So much for BA & the club not been able to produce young talent.
With another young player in Parry coming through our system to debut for us on the weekend I think it's about time we acknowledge the hard work BA and his staff have done to turn around our junior/pathway system.
We've gone from letting our best talent slip through the cracks and join other clubs to having Mahoney, Brown, Salmon, Parry, Niukore, Kaufusi, Stone, all make their debuts with us over the last 12 or so months.
We have an even more exciting crop of youngsters about to be ready for first grade too. The hard work put in by BA and his staff isn't seen by too many fans but its been a huge undertaking and the rewards are about to be reaped by the club. Combined with our much improved recruitment program it's looking like a bright future for the club. Finally.
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There is just no pleasing some. At least the supporters are happy.
Spot on Fong
Frankie, surely you can at least admit that the junior program has improved under BA. Before French we debuted what, 2-3 juniors over a 4-5 year period. We have more than double that this year and next. Double the debutants in half the time is an improvement. Rep players is a bit of a number game as well as coaching improvements, if you are only have 2-3 players with a debut in 4-5 years odds are extremely unlikely to get a rep player in such a small sample, but if you have 2-3 players debut each year, your changes increase.
I will certainly concede that I am uncertain of BA's ability to improve players to rep quality, and would love to see a halves mentor engaged. I think we have some young guys with the raw talent to reach rep level, but that raw talent needs to be shaped and honed into rep qualities and consistency.
I am reserving my judgement on BA until next year and if this level of team improvement we have seen this year continues into next year, and we are serious top 4 contenders than I will sing his praises. If you are not top 4 you are not premiership contenders.
Been quiet for a few weeks Frankie. Silence would be better. All of the youngsters used show a lot of promise. But that would be recognising a BA success.
John, a promise to be is still not a success until we experience this success and these coming 8 rounds and the finals will either reveal this success or not. Otherwise we have to wait until nexr season to see what comes and if the success is still not forthcoming, ideally this season. we need to move on from Brad Arthur.
Agreed to a lesser degree because of the Eels circumstances going back over the past 8 years. It's true that we have not produced any jumiors who have gone on to great success while playing for the Eels in the top grade. The new culture is now changing this horror period and these juniors and more coming through over the next threa seasons have the pottential to bring back the great glory that's been missing since 1987.
Agreed Fong, Lets see just how much Brad Arthur & co have learnt and just what type of juniors are we now bringing through.
Ethan Parry playing today is now exhibit f)
Exhibits being
a) Marata Niukore
b) Stefano Otoikamanu
c) Oregon Kaufusi
d) Ray Stone - I think he was a Tigers junior who came from Moss Vale before we got him
e) Dylan Brown
f) Ethan Parry
Others were not our juniors and we purchased them from other clubs
Jaemon Salmon - Sharks - only in the Eels system for around 2 years or so before breaking into our NRL squad,
Reed Mahoney - Dogs - only in the junior system for 2 years or so before breaking into our NRL squad,
Marata Niukore - Warriors/Knights? he was in our juniors/wenty system for 3 years or so before breaking into our NRL squad
Other juniors
Tepai Moeroa - he is now just about back to his 2015 & late 2017 standards - he was a Penrith junior and who played union playing for Newington College
Daniel Alvaro, he was an Eels junior before going to the Broncos and then back to us. He was our best forward last year and I still think his best years with us are in front of us.
Mitchel Moses was an Eels junior who went to the Tigers and then came back to us. He is now starting to crack SOO standards. The best is before us all now.
Manu Ma'u was rescued from NZ and brought through Wenty for a few seasons before cracking our top squad
Peni Terepo is another rescued player from NZ (i think) and brought through our system. He is hot and cold but has improved a lot on his earlier years and still learning how to play his best style of game - he may still improve or gradually be forgotten about - it is up to him. He is currently only worth $250k/$300k. I still feel there is a lot of improvement in Peni if he can sort out whats going on in between his ears.
Tim Mannah - another Eels junior who played SOO - he is hot and mild a lot. Maybe we might see another burst of his very best before retiring?
Junior Paulo - an Eels junior finally getting back to his best and I feel the very best is yet to come. If his NRL stamina improves and tappers off a little more of his playing weight, he should be playing SOO next year.
