Eels Blogs

I’ve not been in a position to be able to write a long, analysis piece for a long time. However, I find myself tonight we some time on my hands, so if you choose to read on, strap yourself in for about six months of observations, thoughts and opinions bundled into one very long piece. (You have been warned).

Firstly, a disclaimed that I’ve been overseas for most of this season, so I’m not going to pretend that I am can speak authoritatively from a playing/tactical point of view in regards to what’s taken place on the field  to date, but ultimately my view anyway is that the position the club finds itself in, is the culmination and consequence of a range of factors that are related to on-field and off-field issues.

And I’ll say straight up (and most of you know this) that I’m an ardent fan of Brad Arthur, and despite our current position on the ladder that hasn’t changed. And so it should not surprise that I don’t question his position at the club at this point. I also think its naive and ignorant to be looking to point the finger at any single person, because I think the club has broader unresolved issues and problems that are all contributing factors to us not being anywhere near where we’d like to be on the ladder.

Brad Arthur’s tenure

I’m not a fan of Arthur because he’s done me any favours, or I know him personally, or anything like that. Simply, he’s earned - via his results - my respect and appreciation. I think ultimately you judge a coaches performance in any season, based on a comparison of where the bookmakers (ie the market consensus) expects them to finish at the start of the season, and where they actually finish; and on that basis Arthur has over-achieved every year he’s been at the club. From a longer term perspective, you want consistent improvement; and Arthur has delivered there too - he took a wooden-spoon winning side, and over four years built them into semi-finalists. To my mind that makes Arthur an unqualified success, as an Eels coach and I struggle to fathom that anyone could argue counter to that.

That success, of course, saw Arthur rewarded with a contract, that I believe was fair and reasonable, both in terms of compensation and its length, and as such he deserves the opportunity to see out that contract. For me, that’s open and shut.

Certainly I don’t think that over the off-season, Arthur suddenly became a crap coach. And if any club has learnt that reactionary behaviour like sacking coaches, CEOs and the like, doesn’t bring success, it should be Parramatta.

Rather, what we as a club should really be doing, is using this slump as an opportunity to engage in some well-overdue realism, and really review the range of factors which have all contributed to us not achieving our 2018 goals to date.

Papering over the cracks

I’ve long been critical of the club from a business point of view, for essentially papering over the cracks in terms of problems related to revenue, reputation and financial performance. We do that because we have a strong Leagues club who has always bailed out an under-performing business. I think our better-than-expected performance in 2017, resulted in us basically papering over every crack in the joint, whether it be our roster, resourcing, or structural issues. So let’s pull down that now-peeling wallpaper and properly take a look at where we’re at, and what’s gone wrong this season to date, and potentially what is to be done about it.

Player morale

I’ll say up front, that I was overseas and pretty much disconnected at the height of all of the innuendo and rumours related to player harmony and the like. I have no knowledge on that front, so it’s not something I’m going to take into account, except for that fact that it seems unlikely that what was universally regarded as an incredibly tight-knit group could so quickly devolve into a “loss of the dressing room” and player infighting. I think if there are issues, Arthur is strong enough to make the necessary tough calls - he showed that with Kieran Foran, and he’s also demonstrated he’s an exceptional man manager. But as I said, for the most part, I’m leaving that out of this analysis.

Roster

The fact that there are gaping holes in the current roster, I think is widely acknowledged amongst Eels fans and indeed League commentators. Most pointedly, the Eels simply lack size and grunt up-front and have done for a while now. The fact this issue wasn’t resolved during the off-season, is something that everyone related to the Eels recruitment is accountable for.

That said, we got through last year with an even smaller pack than we have this year. And that’s what I mean by papering over the cracks. The fact that we did make top four with the majority of these players, clearly gave an unrealistic sense of comfort that it was feasible to do likewise again this year.

However, in many ways, Arthur has been a victim of his success. Looking at the way the club has performed this year, I see it as much as a demonstration of how phenomenal last year’s effort was, as it is a blight on the current season so far.

