We were drinking the Kool-Aid from day one of the pre-season. Big gulps.
Every little thing in the off-season felt like proof we were onto something. The Lomax stance? Finally, we’ve got a backbone. The club stands for something. Love it.
Pezet on a one-year? Sneaky smart. You start talking yourself into how that could actually be a Ryles masterstroke.
De Belin, Kelly… yeah alright, maybe.
Then all the Moses chat kicks in. This is the year. Breakout. Leader. The media and Journalists start backing us. Everything starts lining up nicely in your head.
Then the season starts… and it hits you.
We weren’t building anything. We were just talking ourselves into it.
All that “identity” stuff? Turns out we suffer from multiple personality disorder, and none of them are good.
Classic. Cheers for the Kool-aid it tasted better this year.
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What's wrong with being optimistic? I'll be impressed when someone correctly predicts (so that's ahead of time) our success, not failure after it's occurred. So much commentary on here is past tense and completely focused on our flaws.
Nothing wrong with optimism. Deep down it's all Eels fans have. As far as predicting our success, help me, you seem to have some good insight. I've been trying to predict it for over 25 years, some here, for over 40.
i don't know man I used to get on here and whinge and bitch about everything and I came to the realisation that it's pointless and doesn't represent my passion for this club.
So when things are going to shit (like they are now) I try and keep my trap shut and not sink the boot in all the time just for the sake of it.
I generally view things through a long term lens and I think the long term plan we've got is sound. But we've got to be patient and not compare ourselves to what's happening at other clubs because our situation is unique to us. Good things will happen, we all deserve it.
I know some of our injury issues were unavoidable, but I think its no coincidence our head of physical development was brought over from the spoon winning Newcastle knights. The number of soft tissue injuries are off the scale.
It does look a bit funny when we get:
Who knew getting a collection of people from the worst performing clubs wouldn't translate into immediate success?
I'm being a bit tongue in cheek, but it definitely doesn't seem like a winning strategy so far.
Soft tissue injuries? Mainly from trauma, like contact and excessive force. Why lob this squarely at the foot of the trainer and not playing a contact sport?
Also, when the previous head of atheltic performace (Blair Mills) left, you claimed Matthew Jay would be 100x better. This axe to grind against the entire club is getting old, don't you think?
The Lomax court battle was a genuine win and was something to be proud of. It absolutely did require the club to have a spine and to call the bluff of some pretty intense and powerful characters. So credit where it's due, it was a fun ride and we should be proud of how we handled it as a club.
The roster? I didn't see many excited about Pezet, I think we were mostly bewildered at the stupidity of the deal. Kelly...no one is ever excited by him. JDB? Definitely underdelivered, but we know that forwards decline very quickly and the pace of the game is up this year, so that's potentially a bad buy in retrospect, but probably wasn't bad depth at the time of purchase.
We are definitely underachieving, but not by an enormous amount. Most people had us around the 8-10 range this year, we're looking more like 12-15 range.
Melbourne Storm are a much bigger story in terms of expectations vs delivery.
Dave Riccio tried to spin it that the Lomax case somewhat derailed our season as we got nothing out of it. But nobody said "what did you want Parra to do?" What happened was best case scenario and glad they did it as opposed to just letting him go to Melbourne for nothing as well.
Agreed. The question is are we improving or are we going backwards?
We haven't played finals since 2022 when the club allowed the roster to be picked apart. People mention rebuild when they talk about the Eels but if you're not improving, can it be called a rebuild? Or is it more accurate to say the club is going nowhere?
I think even the club and everyone involved drank it too. That's where after last week Ryles looked the most dejected I've ever seen him. As if it was a pure reality check of "shit, their effort says injuries aren't the only concern"
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