We then also purchased unused stock and turned them into high quality NRL players
Clinton Guherson from Manly - without further serious injuries to his knees, I reckon there is another 20% improvement still to come from Gutho.
Maika Sivo - Penrith reserves ("whose that" says Phil Gould a few months ago) to NRL golden boy in less than 9 months. Hige future in front of this slaughterhouse come gentle giant
Brad Taikarangi, David Gower, Kane Evans Nathan Brown Andrew Davey, and Shaun Lane have all improved since joining our club and are shinning lights (bar Andrew Davey) in our 2019 squad - lets see how these boys go today and for the rest of this season.
And we still have promising juniors coming through in Haze Dunster, Salesi Fainga'a and Greg Lelesiano (issues still with defence but has massive attack statistics better than almost all current NRL wingers).
Blake Ferguson has excelled since playing for the Roosters - and his 2 2019 SOO games were world class, superstar material.
Waqa Blake - another Penrith recruit waiting to see what he delivers this season.
Josh Hoffman - In 2019 Josh has played some of his best NRL games ever since he first played for the Broncos all those years ago.
Things are NOT really that bad Fong
As for the wreckage
Bevan French - love this guy but he needs to physically grow that body and until then, maybe a few years in SL will do him a lot of good - probably win all the awards including Golden Boot over there. Love to see him come back to us and not another NRL club and prove what he really can do.
George Jennings - terrible, terrible, terrible acquisition from Penrith
Will Smith, another Penrith recruit who has gone downhill since his great Eels exploits late 2017
100% correct Fong
The point Frankie is that our junior development pathways were in complete disarray when BA took over, you only have to see the quality of juniors that were coming through at the time. Kelepi Tanginoa, Taniela Lasalo, Jacob Loko, Ryan Morgan, Pauli Pauli, Tepai Moeroa, Fabian Goodall, Nathan Davis, Ryan Matterson etc.
Most of them were talented but were deeply flawed due to poor underage coaching, leaving BA and his coaching staff with more to do than should be expected. They were poorly prepared for the requirements of NRL level footy and BA didn't yet have the experience to overcome that poor junior coaching.
Now, would Craig Bellamy, Wayne Bennett or Des Hasler have done a better job with those young players than BA did ?
Probably.
But as has been pointed out BA was a rookie head coach and was learning on the job, as all rookie coaches have to. He had to balance the needs of winning now and planning for the future. The fact remains that if most of those players were still at the club it's unlikely we would be sitting 6th on the ladder right now.
Basically our development pathways had to be completely rebuilt from the ground up when BA took over, which in turns means that the production lline of young players coming through was always going to take about 5 years to really start to bear fruit.
So, you're right, guys like Mahoney, Brown, Salmon, Parry, Niukore, Kaufusi, Stone et al haven't achieved much yet, which is hardly surprising since there would be maybe 70 games of NRL experience between them. But what we have seen is that this particular batch of juniors coming are looking better prepared for the standards required at NRL level. All of those guys have arrived at the club during BA's time. The previous batch that I mentioned were at the club prior to BA's arrival and as such he had little to no influence over their junior development.
As I said, a more experienced head coach might have still made something more of them as can be seen by the steady improvement seen in Ryan Matterson after being coached by Trent Robinson and now Madge, but that is the cards we've been dealt with the appointment of BA as head coach.
When BA was appointed, whether intentionally or otherwise, the club played the long game and now we are starting to see the benefits of that enforced patience.
Could these young players still end proving to be duds ?
Maybe.
But we won't know that for a few more years yet.
I’m with Fongy on this one. It wasn’t that long ago we were thrashed by Cronulla and looking likely for a bottom 4 finish. Plenty were criticising Arthur and rightly so.
Like all of us on here I want to see Parra win but I’m not about to get carried away by the last 4 weeks.
i sincerely hope you’re right re our juniors coming through. That said Niukore came from the warriors, Mahoney from the bulldogs and salmon from Cronulla-ie they didn’t come through the parramatta juniors.
Lets hope we do get the most out of our juniors going forward but I’m not prepared to say we’ve got it right yet
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