We came with a shit attitude and thought we’d get it dished up.”
These words came from Mitch Moses in the aftermath of the Eels capitulation to the worst team in the NRL, the Dragons.
It was a loss that cut deep for the majority of the Blue and Gold Army.
An honest self assessment was the only acceptable response from the captain and the coach, but why was such a performance delivered?
If ever a team should never turn up expecting to win, it is our Parramatta Eels.
Parramatta has been so long without success, that no match should ever be taken for granted. Strike that. No minute of any game should be taken for granted. The problem for our club is that this is nothing new.
Despite different coaches, different players and different administration, this attitude has raised its ugly head multiple times, over many seasons.
I don’t have an answer. Professional mindset coaches employed by the Eels have failed to correct this affront to supporters, so it’s apparently not an easy solve.
Upset victories are part of sport. “We didn’t turn up” is a cliche that illustrates that upsets are not the exclusive domain of our Eels. But at what point should Parra be acutely guarded against allowing a poor attitude to manifest?
This has nothing to do with an injury crisis that nobody should downplay. It was real and it impacted the team. To suggest it didn’t is absurd. But, far too often, aspects of performances were determined between the ears and not by those missing from the action.
So whilst it’s valid to contend that Parra isn’t an island, they have become masters of the art of wrong attitude.
The simplest example can be found in how the club bookended 2026.
Coming into the opening round, the Eels had taken out the preseason challenge. It was on the back of a strong, promising finish to the 2025 season during which they defeated the eventual premiers in the Broncos.
Confidence was riding high. But surely they couldn’t have been over-confident? Surely they couldn’t have gotten ahead of themselves? Surely they didn’t need a round one reality check? After all, they were playing the Storm.
Think again. The performance was diabolical. It was Rylesy’s shout for the Schooner of Reality.
That quote
Then we come to the final round.
The opportunity was there to back up the best performance of the season delivered against the Sharks in Round 26. The Eels opponent, the Dragons, were the deserving wooden-spooners. Time to give long-suffering supporters a Blue and Gold infusion for their ever-hardening hearts.
Surely the desire, the intensity, the will to win would be there in spades?
Wrong again.
What was delivered was offensive to Eels fans. It was akin to the performance against the Tigers, except in that game Moses somehow engineered a late try to steal a victory over CommBank Stadium’s hapless part time tenant.
The start and the end to the season weren’t isolated incidents. Besides the Tigers near debacle, there was also the embarrassing thrashing at the hands of the Titans.
Back to the question at hand. How does a team with Parra’s recent record, let alone the history of the last 40 years, have a repeated track record of turning up and expecting to have a victory “dished up” to them?
Remember, it’s the coach and the captain pointing the finger post match at this “shit attitude”.
The coach and captain were blunt in their self assessment
It beggars belief.
As a rusted on supporter, one who is very often accused of being glass half full in my passion for the club, it pains me to write this. I had plans to pen an article that highlighted some of the positives to emerge this season. There were some, but I’ll leave that to others, and the coaches, for now.
Round 27 forced me to order a full round of reality schooners. In the light of “the day after” I have decided to skol the lot.
Roster changes alone won’t cure the malaise that for some reason continues to infest the mindset of those wearing our jersey. This is the greatest challenge facing the incoming CEO, let alone the current coaching staff.
I can’t accept any thoughts of being happy with the effort for the majority of the season. The cold hard fact is that until this “shit attitude” is eradicated from the DNA of the Eels, it will threaten to manifest at any given time.
Looking for the positive in my club will remain a trait of mine going forward. Cheering for those who wear the jersey won’t change. And no doubt I’ll re-set for next season with renewed hope.
But at the back of my mind lies the fear that until somebody can find a way of exorcising the poor attitude from the soul of our team, Premiership success for Parra will remain a long time coming.
Eels forever!
Sixties
Thanks Sixties, my comment here is short and sharp.
Its on field leadership – we need a guy to lead like Dean Pay for example. I am not saying that Jr and Moses cannot lead but we need that lead by example guy who can lead, and be tough playing and also lead. Jack Willams can be that guy but need more….I feel sometimes Moses is too emotional on the field and needs to be more level headed.
CEO needs to be footy minded and have the smarts……my confidence is not high and hope to be wrong.
