Eels Blogs

In my opinion o don't think we can deny the contract saga isn't having an effect on moses or the team. Without having the "personal" connections others who have touted their guarantees on that have come and passed I can only offer what I see. To me moses seems like someone who is afraid of having the big contract, the big pressure and the responsibility of leading the side. Let me explain...... last year he was not the focus --- it was a lot about the forward pack and Dylan browns breakout year. Even the gf failure was overshadowed by the Cleary love fest.

In his career moses has ALWAYS been the "rising star" -from tigers days until now. There has always been a belief that he will rise to the elite level halfback - and don't get me wrong his kicking game is at that level. Again though, last year there was contract saga with Papalii, githerson, matterson etc. Most saw last year as a "success" for the eels in reaching the gf --- and it was given the position a few months before we never should have been in. Again though the narrative was that moses was "starting to realise" his potential.... even though a lot of our attack and organisation was still coming from gutho and brown.. and Mahoney.

what I am seeing now is a player who is NOT playing to impress for a contract but is in fact intimidated BY the contract he will sign. If it was still undecided moses would be playing all the effort plays. What we are seeing though is uncharacteristic poor kicking and a reservation in attack. The other major marker I see is his running game. After our first loss and in the context of the contract drama there was a lot of noise about Moses needing to take the line on more (we know now that the media gets to him about these things from his interview last week). What I have noticed is Moses is now running more often --- but not for taking the line on in a smart way - it's like he is running because he's hearing people say he should be running. Previously he didn't run enough but when he did it was targeted ---- again, to me this is another sign of a player who has the talent but is intimidated by the pressure. This was evident in our loss to the storm when brown and Hodgson overdid their million dollar, field goal kicking halfback when all we needed was one point.

To summarise I feel BA actually needs to lean into this and give control of the team to Moses ---- thereby giving him the validation and confidence he needs, with gutho in a mentoring role

Sorty for the long post but thankyou if you've read it - hard to say it simplistically