It's the most cliche saying in rugby league: "Defence wins premierships". Yet an effective defensive system has not been at Parramatta since the days of Brian Smith.
Despite having a dominant forward pack for a considerable period of time, Brad Arthur's Eels never sat in the top 4 regularly when it came to their defence. The defensive system seemed a mix of dominating possession while relying on individual players to solve problems rather than having a system designed to limit attacking opportunities.
At the start of 2025 Ryles' new look Eels were up against it. For the first month they were the worst defensive team in the competition.
Averaged out, Parramatta were conceding 32.5 points per game. Well on track to a wooden spoon.
There are some reasons for that. New coach, new defensive system, the absence of key players all contributed to a side unable to hold itself together.
Yet, as the season has gone the side has looked more cohesive and with that has come an improved defence.
In the last month, the Eels' 4 game rolling average has gone from the worst in the league to the best in the league.
Parramatta is now conceding 12.5 points per game.
You have to go back to 2020 when across the first 4 games of the season they conceded a miserly 7.5 points per game to have a better defensive period. However it should be pointed out that was the first COVID season and across the opening 3 rounds the Eels played the Bulldogs, Titans and Broncos. None of those sides would make the finals with the Dogs and Broncos finish 15th and 16th respectively.
Parramatta managed to replicate a similar defensive effort at the start of 2021, conceding 13.5 points per game across the opening month. Yet in 2021 they still had big off nights, conceding 96 points across 2 games against the Rabbitohs and Sea Eagles.
The trend during the Arthur era was often a strong start to the season before hitting some bumps in mid-year and then tapering off as they hit the finals (if they did make the finals).
So far (in a much smaller sample size) Ryles' Eels seem to be improving as the season has continued. With a halfback like Moses and 2 promising spine members in Iongi and Smith, the points will inevitably flow in attack. Throw in Lomax and Addo-Carr and Parramatta's ability to finish opportunities will steadily improve.
But it's the defence that is keeping them in contests now. The Panthers, 4 time Premiers, had to reach deep into their bag of big match experience to beat a Parramatta side that went toe-to-toe with them, despite being in a period of flux form-wise.
In fact, in the last 6 weeks, Parramatta have been in a position to win each of their games. A marked improvement from the start of the year.
And all of that has been built on defence. Time will tell how good this side becomes, but they are building a solid foundation and it's clear Ryles has the buy-in of the men around him.
Replies
it's so refreshing not seeing Sivo jam in and the opposition winger going in untouched
Defence has 100% improved, next step is to tidy up the errors and execution in attack. But they trending in a good direction
Any correlation with defence and completion rate?
There's a slight correlation, but not as big of a change as you'd expect. Even against Penrith we completed at 81%. Our best completion rate was against Manly with 88%. But against the Tigers and Dolphins we were in the 70s like we were at the start of the year.
And for me completion rate is a complete red herring in stats. It's more about when and where you make errors compared to how many you make. Making errors on your own line and inviting pressure? That's bad. Making an error trying to score a try and being able to defend 80-90 metres of the field? Much better. That's actually how the Roosters play. They take risks trying to score points and their completion rate suffers. But because their opponents are constantly having to stretch themselves to prevent the scoring opportunities the Roosters continue to get more of them.
Good stuff Super and good question Zip Zip.
It's so refreshing to see them slide and defend in a line. Under BA it was a dog's breakfast- players shooting out of the line, overlap after overlap, etc
100%
It was sooo shocking
and just NEVER improved EVER
Watching them now I'm so perplexed it never got any better and was never improved 🤷♀️🤷♀️just gob smacking it was
I was yelling for a few years on this site to compress our defence and slide, this would have nullified the sweeping block plays, just about every team is sliding in defence now so teams are adjusting their attack by turning the ball back inside when hitting the edges. We are a few years behind the curve so as teams perfect turning the ball back inside we will need to adjust our defensive structure to suit. It's a copycat league, if you try to go against the flow you will more than likely come up short.
It is such a refreshing change to not see teams just simply pass it along the backline and always find us short of a defender. they didn't even have to run a play half the time we just couldn't number up. Not to mention how often we gave away tries from scrums when teams put 4 players on one side and we stood there with 3 on both sides not even attempting to number up like mindless drones.
Last week when we dropped the ball in the first set of the game we managed to defend the line really well. That would never have happened last year.
Big improvements in defensive structure under Ryles. Individual mistakes will always cost tries as will superior packs with better quality players, but I find it hard to fault our structures both in defence and attack at the moment. We are so much more enjoyable to watch with the wya we have been moving the ball around as opposed to previous years where it was just one out running over and over followed by, if we were lucky, a block play. Honestly I found as tedious to watch at times so predictable and dull. Things are much better now even if our position on the ladder is not.
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