I feel the problem is lack of respect for the ball. Whenever we have beaten a team that wasn’t imploding so that we could beat them, our completion rate was great. That is on the individual players. They would stress out any veteran player in the team. Ball handling is a fundamental skill and when you combine that with poor defence, the pressure gets to insane levels.
Zachary, all year I’ve banged on about achieving 80% completions. That’s a weekly starting point, but perhaps it is only symptomatic of an attitude issue.
Hey Milo. Perhaps it is leadership. It just feels like an issue that has long been with the club, even going back to the Brian Smith era. Remember all those finals, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Maybe I’m just feeling the pain too much?
Hey Sixties, I fully recall that era and some brain explosions during certain prelim finals (98). I don’t blame Smithy but he also IMO played some mind games with the team when he chopped and changed but we definitely had the experience to win at least two of those finals and make the GF. I was at both prelim finals and still have nightmares.
I feel the team needs more experienced heads as I have seen Moses play very well and also show too much emotion particualry towards the ref and players at times.
Eg Cleary and Yeo – albeit v high quality always seem calm. Cooper Cronk also was v good and seemed calm headed on the field. Perhaps someone like he can support the squad. He would be v good.
Hey Sixties, I forgot to say and I am not saying this because i am a close Panthers fan, but have known some good people with them now and who have moved on. One of them told me about Petro (sevencentsalitre), and that when he turned up back in about 08/09 that he started to instill some training ethics into the squad, and he told me that Petro would do his 400 m runs in between weight sets at the gym (which back then was under the grandstand). He led the way is what I am saying and we know how quiet he was. To me it is that sort of leader we need. A guy who has the nous / respect background to briing it in and stay calm but do his job each and every week.
The problem with that example is that they are not the captains of a rebuild team with players who are constantly making fundamental errors. Heck, their minimal injury toll alone takes off so much pressure even though that wouldn’t even be necessary. The team has far more cohesion and even when their players are out for Origin, they still play very well.
Bring back Ray Price! Would love him to be able to play again but we’ve won nothing ever since he retired. Its as if the heart and soul of the club retired with him when he left. But maybe, just maybe, his passion and never say die attitude can rub off on the players by he being at training or game day to rev up the players!
Also Ryles has been in the Storm system for years and they never gave up so why can’t he instill that attitude into our club? And yes MM is not captain material imo, that should be given to someone who CAN turn up every week and give his all.
I don’t know where this attitude from our players comes from. Yes, we have had injuries and I won’t pretend like we haven’t had good years in the past decade, but it feels like our rebuild periods are this thing to fear like we don’t have the systems in place to be stable despite being a well off club.
While it is a minority, I have seen people trying to pin this problem on Ryles and Moses with some calling back for Brad Arthur. I wonder how many of them were calling for Arthur to get fired.
The way I see it is that our veterans are too few in number and are being expected to go above and beyond. Having young players is a good thing, but it isn’t a coincidence that the club are going after big name veterans. Unless you have a system like the Panthers, it is very difficult to build a team with a focus on juniors.
Agree with much of your comment. Undertaking a thought out rebuild seems smarter than just trying to buy your way off the foot of the ladder – but do we have the right people to do that? Ryles has no experience doing it, Nathan Brown, didn’t exactly succeed doing that at Newcastle, and O’Neill,… well i will get my comment rightly edited if i say that part. 😛
We had plenty of veterans, just not the right mix, right point of their career veterans, and we expected too much of them.
The thing i take some exception to, is all the fans, and sixties references it as well – but the “injury crisis”.
Yes we had injuries. Yes, of course they hurt. But to blame them is excuse making and hiding the real issues in the roster.
Our last game props were Jnr and Moretti. At full strength who would it have been? Jnr and Big Sam? Is Big Sam (at this stage of his career much of an upgrade over Luca? sadly, no). We played Williams there most of the year, and he was probably our best prop on the year – a back rower.
We lost Iongi. On potential and at his best, easily our best fullback. But he seldom found that form. Was Joash much of a drop off in talent? – yes probably. But based on the form he showed, if Apa or JAC played back there, that isn’t much of a drop off.
Russell/Penisini/Samrani. Other than a game or two, these guys made up our centres. The difference between the best and worst of these guys is pretty much non existent.