Playing style

What the Eels managed to do last year, was play well above their eight for the entire back-half of the season. On paper, they were out-powered week-in, week-in, yet somehow they were not just able to compete physically with larger teams, but such was their effort, intensity and physicality that they often managed to bully packs that weren’t as committed as they were. Which was pretty much everyone, until the final two games of the season.

All teams can produce this level of effort at some point; the good teams do it most weeks, but Parramatta did it week in, week out and went on an incredibly winning roll, all the way through to the finals. And that was despite the fact that, by the end of the season, our high-intensity, fearless game, had started to really impact the bodies of some of our key forwards who got through the year playing pretty busted.

Arthur truly did have his squad running through down brick walls for him.

However, I always had a lingering doubt, whether this style of play was going to be sustainable.

Adversity a benefit

In retrospect, I don’t think it’s stretching the truth to say that the adversity that the playing group came through over the prior two seasons, was perhaps part of the reason they were able to sustain that effort for so long. They had a point to prove individually and collectively, and clearly a fierce bond was developed amongst the group in all of that adversity.

This year was all together different. They started the year as a title contender; they had the respect of their fans, and the NRL. After an impressive trial against Newcastle, Eels fans were licking their lips in anticipation.

I think it’s understandable that the group wasn’t able to reproduce that extreme motivation to play at such a fierce, selfless level under those far more comfortable circumstances. And without that 100 per cent intensity and commitment, those problems with the roster were instead laid bare. And conversely to where they were able to ride the momentum of a winning run last year, instead this year gave way to an ever-growing snowball of dipping confidence, and maybe team harmony. I don’t think it was coincidental that it wasn’t until the rumour and criticism reached a true feverpitch, that the siege mentality kicked in again and the Eels recorded their initial wins.

Rule interpretations

The other obvious factor that hurt the Eels, was the change in interpretation of the rules, and in particular the speed of the playball. Craig Bellamy was very vocal last year that the Eels had gotten away with murder in relation to offside and slowing down the ruck, and the crackdown on both the 10 metres and interference in the ruck, saw the Eels heavily penalised and their “work-around” to counter their size disadvantage was taken away from them. Suddenly they couldn’t dominate teams with their line-speed and bigger teams simply rolled over them. Nor did we seem to take advantage of the way the rule interpretation subsequently changed the pace and flow of the game, as offensively a faster ruck should theoretically have benefitted our mobile pack. That’s clearly on Brad Arthur, although I’d suggest that the change in rule interpretation probably impacted us more than any other club, and Arthur didn’t have as much armoury at his disposal to change things up. Again, there’s that roster issue.

Non-level playing field

And while it’s tempting to throw Arthur under the bus, on that factor as well, there are two very important factors to keep in mind here.

Firstly, the Eels clearly aren’t playing on a level playing-field at present. I had a catch-up with Bernie Gurr at the start of the season, and I wanted to float how the club now felt about the coterie idea we commenced before the salary cap scandal. Gurr was quick to dismiss any interest at all, and I think it’s clear that we’ve been playing it ultra-conservative with our cap, avoiding getting into TPAs whatever while also keeping room in the cap for a rainy day.

Bargain hunters

Our recruitment strategy of late has been bargain shopping. I guess that’s not surprising given we had the simultaneous reality of trying to work ourselves out of an over-extended cap, while also wanting to be extra cautious so as not to risk the wrath of the NRL by collecting any further salary cap infringement. It’s been a philosophy then that was born out of necessity, but fortunately we’ve done remarkably well on that front and it didn’t impact us last year. If you look through our roster from 2017, there were a large bunch of players who quite clearly were playing at a level well beyond the paypackets they were taking home. Whether that be the locally-produced players who still hadn’t graduated to marquee paypackets like Bevan French or Semi Radradra, to the likes of Nathan Brown and Clint Gutherson who we picked up undervalued from their prior clubs, to guys like Will Smith who were getting their careers back on track. We really did manage to beat the cap last year.

