Drinking the pre season Kool-aid

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.

Admittedly some kool-aid-drinking was a bit rational: the Eels had a 5-4 W/L record over the last two months of 2025 after their R18 bye, including wins over Broncos, Chooks and Warriors (Top 8 teams) and a close loss to the Storm. Going 2-0 in the pre-season with enough entertaining play to maximize the silly points in the Witzer Cup (vs Sharks and Chooks) was promising.

Maybe many did talk themselves into being (mildly) confident. But have we now switched to talking ourselves into "it's a total debacle, the gloom is forever"? Like we're drinking poison now not kool-aid!

A good example here is - and apologies to Chiefy for singling him out here - all the ranting about the Eels' head of athletics performance (Matthew Jay). It all strikes me as performative cherry-picking. Chiefy, for instance, seems to be applying for head of athletic performance? Chiefy had previously opposed the prior head of atheltics performance (Blair Mills), and had declared the new one (Matthew Jay) to be 100x better, but is now also criticizing the new one despite having previously defended his apppointment. The new one is apparently suspect because he came from the Knights, and we can easily establish he was previously at the Tigerrs and Sharks. Here is Chiefy when Jay replaced Mills:

Now Chiefy says Jay came from the Knights and that's enough to say the club is run by clowns. OK, some quick search unveils Jay's NRL record, aside from multiple forms of credentials and being part of the Kiwi set up etc. Here is the record:

Knights 2025 (17th), 2024 (8th), 2023 (5th)

Tigers 2022 (16th), 2021 (13th)

Sharks 2020 (8th), 2019 (7th), 2018 (4th), 2017 (5th) NRL; previously Sharks pathways system 2010-2016

If we take this 9-season record as head of athletic performance (across three teams) as the data sample, Matthew Jay has been at the helm of 6/9 finals-making teams, or 66% of the time his team made the finals.

I'd like to hear what experience and credentials Chiefy is drawing upon that leads him to cherry-pick 1/3 of Matthew Jay's time at the Knights as "the indicator", ignoring the 66% (finals) track-record?

And lest it go unsaid, I am asking whether critiques of the club on thin and flimsy grounds truly advance discussion? Who doesn't remember 10-15 years ago when the site was dominated by partisan hacks for "Club Factions"? Those were the times of entirely boring POLITICAL talk, ostensibly about the team but anything about the team really masqueraded as political talk about the club. It seems to me the site is going back off the cliff back to that and I am saying that is mostly unproductive.

Yes the team currently stinks. Yes most of us sounded warning bells, for instance about lack of depth in the outside backs. Most of us admit the forwards have not held their ground this year. Though most of us temper that critique with the fact we also admit the style of play by the forwards in the last two months of 2025 had shown promise and that we cannot ignore the R7 team is missing three props and two backrowers normally in the 17.

But if the issue with current poor form and an injury-ravaged side is reduced to "heh look the head of athletic performance came from the spoon-winning 2025 Knights", and some basic checking reveals that to be pretty wild cherry-picking, then I am just asking how does that kind of selectivity really help?

"Yeah agreed Riccio is silly, that's deadset rewriting history. Ideally Lomax wasn't a dolt and doesn't chase a mirage in the Middle East, but he was never known for his brains.
The fallout that followed was 100% a great showing by Parra every step…"

Replies

Prof. Daz April 18, 2026 at 12:39pm

Admittedly some kool-aid-drinking was a bit rational: the Eels had a 5-4 W/L record over the last two months of 2025 after their R18 bye, including wins over Broncos, Chooks and Warriors (Top 8 teams) and a close loss to the Storm. Going 2-0 in the pre-season with enough entertaining play to maximize the silly points in the Witzer Cup (vs Sharks and Chooks) was promising.

Maybe many did talk themselves into being (mildly) confident. But have we now switched to talking ourselves into "it's a total debacle, the gloom is forever"? Like we're drinking poison now not kool-aid!

A good example here is - and apologies to Chiefy for singling him out here - all the ranting about the Eels' head of athletics performance (Matthew Jay). It all strikes me as performative cherry-picking. Chiefy, for instance, seems to be applying for head of athletic performance? Chiefy had previously opposed the prior head of atheltics performance (Blair Mills), and had declared the new one (Matthew Jay) to be 100x better, but is now also criticizing the new one despite having previously defended his apppointment. The new one is apparently suspect because he came from the Knights, and we can easily establish he was previously at the Tigerrs and Sharks. Here is Chiefy when Jay replaced Mills:

Now Chiefy says Jay came from the Knights and that's enough to say the club is run by clowns. OK, some quick search unveils Jay's NRL record, aside from multiple forms of credentials and being part of the Kiwi set up etc. Here is the record:

Knights 2025 (17th), 2024 (8th), 2023 (5th)

Tigers 2022 (16th), 2021 (13th)

Sharks 2020 (8th), 2019 (7th), 2018 (4th), 2017 (5th) NRL; previously Sharks pathways system 2010-2016

If we take this 9-season record as head of athletic performance (across three teams) as the data sample, Matthew Jay has been at the helm of 6/9 finals-making teams, or 66% of the time his team made the finals.

I'd like to hear what experience and credentials Chiefy is drawing upon that leads him to cherry-pick 1/3 of Matthew Jay's time at the Knights as "the indicator", ignoring the 66% (finals) track-record?

And lest it go unsaid, I am asking whether critiques of the club on thin and flimsy grounds truly advance discussion? Who doesn't remember 10-15 years ago when the site was dominated by partisan hacks for "Club Factions"? Those were the times of entirely boring POLITICAL talk, ostensibly about the team but anything about the team really masqueraded as political talk about the club. It seems to me the site is going back off the cliff back to that and I am saying that is mostly unproductive.

Yes the team currently stinks. Yes most of us sounded warning bells, for instance about lack of depth in the outside backs. Most of us admit the forwards have not held their ground this year. Though most of us temper that critique with the fact we also admit the style of play by the forwards in the last two months of 2025 had shown promise and that we cannot ignore the R7 team is missing three props and two backrowers normally in the 17.

But if the issue with current poor form and an injury-ravaged side is reduced to "heh look the head of athletic performance came from the spoon-winning 2025 Knights", and some basic checking reveals that to be pretty wild cherry-picking, then I am just asking how does that kind of selectivity really help?
- Cʜɪᴇғy Mclovin🐐 - Mark O'neill's 🪓 > Prof. Daz April 18, 2026 at 1:59pm
  
  A broomstick would be 100× better than a rugby coach in the Nrl
Mallee57 April 18, 2026 at 12:43pm

It could have been 'flat Aid' because they've been flat all year
Parrafan101 April 18, 2026 at 1:43pm

Like i said Mark O'Neil has to be fucked off from the club in order to see changes under Ryles. If we sack Ryles and get a new coach with Mark O'Neil still as GM expect more drought and pain. It's upsetting that when we appointed Ryles we should have gotten a clean slate from the football side of things not keep what was left from the past BA era. Jim needs to get his shit together on the football side of things.

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