Kelly played wing instead fo Bailey – Would Bailey have offered much more than what Kelly ended up delivering? No. And worse, it would have knocked Kelly into the centres… over Samrani?! That wouldn’t have been good.
Volkman ended up playing the role ear marked for Pezet which he lost primarily due to injury – anyone want to argue that wasn’t a win?!
Hopgood was the one we missed – not that his form last year was amazing. But the drop off to the rotating cast who filled in at lock was impactful.
Yes injuries impacted our season. But no one will convince me they were the difference between finishing 3rd last and making the 8.
Every team outside the 8 can point to injuries – injuries to key players. They can all show you the list of games they lost by 6 points, and didn’t get the rub of the green. The teams who want to keep talking about injuries, penalty counts and close losses, will miss the 8 next year as well.
Our Club would do well, to move on and look at themselves, not everything else.
I will say that our injuries were pretty comfortably the most prominent out of all of the teams and it is for the sake of depth rather than just the talent. Even talent wise though, players like Doorey while not superstars have shown that they are capable and I do actually rate Simonsson, but I don’t know his current record, but this year and I think last year, he hardly played any games. Brian Kelly works hard, but I don’t see him as a prolific try scorer at least not while he has been with us. Maybe at the Titans? In fairness, he doesn’t really need to be as sides can have one stronger side for try scoring and his work rate has been huge.
I do actually think that without the injuries, we would have had at least a chance to make the 8. You can disagree with me there, but while I do think that the quality of the players was at least a decent enough of an issue, my main problem with the large amount of injuries which was actually comfortably ahead of any other team throughout the season was it affected who was playing where. If you can’t field the same team or even a similar team for a large stretch of time and you are putting players in different positions, it is going to affect how the team gels. While even with these players, we still would have problems with our line up, the amount of changes that there has been to the lineup has been pretty crazy.
I definitely agree though that we can’t just talk about injuries and that we need to focus on what went wrong with what we had because even if we could make the 8, it wouldn’t change that we would be making up the numbers. I was reading your comment below and I wouldn’t jump the gun about signings. I think that it is possible that we could be getting some great signings. If I am wrong, then I am wrong, but in my opinion, while the pessimism is definitely understandable, it is better to wait on the news before jumping the gun.
BA, you’ve turned this into an injury debate. I had one paragraph that referenced that injuries were significant but they weren’t the reason for a performance like Sunday.
I will briefly address your response to the injuries as I regard it as a simplification and full of supposition to suggest that the missing individuals might not have played much better than their replacements. Yes we have a squad of mid roster type of players, but you cannot ignore what each individual brings to the team, the further impact on combinations that were worked on throughout the preseason, the sheer totality of missing players, and indeed the number of games where certain key players, including Moses, were missing at the same time. Then there is the disruption to training of not having your best possible opposition during scrimmages/drills in addition to limited selection options when the coach might want to drop players but there is nobody else available.
But that wasn’t the point of my post. I had pushed injuries aside as a reason.
Does it come down to on-field leadership as suggested?
You reference the competitive Gutho. He was the leader for countless “didn’t turn up” performances. I believe that both Junior and Moses have a competitive will to win. Do they demand it of their team mates, in the Ray Price model? I can’t answer that.
I’d add an Isaiah Yeo to the leadership group in a heartbeat. Would that help?
When it comes down to it, maybe I shouldn’t have written this post as it was written out of frustration, and with zero answers.
I feel like a great recruitment campaign can improve our team. But until it’s proved otherwise, I’ll remain concerned that the “shit attitude” lurks.
Sixties: You wrote a piece, an emotional repsonse to the end of the season and where your frustraiton is.
I gave my input on your piece further down the page.
Here i replied to a comment from one of the other commentors, and just tried to build and expand the conversation. If you just want replies kept to the opinion you focus on in your piece, thats fine, it’s your website. I know you could write a 1,000 word piece on the lighting at Commbank and 3 of the first 4 comments would be about MoN, and that would be frustrating as a creator.
I was just trying to add to the conversation and people can disagree with my view point, I just figure the more you expand the conversation the more it makes people think,. the greater the engagement, and the more opinions and views get shared – which would seem like a good thing for people broadening their own opinions and considering others.
But if I am missing the point of this comment section, i apologise.
BA – I just saw your comment. Appreciated as always and I literally laughed out loud about your MoN comment.
