Eels Blogs

I think I might be like a lot of fans, in that I've been torn on Willie Tonga's return to Parramatta, however, probably more so because of my history with Willie (yes, I realise how that reads!).

As most of you know, I like to watch our juniors and pick the ones I think are going to make it to NRL or better. I remember watching Willie in an Under 20's match one day at ANZ and he scored the most amazing try beating three or so players with just the most blistering footwork and pace. At that time, he was a pretty skinny kid but it was pretty clear, to me at least, he had exceptional talent and he became my poster boy for our upcoming juniors.

He quickly broke out of the juniors and made his way into our NRL team, and as is often the case with young outside backs, he struggled a lot defensively against the seniors. One game, in particular, against Canberra he had a horror day and I think it was Phil Graham who had a field day against him. As has been a recurring groundhog day ever since, I staunchly defended Tonga on online forums while most everyone else bagged him relentlessly, swearing blind he would be a star one day.

And then he went to the Bulldogs, feeling his way was blocked by Jamie Lyon at Parramatta, and basically overnight became a sensation. I said a lot of "told you so's" but found it pretty painful to go on and see Tonga reach the highest levels for the Bulldogs. And to make matters worse, Lyon of course shortly after dogged us and Tonga seemed to be feeling right at home as part of that arrogant Bulldog culture at the time. And then to top it off, Willie was a Queenslander who routinely blitzed NSW come Origin time.

And so it's fair to say, I lost all affection for Willie.

When it was announced he would return to the club, I was a bit sceptical but I thought this could be it. This could be the prodigal son, returning. Alas, Tonga's time in Blue and Gold has been nothing but further heart ache and dissapointment.

However, hearing Brad Arthur talk about Tonga in a pre-season video posted to parraeels.com.au last week,  I couldn't help but admit to breaking into a smile. He described him as having "matured" since even when he was last involved with Tonga a couple of years ago, and we’ve all read the stories about his having lost a lot of bulk and feeling light on his feet again.

So I went into last week’s game with a fair amount of hope, wanting to see if we’d see something like Willia Tonga at his best.

And it certainly didn’t take long. The footwork he put on to set up Semi Radradra’s first try was scintillating. If you take a look at the replay when Tonga gets the ball it’s actually three defenders on two attackers, however with a brilliant spurt of acceleration and footwork he gets on the outside of the two defenders in front of him and puts Radradra away. Centre-play just doesn’t get any better than that.

You look at Parramatta’s outside backs and an Origin-level Tonga makes an enormous difference to the sheer class in our backline. It gives us two genuine representative players on either side of the park (and some nice depth with Ryan Morgan as well). There aren’t a lot of clubs that boast two centres of that quality and it’s going to give the Eels a lot of strike-power out wide.

It’s certainly not too late for Willie Tonga to re-establish himself as a Blue and Gold hero -  a local junior, who reached the very greatest heights of the game and then who returned home to help us climb out of the gutter and to wherever this side is headed! And we promise to forget about that whole Bulldog period...