However, maybe that bargain hunter philosophy became a little in-grained in the culture of the club (and BA does give the impression he’s not an eager spender of anyone’s money). And so when it came to diving into the market for a monster prop-forward, pretty much the rarest commodity in the game at the moment, we came up empty-handed. And you’d have to say that conservative recruitment policy probably was a contributor to that.

Head(less) of football

The question also has to be asked, what impact has not having a head of football played in our success in the recruitment market, or indeed on a range of football-related issues including things like junior pathways.

In the past 12 months, it’s common knowledge that there have been cut-backs in the football spend, and our junior results have slipped after a phenomenal 2017. It’s danegrous to read too much to much into some of these indicators. Things like junior pathways play out over many years, but equally it would be stupid to ignore that we’ve seemingly taken a step backwards in football performance across the club

After gradually building to such stellar football results in 2017, it’s hard not to wonder whether an overall complacency and satisfaction with the level of progress has resulted in investment not being made where it needed to be made for continued progress to take pace.

Business of football

Which brings me round to one of the issues, I’ve tended to bang on about, that not a lot of Eels fans pay much attention to, but there’s no doubt that the level of investment we’re able to make in football is directly tied to how much revenue the football business makes, and it’s clear based on the ridiculous losses racked up in recent years that our business performance hasn’t been good enough. I’ve not had high regard for the progressiveness of our revenue development, and I think that’s come home to roost a little bit this year. It’s clear there has been pressure to reduce the losses incurred through football, as this can’t be sustained indefinitely by the Leagues Club, but the business really needs to find ways to improving the bottom line by increasing its income rather than cutting costs.

Blocking of reforms

In passing let’s also acknowledge that it’s now been nearly two-years that our Leagues Club has been in administration because the long-needed reforms were blocked. Clearly, when the parent body is under administration, we’re an organisation that is going to be conservative in our decisions making.

Circling back…

All this said, I would still argue it’s still too early to be alarmist and to be overly reactionary to the current situation. I still think we have a very talented core group of players, and I retain faith that we have a coach who will find some answers. The executive have asked for time, too, and that’s not entirely unreasonable given the depth of our previous malaise.

There’s still a lot to play out in this season. It wasn’t really until the representative season rolled around that the Eels got their roll-on last year, and we’ll have the same opportunity to build momentum this year with very few players engaged in those rep fixtures, plus a number of players, including Jarryd Hayne and Nathan Brown due to return at that time. It’s an incredibly even competition this year, and any team that can string together a winning run has the opportunity to vault up the ladder. I think a side that has both Brown and Clint Gutherson in it, really gets its ticker back, and so I haven’t given up on the season yet.

That said, just maybe, we can’t overcome those early losses combined with the roster issues, which to my mind mind has been compounded by the season-long loss of Tony Williams. I thought Williams made a dramatic difference to the side in the couple of games he came into the team, and really demonstrated what we’d been missing to that point.

If that’s the case, it comes down to whether we have the faith that the right steps are going to be taken to reverse the decline. Certainly, news that we have likely recruited Junior Paulo, is massive news and will go a long way toward delivering a major upgrade in our forward roster. But lessons need to be learned.

I look at this period, and for me the take-out is, as a club, we were too quick to accept solid improvement as being good enough. Just not being a “club in crisis” is not the end-game, it’s a starting point. The gains we made last year, needed to be the excuse to press the accelerator - be more ruthless, more ambitious, more paranoid and really hurl ourselves at that ultimate prize. Instead, we were probably too quick to pat ourselves on the back, and be overly complacent that we’d continue to move forward without really comprehending just how much of an effort had been expended and what it would require to sustain that. Like all elite sporting competitions, the NRL is unforgiving and success requires equal parts unsatiated hunger and unwavering commitment to being the best. I don’t think we’ve demonstrated that at any level in 2018, but equally I’m not giving up on the fact that what made us so successful last year, can’t be rediscovered and perhaps even built upon.