It might be a roster issue Zachary. I just feel/fear like it runs deeper
I agree Sixties. Our club has had internal issues for years and that has never been the best kept secret because we have had pretty good rosters in that time. In saying that, we have most times been lacking in particular positions. Even when we made the grand final in 22, our lineup still felt like underdogs compared to Penrith which is an insane thought for a team that got to the grand final beating the Cowboys at their home ground.
This is a depressing but fair read. It must have hurt to write. We are all hurting.
The Eels won 4 premierships. I was there at each one. Who was the spiritual lynchpin of the Eels at those 4 victories? RAY PRICE.
We need somebody cut from the same cloth to accept nothing but the highest standard in attitude – an on field general who would be almost willing to die out there on the field. I have no idea where this player comes from at this stage.
The day a part of me died was after the 2022 GF loss when Matterson took 3 weeks off instead of a few thousand bucks as penalty for an on-field offence in that GF. I could not believe it. I was disgusted and personally offended. To this day, nobody has explained to me how that was allowed to happen. To me, that was the soft white underbelly of the post-RayPrice Eels laid bare for the whole world to see. As much as I find the Storm despicable, with their endless gamesmanship, lack of sportsmanship, their general entitled self-made aura, I can’t see Bellamy allowing a state of origin representative forward taking the first three weeks off of a new campaign immediately after the grand final. I would have thought Brad Arthur and the team would have been chomping at the bit to get back amongst it to go one better. There was a talented team there. Everyone onboard for the start of the new year! I mean, who did the eels think they were?
Who is accountable?
It’s not the fans. It’s not you and I. we are just armchair critics but we recognise rubbish attitude when we see it. A ten-year old recognises it. It’s elementary. Rugby League is like that, isn’t it. It doesn’t take an analytical expert to see laziness and lack of pressure applied on the field.
To me, regarding Ryan Matterson, I saw what was allowed to happen and thought to myself “that’s the Eels to a tee”. We just can’t seem to go up one more rung.
We need to shed the likes of Matterson (he is gone, I am sorry for his unfortunate medical exit, but his attitude was lacking). We need to build a team of the likes of Ray Price. We did it before.
We can do it again. But I suspect, like myself, our patience is…running low
Hi NS. Like you I was around for all of the titles. I’ve attended every Eels grand final, win or lose. Price was one of a kind. Even when he wasn’t the captain, his mere presence inspired his talented team mates. The legends in that era still speak of looking at him in the sheds before the game and being inspired. But he was truly one of a kind. We didn’t play finals footy for a decade after he retired.
As for Matto, I can assure you that nobody wanted him to take the option that he did. But in this day and age, clubs can’t force players. Matto marched to the beat of a different drum. Always did. I think the last 12-18 months maybe demonstrated it and how he stood up for his rights and entitlements.
I replied to BA Sports above that maybe I shouldn’t have written this post as it came from a place of frustration. But I honestly believe that eliminating the shit attitude from the DNA of our club is the greatest challenge facing Ryles or indeed the new CEO.
Do you you honestly believe that having Ray Price there would make any difference ?
I feel unquestionably it would.
But my statement is rediculous as the point itself.
Ray Price is the example used (no arguments there), you could have used Ken Thornett and Ronnie Lynch the same way…..it is only worth parrallels nothing more.
The way the game is now with caps, contracts and little loyalty, is such that those type of players don’t get made anymore.
Penrith are an amazing differentiater and their fortune has revolved around a player that is up there with the “goats”. Penrith is the only model we can follow! saying and doing it is an impossible task. Its like all the planets aligning.
The point of this exercise is we don’t stop trying!
Personally I don’t care about winning premierships for the sake of a one or two season memory……I want for my team to live up to its birthright as one of the 3 to 4 giants of the code…..God only knows the resources are there, we blew the late eighties away with a lack of vision from what was then an amateur management with no vision past the ” unbelievable Eels eighties.
What we need is obvious, i.e. success to breed success!
Our current situation has identifiable problems, I could get a “review team” in to identify same…..getting the team in to apply it is another thing. These teams I am talking about are not the ones on the paddock, but behind the doors.
Ryles is the first coach I have seen that has had a true vision for Parra since Brian Smith and I was never a fan, but he recognised what we needed to do, couldn’t finish the job as we all know. BA did a great rescue but not the after emergency surgery.
