Eels Blogs

The previous wooden spooner is always chosen as a team to fail again as the easy answer by those who don't look at the reason why sides didn't perform and what changes have occurred. After looking at last season with reasons we failed along with changes for next year I believe parra will be competitive in the majority of games in the upcoming season. 

The more people write off parra the better. With lots of players on 1 year contracts with a point to prove and careers to save, I can see a stronger bond forming between players which should see better results against the disjointed side we saw this year. We don't have the squad to compete week in week out for a minor premiership with top sides who have advantages such as massive TPAs, ability to attract players due to stable club environments, business connections and consistent results but that doesn't mean we can't compete to make the top 8. If we stay competitive and in the 8 and the table is similar to this year then a little luck and we can go further. The finals are a new comp where injuries, suspension and other factors come into play so I don't understand those going into the upcoming season miserable as f*ck already writing the Eels off.

With added confidence and drive I expect the team to defend a lot better which is attitude related and requires effort on effort. When your seasons gone and your in a bad mind set those extra efforts just don't happen but players don't lose talent overnight and we were competitive against all teams in 2017 on the back of defensive efforts.
Maybe I am a unicorn and a delusional fool as many will no doubt reply but the off season is time for hope with the season ahead. The unicorns were right in 2017 when we competed with the best but the realist were right this year.

However as the realists pointed out the reasons we were so poor were we missed semi who carried the team. We needed a big winger to help get sets rolling and our foward pack was underwhelming lacking that explosive player. Enter Blake Ferguson and Junior Paulo for extra metres, and Paulo's ability to offload or send defenders flying. Trouble scoring trys this year, enter Shaun Lane who will help shorten up the defensive line due to his try scoring ability, which will allow space for our outside backs including gutho who will be fully recovered from ACL which can take over a year to fully recover. Gutho was in dally m contention before his ACL injury just like RTS was a dally m winner prior to his ACL injury who then had his worst year followed by a return to form.

We were penalised out of matches this year so our disipline needs to improve but that will come with better mindset not allowing frustration to set in and player bonds meaning they have faith in the team and don't feel need to buy the extra few seconds by holding players down or creeping up in the 10m. Losing Kenny Edwards will hurt our bench rotation but it will help our disipline. With Lane and Mau likely to start I am hoping Nikuore can step up and provide some spark from the bench and with Peni finally learning to hold the ball he can add some impact with his runs. He varied his game late last year with angle runs and offloads to add to his hard straight line running which was good to see along with better ball security.

Injuries last year also hampered us with Gutho still recovering and French injury who despite complaints as being useless were amongst our best in 2017 when we played well. Brown had an injury plagued season as well who was another who helped propelled us to finals in 2017. It wasn't only them either as I remember many games where backrowers had to either play centre or in the middle to cover injuries. With a new strength and conditioning coach we may have also addressed this issue with better body shapes suitable to the contact of league vs what the AFL trainer was doing.

Yes we still ack that intimidating explosive foward who puts players on their backside in although Paulo may provide that.  Beside many explosive fowards are over rated due to the odd highlight clip overshadowing their failures elsewhere and they only really look like stars in the top sides.  Statistically our foward pack wasn't as bad as many made out. Alvaro has improved year on year and makes solid metres with quick play the balls and offloads. Unfortunately the foward pack rarely worked as a group and we relied on 1 or 2 to carry the workload each game which will hopefully change under a better mind set and team bond. They were also always under fatigue from stupid penalties which takes away from the packs impact which combined with lack of a big winger to assist meant we were under sustained pressure

BA can't coach is another big argument which people throw out along with the lack of development but we have young players ready To step up and despite having crap players and a crap coach in 2017 we were competitive in nearly every game and finished top 4.  So what's changed,  we still have a crap coach and crap players according to some so why isn't the top 8 possible when we made the 4 with the current combo of crap. That's right I forgot we had a good draw which was the excuse used by some, so how do they feel our draw is this year and can it help propel us to the top 8, 6 or even 4.

I'm looking foward to next year and the eels surprising many.  With expectations so low we can only over achieve.

Who knows maybe someone will bet against the Eels making the 8 with an offer only to backflip and renig when we make the top 4.