Went along to the season launch tonight at the Riverside Theatre and it was quite an impressive night. Well done to the team who put it together. Point form run-down for y'all.
1) Sterlo was the MC again, as he was last year, and there is something quite comforting about him being back around the club. Said he sat down and had lunch with Brad Arthur and he's got every confidence that he knows where the club has to go, and how to get them there.
2) They made a point of talking BA up a lot - including putting together a special promo of the players saying how great he'd been. In my opinion, the club has to stop putting someone up as the "saviour" who is going to return us to the glory days. No coach is going to get us there, no individual player is going to get us there - it's going to be about being a collective that is tough as nails. What I really liked was BA got up on stage, and before he answered the first question that Sterlo put to him, he said "Firstly, that was all a bit embarrassing". It was genuine humility and I took a lot of heart from that. Very different to Stuart who always seemed happy to be cast into that second coming role. The recurring theme from the players was "brutal honesty". I like that too.
3) BA said he wants to play both "exciting football" but he also wants to be "aggressive and tough" in defence. I guess we've heard the aggressive and tough in the past few seasons, but probably haven't had a coach who thought we might be able to play exciting football since 2009 given Kearney wanted to focus on the grind and Stuart seemed not to believe his players were up to it. Said his number one focus was making sure that the players were enjoying being at training - which you can pretty much take as an indication of where the players were at with our previous coach by year's end.
4) Ken Edwards and Pauli Pauli did a musical number and were pretty bloody talented. I'm not sure how I feel about my forwards being able to sing...
5) Pauli Pauli looks to have really made the physical improvement I think he needed in terms of his body shape. Honestly, his legs were enormous. Loko is such a big boy and he didn't seem to be carrying any injury or anything so hopefully he might not be out as long as it has been suggested. Junior Paulo is a tank. Seriously he's about a metre thick.
6) Sharpie spoke about putting club before self, and said that was what the team of the eighties based their football on, and if this current generation can apply themselves like wise, we can start to breed our next generation of champions.
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Was Daniel Anderson there? He seems to have fallen off the radar recently, I haven't heard any comments from him or about him.
The club is in a really good place at the moment, lets hope it stays that way.
Daniel Anderson was at the Manly game, was there from beginning to end that included the Under 20's match. He is extremely passionate about the Eels and will do everything in his power to get us succeed.
Sounds like a good night, what happened to Junior Paulo he injured or what??? I thought he was a special for a bench spot come round 1.
I didn't attend but I did hear on a Facebook video that they used the same Parradise - Cold Play song again. You know the one, that has been the anthem of the last 2 wooden spoons.