Whether Ryles can do better is going to sit very much with the leadership that comes from the new CEO….. The Chairman doesn’t seem to get sighted and he to has to be in there with his shoulder on the same wheel if we are to succeed.
The remainder of the board are constitutionally paralysed and there is not much we can do in that respect, other than hope they see a little more grey in our endeavours and not all black and white.
This consitutional difference puts us at a real disadvantage with the other Giants of the competition….. does anyone think that the salary cap is an obstacle in getting a player for the millionaire backers of these clubs.
I understand that we will have more TPA’s this year and lets hope we have a board with a very notional understanding of how they were procured.
Finally Parramatta is no longer destinational club, it should be with Kellyville and Cumberland Oval (notice I dont call it Com Bank).
WE need to offer lifestyle packages to players that come here and that idea of success breeding success has to be the result of us being back to a “Destination Club”.
We want our juniors and pathways are important, but we need to make those pathways such that every junior that comes through has an opportunity to become an Eel, even if it means buying a share in an English Club and blooding our juniors through there.
Everyone else has had a go….there’s mine.
Poppa, it’s a decent rant and some salient points. People who don’t rate Pricey or his ilk to improve our footy are clueless. In a previous post I mentioned the Parra board members, all impressively qualified but I doubt if they know a football from a hamburger. The Panthers board are all long term Penrith passionate people invested in their footy club, that’s where the success starts.
Yes Seth your comments are positive, its not my intention to insult our board members though, I am sure they know a lot more than the average punter.
My problem when I talk about the paralysis, is not their quality but constitutional requirements placed on them in becoming board memebers. I.e we dont have structure that allows a chairman to report with ‘we have done this and not explain the how’s in any detail that impinges on the boards role”…..some of these clubs have Chairmen and CEO’s with much greater flexibility than ours and that allows them to be much more commercial in approach…..commercial gets us into the grey areas I alluded to in my original post.
Thanks for your encouragement just the same.
Now we all know how the constitutional things happened and yes we are better for it, compared to previous administrations…..so I am not bagging the board just saying what is a problem we need to cover when these type of criticisms apply.
I feel for Sixties, and fans like him. Your heart and soul is in it and it’s sad to see the fan-type who do latch on to hope, see it taken from them year in and year out.
I know Sixties is trying to focus in this piece on the on-field “between the ears” issue, not the roster issues. But at the end of the day, the two are inextricably linked.
As Milo says, our roster lacks leaders.
Our roster lacks winners
Our roster lacks football IQ
Our roster lacks mental toughness.
And while our recruitment approach is to pick the scabs off of other teams rosters or grab a guy punted for contractual reasons, that won’t change.
BK – had a good year – but he’s not a winner with a career win rate under 40%
Before him, Lomax – talented player – no mental toughness
Williams. 150 games. Solid player. But never taken that step to being a winner.
Walker and JAC have won – and they have shown toughness – but at their stages of their respective careers, they can’t be expected to be our best on ground, week in and week out, yet that is what we needed to win.
We lost Gutho. Not relitigating the argument for whether that was right, at the end of the day, he was tough. Mentally and physically.
Next year we have Sua coming – Talented player. Does he have the toughness/ The killer instinct and the killer instinct to win? Time will tell – but clubs don’t usually let that sort of player just walk.
And we have Luai… Part of a winning club, but nothing about his stint at the TIgers (And we’re far closer to the Tigers than Panthers) suggest there is any reason to think we see a winner – espcially when he has nothing to play for.
Reality set in for some fans months ago (Personally, we finished exactly where i thought we would before the year started). For some fans the reality set in over the weekend and i feel for you. It ain’t fun. But time to join the reality that there is no magic fix coming in 2027 and manage your expectations. The market is dry for next year. And even worse – the Dragons, who we just lost to, are about to be a heck of a lot better than us, clearing some dead wood (all be it dead wood that scored crucial tries and kicked winning field goals against us) and bringing in plenty of talent. The Tigers are clearing some dead wood too – giving it to us!.
Things are not about to get easier.
This site has not once mentioned the 10+ year tenure of Sarantinos as the leader of the club, and the main person who oversees everyone and everything in the football department from.rostor management, to salary cap management. Not once.
