We are a laughing stock. Now we have to put up with articles like this.
"COMMENT The Eels’ season from hell can be traced back to one selfish decision after the 2022 grand final that should never have happened.
Dane Eldridge
There are fringe extremists online peddling a crazy theory that Parramatta made last year’s grand final.
And incredibly, it’s true.
You’d be forgiven for forgetting the Eels were the second best team in the comp 12 months ago considering how seamlessly they’ve reverted to being a raw wound.
But let this be a reminder: no matter how authentic it feels at the time, success at Parramatta is always an aberration.
With a premiership drought stretching in to its 37th year, nobody really knows why the Eels bother anymore.
That’s why their 2022-to-2023 reversion has been totally on-point.
Whenever this club feels like it’s unlocked it’s boundless potential, reality hits and before they know it, they’re dropping down the table again as quickly and as sloppily as an RCG knee.
Usually Parramatta’s issues are deep-seated and physiological, the kind beyond anything that can be outlasted by Gutho working his bum off.
Most can be traced back to rogue administrative malpractice or Sterlo’s retirement, but this time around they’ve punctured their own hard-earned confidence themselves.
It began with the egregious decisions to surrender Reed Mahoney and Isaiah Papali’i, the former which was compounded by stumping up equivalent cash for the older and more rickety Josh Hodgson.
This was exacerbated by the actions of Dylan Brown and his long-term suspension, plus the Mitchell Moses contract saga which dragged on so long it called for a shot clock.
But in the Eels season of self-inflicted woe, none match the Ryan Matterson suspension as one of the wildest gutter-balls of all time.
A deeply spiritual man of faith, Matterson sat out the first month through suspension to save paying a paltry $3000 fine.
By all likelihood the savings went directly to the parish collection plate – which is fine, if there’d been help in return from upstairs.
With the Eels losing their opening five games by squeaky margins, not only did Matterson’s decision look like a clanger in hindsight, it also appeared God didn’t get the message and/or is a closet Dogs man.
All in all, the Matterson decision symbolises the Eels’ state of woe.
A brighter future beckoned in the minutes approaching last year’s grand final, but only 80 minutes later they’d been eviscerated in prime-time and have yet to recover.
It’s continues the existential decrepitude of a club that has survived two global financial crises, countless PMs and seven waves of feminism without a trophy.
The club is in the bizarre position of being an attractive financial powerhouse with a core of anguish, kinda like a Ferrero Rocher you bite only to find it’s filled with carob.
Parramatta haven’t won a premiership since 1986 — the longest drought of any NRL team.
No wonder Eels fans live rooted in the past yearning for the glory days of the team’s superstars, and I’m not talking about Sterling or Brett Kenny.
The bloke they miss most is Kenny Edwards.
They’d love to have him back out there again in the blue and gold, if only to fake cramp to run down the clock on another godforsaken season. "
Replies
Lol, harsh but fair.
I don't disagree to much with this article. We got arrogant thinking players were lining up to play for Parramatta instead they did but for a price, we treated less than they thought they were. It's bitten both parties, Ice and Reed have had average years while we missed them in our team.
We then got bullied with RCG, Paulo and Matto getting better deals while dangling Dolphins in front of us. We don't have an identity, we don't know what type of club we want to be.
This bloke reads my blogs
Looks similar to apost/Blog i have seen before Muttman
Is Dane Eldridge your nom de plume LOL?
A lot of the reasons for our total implosion this year, have in fact, been self inflicted, however the previous year's of relative success have masked over the root cause of our mediocrity. We have never been a club of innovators. This starts at management level. We have been riven with infighting and power grabs. As a result management has been devoid of strategic planning underpinned with the scars of the salary cap fiasco and administration forced upon it. Our recruitment seems to be focused on a "moneyball" approach which will only get you so far.
Gutho is an inspirational leader, Moses is an instinctive half with immense talent, Brown is an excellent running half. None of them have the brains/game sense to effectively guide the team around the park. We see this week in, week out, particularly when we are ahead in games. This nuanced leadership, like that of Reynolds, Clearly and DCE makes so much difference and would've resulted in enough result turn arounds to have us comfortably in the 8 this year. Couple with this is the obvious achilles heal that is our wing/centre defence, which hasn't been fixed in years.
It is no surprise, therefore that these issues can be directly attributed to coaching and recruitment. I must admit, I got a little excited earlier in the year, when the club came out and said that they were after an X Factor player. But sadly, this never eventuated and our depth was sorely tested towards the end of the year.
We have bemoaned the Rooster, Panthers and Storm success and I fear that we will soon be viewing the Broncos in the same way. Some will say, they act under a sambrero, but all clubs have the ability to identify talent and then manage/massage the cap. We are horrendous at this. The gap between our "star" players and the also runs is massive.
I fear that we have reached the pinnacle in this particular iteration of the Eels. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We either need a club cleanout from the top down or they need to radically rethink the entire operation. There is absolutely no excuse, particularly when you consider the resources at the club's disposal, for the mediocrity that we have dwelt in since our last premiership. After all, we have only played in 3 GF's in 37 years.
So, in conclusion, some of the reasons for our poor 2023 stem from issues that have arisen on the field, but equally, they are the result of the club as a whole, being unable to shake the hurdles that have plagued it for the past 37 years.
Our recruitment manager and defensive coach need to be sacked, end of story.
Yep the club and the players let the fans down this season .
Sorry, I didn't enjoy that, the facts are most wrong and the guy to me sounds like a "Chief" with about the same intellect.
The fact that anyone can agree to that without mitigation again shows the problem is just not on one side of the club.
Disagree Pops, I personally hope Dane is awarded the Pulitzer for this amazing investigative journalism.
Without this inspiring work, we just would not have known what went wrong this season, it truly was a great mystery.
I only hope he is put to work on far more important cases next, maybe MH370 or the Zodiac case. He is wasted here.
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