on the books who I thought might fit the role of retraining to play 9/utility was Dean Hawkins; obviously club leadership didn’t see things that way.
Ray Stone played 60 minutes in that game. Will Smith played 37
https://www.parraeels.com.au/draw/nrl-premiership/2021/finals-week-2-panthers-v-eels/
Noel, I think we were keen to keep Dean but he got a good offer – and that was all sorted before the Pezet deal.
Yep and BA played Lussick out only fit hooker the week before in a meaningless game when he rested majority of the first grade team. Still hurts!
Im hoping the team are travelling to fan day sites similar to last pre season where we saw them at Fairfield showground.
Haven’t had it confirmed but the early feedback was apparently quite good
Do you expect any other young player to join the pre season like Popo, De Stradis, Neemia, Lynn, Spence, Samuela, AMS, etc
Barring injury, this group would be the pathways players selected for a preseason. Some are only up to Christmas. If they are injured, like Apa was last season, then there could be a late starter or two but I can’t recall any injuries to key rising players. Lynn has departed and was told mid season that he wasn’t going to be retained. I’m not sure about Arty. I reckon he’s got some serious rehab ahead. I spoke to some of the others you listed at the KTM and at that stage they were not contracted.
Gee it’s a tough gig for a young man, isn’t it? Young Lynn, for example, will have been an elite player at every level he’played and will, justifiably, had hopes for a Parramatta career. Not to say management was wrong, but he must be terribly disappointed. I hope someone else picks him up
You have to realise that he is not JF eligible and he has Volkman, Lorenzo, Twiddle and Joash in front of him. So even if the club wanted him, it would have not been smart for him to stay. He got a deal with Falcons in QLD cup.
Same with the likes of Spence, Samuela, Neemia and De Stradis. All not JF eligible next year and got player in front of him and better juniors coming through too. The one I really wish we could have somehow unlocked was De Stradis. Reminds me of Nikora with his line running. Plenty of speed too. Shame he couldnt hit that next level.
Even Neemia early season form was great until he got injured. Both him and De Stradis surely will get picked up by a nsw/qld cup team next year.
I assume we have let go off Brock Parker too.
I’ve not seen that young man. Likening him to Marata is high praise; if you were picking out all time pack just on toughness Marata would get one of my votes – a true hard man. In the losses at the end of 22 his was the second greatest, in my view. Understandable given the money, reportedly, Auckland have him and his family connections with that city.
I don’t mean Marata. I mean Briton Nikora from sharks
Meanwhile, as others have pointed out, we have three spots left in the roster and some very interesting individuals looking for a contract..
Nelson A-S is saying all the right things; Jesse Ramien must have gone close to snagging the State of Origin jumper that ultimately went to Bradman Best; I have no idea what sort of money we have left under the cap; if we brought off those two signings I believe we’d be top 6
I know this is not the thread to discuss the Pacific championship but it really pained me to see how well Dylan Brown played. He wasn’t so much as being out of form as deciding early on, when his future at Newcastle was secured, that he wasn’t even going to try throughout the 25 season. He has heaps more talent than what he showed this year and it makes me wonder whether there’s a backstory as to why this happened. A shameful end to his Parra career and I for one will have trouble wishing him well in his future endeavours.
He looked a totally different player didn’t he? Great game of football though. Next year’s world cup will be a terrific treat. Given the performances of yesterday’s two packs I wonder if the team we have left to represent Australia will make the final.
I agree Marty – to me he had the chance to step up often but failed; He then played with a test team, and aimed up. Go figure, some players do this.
I go back to the Bob Linder days when he played with Parra…..i daresay he played one or two decent games (different eras of course) but when he played for QLD and the like – a different player altogether.
Brown is on $1.3 or more, lets see how he plays with the expectations etc.
Parra are in a better position for me next year and can start fresh.
Agree Milo. I wrote a comment years ago on the rugbyleaugueproject website about Bob Lindner only pulling his finger out for Parra around SOO selection time!
Sixties, you’re going to get banned from training sessions if you keep sneaking into the showrooms to compare sizes. But in all seriousness, mate great report as usual and thank you.
Your reports keep me sane in the offseason.