Our roster is bottom 3
Our salary cap was absolutely busted until Ryles had to have the largest clean outs in the club’s history
Reserve grade was an absolute joke with rejected players from other clubs like Lumi Lumi, Cini, Harper, Asi, momosia, Greig, ect filling what were supposed to be development positions
Then the get out clauses which saw good players in a position to be scouted
All this and not one mentioned of the leader
Why ?
Look at the club now – its going to take another 5 years + to get it where its supposed to be
Naming names and making people accountable – thats called supporting your club.
How dare you Chief! I won’t tolerate comments like this, not because you share different opinions, but rather because you do so in a manner that disrespects this site. If you had said that the person responsible was Jim and gave reasons for it, that would be your opinion and I wouldn’t be writing this reply. Instead you choose to make accusations about TCT.
You make insinuations then clearly state that because we don’t publicly tear shreds off individuals that we don’t support our club. Piss off! You have no idea of the time or the interactions that I have with the club to get changes or improvements. And furthermore, this site has also been critical of the roster and John and I have repeatedly addressed the need to raise both the floor and the ceiling of the roster. Its been a regular topic on the podcasts but you are a self admitted non-listener. We are not fans of the committee processes.
Jim is moving on. And he wasn’t the CEO for ten years. He has been with the club for ten years. So try getting your facts right.
You can finger point all you like. But I’ll reiterate to you, if you don’t like what you read here, move on. I’ve got many readers here that don’t agree with what we say (see BA Sports above who is often taking my opinions to task) but they don’t make the accusations you do. Your behaviour is like walking into someone’s home and declaring that the place is shit and the owners don’t care. If you did that to someone you should expect to be thrown out.
I don’t tell you how to support Parra. Don’t accuse us of not supporting the club because we don’t do what YOU think we should be doing.
This is your first and only warning. If you disrespect this TCT house again your ban will be reinstated.
Ill gladly have a beer with.you or anyone on here. All im trying to say is sure we’ve all been critical of
the players when losses arise,
the coach when for example he makes mistakes about interchanges at the worst possible time as we’ve seen this week.
The referees, well who hasnt been critical about them
But we have to.look at where Parramatta are placed football wise. Let’s face it we have a bottom 4 roster and Ryles has just hat to endure a massive clean out.
We fans need to keep asking questions on why our we are in this position. Sarantinos and O’neill have been here for over 8 years. We need to call our whoever made the decisions, otherwise fans aren’t doing their jobs. To make persons accountable. Thats what drives change
Listen mate, I’ve met with you previously and we had a nice conversation, I didn’t disclose that I was chief otherwise there could have been fireworks lol, but we did get on very well.
One day we’ll have a beer. We are both passionate supporters and sometimes when things are not going well on feild fans can go off the boil. If I’ve disrespected anyone i apologise, that wasn’t my intention. My intention is to help Parramatta be a powerful club once again
Sixties, those views you have expressed I have taken to task with Chiefy on the other site, I fully support what you have said.
I have been a Saratinos fan all the way through and I am very disappointed he is leaving us…..he has been a very good CEO in the capacity of the financial management and development projects of the club and representing us on the highest business level in achieving those things.
When you look at his history, the actual football side of things was not his strong points, but everyone has to start somewhere when you look at the responsibilites he took from previous CEO’s and their respective mishandling of the club you can understand that.
I think he gave too much understanding that BA had everything under control in that area and hence was not that concerned with what Mark O’Neill was achieving. I think just about everyone agree’s that if a true General Manager Football was appointed that Mark would do very well looking after the pathways as such and the feed in to the higher levels.
The disappoinment to me was I think Jim he was getting a handle on the football side, he was very instrumental in supporting Ryles.
I refuse to believe he has been “tapped” on the shoulder and can only think, he has been involved in making sacrifices because he realises that more experience is required on the actual football platform. The other thing is as a principle he possibly believes that 10 years is enough dedication.
Personally again I thought a genuine General Manager Football could have been more in accord with such a direction.
I like Mark O’neill but have always thought that whilst qualified for his experience and knowledge was not really a General Manager but rather an assistant manager i.e. a no stage did he have control over BA or Ryles in their ultimate roles as head coach or has ever been allowed to assert himself that way. I would suggest it his not his style where that GM role requires very aggresive selling skills.
Tell me a better CEO than Jim in the past 20 years?
