As we transition with our rebuilding phase, I'm wondering if we have gone about it the wrong way around.
We have a great Home ground, we have great fans that will support the club, we have a world class training centre, we have the new constitution and Leagues Club to rival most others, We have the shiny new coach and assistant coach's, and we have a world class Halfback, with a new culture developing.
It appears that we have been checking off for some time all the ingredients required to have a winning club. This brings me to what I see as a major fault within our club.
It appears we are able to identify the players we wish to sign, there are many examples of that within our system right now, none better then Iongi, Lomax, Addo Carr and Walker. However there also appears to be a problem with getting classy players that are being courted by other teams over the line and sigining with our club. The 4 players I mentioned were not being courted by any other club.
So how do we fix it. If we are identifying where the club was falling behind with all of the above and we set about turning it around and fixing it, to the boards credit, then surely the same Board can see we are seriously lacking in the art of getting a quality player that other clubs want to join our squad.
What is it that is lacking in this area. Is it a lack of understanding of what makes the player tick, are possible recruits issues, fears, not being addressed during the negotiations, is it a stigma that players don't like our club, Is it the rookie coach might not be good, is it a lack of third party deals or investment clubs etc. Do the player managers not get on with our club. There must be something that is turning off potential recruits. Over the last couple of years we have lost so many players and potential coach's for that matter, that the club has identified as wanting or wanting to keep, and we havnt been able to get them accross the line.
So I do wonder who at our club is identifying the problem, and what needs to be done to turn this around. Over the next 12 months, we as a club have a huge war chest of salary cap $$ to be spent, but it won't matter if the club cannot sign the good 1st choice players they are targeting.
It makes me wonder, what our club would look like if we were to recruit say Gus Gould. Would that even be possible. I do wonder what type of $$ would it take to hire someone like him. We seem to be very light on in the reputation and signing power of our current head of football. I'd happily pay Gus Gould $2m a season to be our recruitment spokesperson, the man that makes the deal, that courts the new player. Surely someone of his experience and stature would be a crucial and club defining signing. Perhaps the very last piece of the Eels puzzle.
Im no fan of Mark O'Neill head of football operations, I have made that very clear. So how do we get the club to at least review what mistakes have been made or continue to be made that turns so many players away from us.
I think it's crucial for any future success, more so then any one player. We should be going for the best of the best people out there to be working on our contract negotiations and selling our vision to new recruit prospects. We search high and low for the best layers, then why don't we do that at Boss level, at management level.
Im not sure of whom we should even target if we were to replace Mark O'Neill, but i am of the strongest opinion that the club to move forward must as a matter of urgency delve very deep into what is going wrong at this level, and fix it. We have an oppurtunity with our war chest to really go after some serious talent right now,
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All great points Pops, and I understand what the media "general consensus" says about most of the players we have failed to resign or sign. However we as a club seem to get more then our fair share of "not signing with us, at the last moment". I see you have identified "Stigma" as a potential issue.
You;ve also identified in the Galvin case we were perhaps used as pawns to maybe up his price at the dogs. This perhaps goes to one of the issues, are our negotiators tone deaf, and not experienced enough to read the room so to speak. Are our negotiators perhaps so poor that a lot of managers are able to use us as whipping boys to up their clients price. They are all interesting questions i feel, and questions the club should be trying to answer to improve our negotiation / closing player contracts record.
Coryn, you'll never have one good thing to say about the administration after you cried yourself to sleep over the bush coach, and his two sons ousting crying like a biatch
Ask yourself - why did Galvin ever consider the Eels after he asked for a release midway through 2024, when D Brown was contracted here.
Your just a cry baby who'll find anything to pin on the Eels administration, who are moving in the right direction with Ryles at the helm.
Well I didn't like the way we went about the Arthur saga , mostly because I know that MON didn't give him the players he asked for , however I also didn't like how Arthur wanked off Gutherson and a few others, so I was neutral to him going , but didn't like the re-hiring process .
My point is , I also didn't like the management of the coach sacking, but I was super critical of the board and MON long before that. Just saying..
oh and I also think JA was judged unfairly , he was shit , but he wasn't any shitter than a bunch of young kids that were judged ( or not judged I should say ) as just that , young kids . If JAs last name was Volkman we wouldn't have heard boo about how shit he was. He would've been the young kid filling a hole .
"I know that MON didn't give him the players he asked for"
How did you know that Wizzy, did he tell you while you were praying to the Lomac Apostles.
BA was a well "quantified" autocrat, if anything he would not let MON do shit unless it was directed by him. Saratinos said afterwards BA was never denied anything he asked for by the R&R Commitee.
Its one thing to have "hyperbole" (Arthur wanking players off) its another to keep making up lies.
Well chief as currently constructed in our front office Parra aren't winning a premiership anytime soon I'll just let that sink into you for a hot minute.
Your so simplistic when you look at this you fool.Ryles is not winning this thing by himself you idiot if you can't see that I can't help you.How exactly has he got us pointed in the right direction how exactly.His body of work isn't big enough to suggest anything yet 😂 🤦🏽♀️
Stop farken embarrassing yourself you twat and let the adults talk.
Adults ? I was told Coryn just graduate from Phukatāne primary school 🏫
The problem is that we haven't had Premiership success for a long time, and players from other clubs can't see the changes that we have made will bring us closer to that. Win a Premiership and players will be falling over themselves to come to Parra. It's a catch 22, but in the meantime we need to do it the hard way. Let's hope it works.
But Longfin we played a grandfinal in 2022 and promptly lost players to other teams, and havnt been able to sign a top player when other clubs are in the race as well, that makes me wonder if it's the "Grandfinal" issue or not. Admittedly we didn't win one, but we were there, surely some of the players could see on the field we were playing above our weight.
I'm sure it has some element of truth, I do wonder if there is more though.
That Grand Final sort of came out of nowhere, and like previous successes it quickly fell away. That's what we need to change. We need to be top 4 or thereabouts every year. Success breeds success and if we can get up the ladder and stay there, players will come, without a doubt. Of course we need people who can do the paperwork, but we're not privy to what goes on in the front office and need to hope the club has this covered.
I don't think 22 came out of nowhere we had been to the finals the previous 3 years beforehand so they did build into getting into that position.The issue was we just didn't know how to win the big game and were outclassed by the best team of this current era.Which is no shame.
What happend 23-24 we rested on our laurels and made some poor coaching and recruitment and retention decisions you throw in injury to key players and all of a sudden we got exposed badly.
The issue I have now do we no how to get back to where we were and if we do are we setup across the board well enough to run with the best in the comp consistently.The next 2 years will tell a story.
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