I’m not convinced the outgoing CEO had complete control over the situation. In hindsight, I think his biggest mistake was sacking BA and then leaving Mark O’Neill and his support staff in place. If you’re going to clean out the coach, you need to clean out the people responsible for giving him the cattle in the first place.
Jack Gibson famously said he realised he coached better when he had better players. That should be tattooed on the walls at Parra. O’Neill’s recruitment and retention record has been a massive part of the problem, yet somehow he has managed to survive every clean-out. Sacking BA while leaving the bloke responsible for assembling the squad untouched was basically rearranging the deckchairs and pretending you’d fixed the ship.
If the roster is mediocre, the recruitment is poor and the coach is being asked to squeeze blood out of a stone, eventually you have to look at the football department. At some point, O’Neill has to stop being the survivor of the previous regime and start being held accountable for the mess he has helped create.
“Naming names and making people accountable – that’s called supporting your club.”
So basically..
If you’re not angry, you’re not a real supporter.
If you don’t publicly shame individuals, you’re not loyal.
If you don’t adopt your confrontational tone, you’re part of the problem.
What a crock of sh!t.
Thankfully Chiefy all those names you’ve mentioned have left/leaving the club. But attitude has always been a problem and I have no idea how to fix it, but until it is fixed, we’ll never achieve anything!
The Panthers have lost a heap of some of the best players in the NRL over the last 5+ years, all developed from within, and never once threw in the towel. And their attitude has never wavered.
What we need is to use that as a blue print for our juniors, fix their attitude at a young age, and put systems in place to teach them to tackle. Because that is part of the attitude. Be tough, play tough and never ever give in even if you are being beaten!
Perhaps that is the answer Glenn. We want our juniors to be Parra inspirational. Perhaps instilling that never take anything for granted/take no prisoners can be instilled in pathways.
The frustration is the extraordinary inconsistency. That win against The Sharks represented delightful Rugby League executed at a level of a team rusted on the top eight, challenging for the top four. Then that second half on Sunday!
What’s lacking? What Taylor described as”Mongrel to win!” We had that game after the fourth try. That’s when the intensity needed to go up, the tackles needed to get heavier and hurt more even if the tackler’s lungs were burning, everyone needed to be looking for the chance of a hard carry, every opposition play attacked and harassed. Many of our talented young players obviously thought the job was done and they could ease off.
Frustrating.
A couple of players can be excused. All year Will Penisini has never given a game less than his total effort. It is noticeable that opposition coaches are trying to put three and four defenders on him when he runs and he looks for the ball when the going is tough. He has his critics but we’d be in a sorry state without him.The bloke who was the late signing from The Cowboys is a first rate defender. Don’t know if he’s a very creative dummy half. Jack Williams can hold his place with the best of the tight forwards we’ve ever had.
Da Silva? One moment I’m up out of my chair cheering him, next he’s got me wanting to throw something at the tv. That was a dreadful second stint on Sunday.
Crucial season, 2027, isn’t it. Ryles will stand or fall by his ability to get a tough, consistent defence side out of this lot. How depressing to have to make another fresh start.
Sharing my thoughts 60s thanks always for doing what you do. It’s not great to lose that last game but honestly I’m not as gloomy as you were post match. Dragons were at home, they’d been improving the last month or so, and for them they had the crowd and emotion on the day. We statistically I thought won for most of the game, it was sloppy defence and errors that undid us, but overall it wasn’t that bad. Some young guys got a lot to learn and I agree Ryles messed up the interchange but I know we will be much stronger next year, we have to be. Look forward to seeing you again in Jacks bar and grill in 2027 thanks for you all you do for us fans, eels forever !
Hey Chris. I reckon we will be back in Sterlo’s next year but we’ll have to wait and see. As you know, I’m the glass half full bloke. That last result near broke me. I’ll probably be back to finding the positive come preseason but for now, feeling broken.
Tks sixties, frustration expressed! I spent 3 or 4 years commenting on our obvious inability to defend smart wide shifts and it never improved until BA left but that didn’t help, other things fell apart. My head spins thinking about the problems and solutions, so I sort of stick to the weekly on field events, that’s what I see and can form opinions, and I find it difficult to be expansive, I just shake my head and think ‘I could write a book every week, but don’t have the attention span these days’, I listen to you and forty do the post-game and read your and the bloggers’ pieces, that’s enough blue and gold for me! So a quick thought…in this day and age player agents, more money, better contracts have contributed to higher mobility and less club loyalty ( not criticising, just stating fact) , not only our injury toll but our stability of roster has been extremely volatile, if you look at the better teams they all experience turnover but I’d suggest nothing like our revolving door. I don’t know how that builds a common platform of on-field players on the same page mentally, physically, tactically, skillfully, behaviourally to deliver consistent, good quality effort each week. We look hit or miss, hot or cold, capable of high or low…like a wayward teenager with instability in their DNA.
Hi BDon, thanks for your comments as usual. This result really hit me more than I expected. Maybe I’ve overreacted. As for turnover, we have moved on ten players (9 top 30) from the full time squad. By my calculations, there will be only 8 or 9 players from BA’s full time squad still with the club next year. That’s a massive turnover in a couple of years under Ryles.
Thanks Sixties, the pain is obvious as was the frustration and anger from you and Forties immediately post match. And why not. What a frustrating end to the season. The only positive for me is that we finished above the Broncos which I can mention around the neighbourhood and with friends in Brisbane.
The attitude and footy IQ has been an issue for years. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve told my wife we’re going to lose this while listening on the radio. I can go back to when Warren Ryan was on the ABC. We’d let games go against the Tigers whenMitch was playing them. Same formula, get a lead in the first half, let in a try just before half time, let in another just after, allow the moments shift to stick and then make multiple errors trying to get it back. Over and over and over again through the years. Different coach, players, administrators – still happens with too great a frequency. No idea how to fix.
But of course it is never just one thing. There are multiple causes and the way Roly has looked at things makes shows that too. As a club we need to be more adept at addressing the issues. I’ve lost confidence that is going to happen any time soon.
Such a depressing read – only because it’s all so true.
Is this piece written out of frustration like you’ve said in the comments? Sure. Is it an overreaction? Not at all.
Hopefully there’s lots of good change to come and some big signings that can give some us fans some excitement.
Thanks for your work this season Sixties – and Forties
Thanks for your efforts this season to the Cumberland Throw team, this website is one of my favorites
Thanks 60s and 40/20 for your efforts much appreciated I think all parramatta supporters feel your frustration
Feeling your pain mate, I’ve declined my auto membership registration for next year. Im done, I need to see an overhaul of team attitude ,management, coaching and recruitment strategies, before ill even consider a rethink. Been grafted on blue and gold for over 50 years now, hard decision, but we have to be better or seen to be moving in the right direction . I’ll never support another side, but will no longer accept mediocrity, cheers for all the work you and the team do every week, thanks.
I see Moa has moved on and been replaced by someone from The Storm. I’ve never met Moa and feel no animosity to him but it seems to me that this may be an important move. One consistent, week after week has been that we’ve regularly missed more tackles than our opponents. We’ll never be top 8 while that situation exists. Going back to the days when Provan was coach it always stirred the blood to watch defensive intensity lift when the game was there to be won or lost. The greatest challenge before us is to become an outstanding defensive side.
Light at the end of the tunnel?
Actually I believe we improved under the Ryles/Moa defence.
My understanding Moa is going to Trent Robinson at the Roosters, he worked for Trent previously. Mark Russell the new appointment is a strong aquaintance of Ryles and is very highly regarded as a defensive coach. Probably a good freshen up for everyone.
I would not feel too let down after last weeks loss, it was predictable in that our inexperience found it difficult for a team that a win or loss meant nothing in the scale of tables and where we finish.
This day and age you only need to drop a couple of percentage points and you lose.
Look at the results you see, Dolphins lose 66 to nothing against Cowboys, Easts 80 plus against that same team…..these things/ results are happening every weekend. All those sides are in the finals!
Referees /Bunker have as much influence as the players!
We are inexperienced in closing a game down, look at our playing side, little wonder.
Look at the 3 recruits (so far) bring a wealth of experience in winning and more importantly how to!
Dragons went into that game fighting for a place in their club and the embarrassment of being wooden spooners, their physcological will to win was higher than ours. Simple really, disappointing yes, wrist slashing no!
The good thing is everyone was pissed off by it…..its a bitter memory to be reminded of if it happens in a game that counts. Which for us next year, has to be everyone we play.