More memories...
The curse of the Eels
August 16 2002
After last season's upset grand-final loss to Newcastle, the bright, young Eels were expected to emerge stronger for the experience and were at even shorter odds to win this year's title. So, what's gone wrong at Parramatta? Roy Masters reports.
For Parramatta, it has been a season in which one crisis passes only to make room for the next.
Yet any fan searching for an answer to the Eels'
annus horribilis only has to look at the Roosters' line-up for this weekend's match.
There are three former Eels in the Roosters' 17 - David Kidwell, Jason Cayless and Eric Grothe. The salary cap has screwed Parramatta.
When coach Brian Smith began losing players to injury and suspension this season, he scanned his roster for replacements, only to find they were with other clubs.
Wests Tigers have another three former Eels - forward Troy Wozniak played in Parramatta's first-division grand-final loss last year; five-eighth John Wilson left at the end of the 2000 season and promising young lock Ben Galea played in blue and gold in '98.
Grand finals have a handicap effect on a league. The market price of the stars of the two grand-final teams increases, leaving less money under the salary cap for players on the rise.
Rival chief executives target the emerging talent, offering contracts sometimes four times the amount the player would earn at the club that produced him.
When those cackling, humpbacked witches who have ridden on Smith's shoulder at three grand finals circled the Olympic stadium after last year's loss to Newcastle, they did not fly away to haunt some other miserable coach. They set down in nearby Parramatta to plague Smith for another 12 months, cursing the club with injuries, suspensions, referee controversies, tension with former proteges, such as Brisbane's Gorden Tallis, and agonising defeats.
"I have never had a season like this," Smith said. "We have been brought to our knees many times. Usually if a club loses its top two or three players, it's out of the running for the semis, yet we've had our top two or three missing most of the year."
Almost a decade earlier, the witches landed at Kogarah. Smith, then coach of St George, took the Dragons to two consecutive grand finals in 1992 and 1993, only to see his squad of players plundered by other clubs.
Three times Smith has walked away from a grand final with nothing except the certainty his club will leak players to lesser-led ships.
Even when a losing grand final club retains most of its players, there can be a legacy of emptiness afterwards, an exhausted, debilitated, nothing-left feeling.
Sometimes, people don't understand a coach and players gave it everything they had. They laid it out there, made every part of themselves vulnerable, held on to nothing - not even that private, inner kernel of fortitude that can lift them above the harshest scrutiny. And still they lost.
When a club has an intense coach such as Smith - a man who prepares his players with a clinical zeal - it makes the team even more vulnerable to post-grand-final collapse.
The Eels will deny it of course, but it's likely more than one player said during the off-season: "Do I have to go through all this again next year?"
Perhaps mindful of this, Smith has been very successful in the past at reinventing his team.
He brought in half Jason Taylor to energise the 2001 team and purchased Sharks five-eighth Adam Dykes to steer this year's team. Dykes has retired twice this season with injuries. The two men Smith hoped would receive plenty of ball from Dykes - State of Origin players Jamie Lyon and Brett Hodgson - are also out injured, both possibly for the season.
Lyon can score 90m tries and Hodgson showed in OriginI how dangerous he is running off a pivot.
Some will say Smith outsmarted himself this season by adopting a deliberate tactic of moving the ball wide early in the tackle count.
The strategy was probably inspired by a change to the 10m rule that has allowed the defence to stand closer to the attack, meaning the opportunity of gaining territory up the middle has diminished in 2002.
Others will argue it has been one of the game's eternal axioms that a team cannot go wide without going forward first, no matter what tweaking of the rules takes place.
In any case, Parramatta's forwards have not been as dominant this year, being brought back to the pack, so to speak. Still, international prop Michael Vella has played only 11 club games. Smith has also had to develop a new halfback/five-eighth combination during a season in which the closer defence has meant the thinking time of the Sunday generals has been significantly eroded.
Winning teams in 2002 are those that use the fewest players and are led by an experienced halfback.
The Eels can make the final eight and go on with it, validating Smith's view that it is easier to come up from the bottom than sit alone, like a target, at the top. Until last week's thumping of Souths, the Eels had gone winless for eight weeks - a controlled environment of defeat with one demoralising loss after another.
The whole thing is reminiscent of a horrible biosphere, a dome of disaster that we spectators can only peek into from the outside. But Smith has enough of the mad scientist in him to turn things around overnight. "We're not dead yet," he said. "Our season's far from over."
Year of highs and woes
September 2001: Beat the Warriors 56-12 and Brisbane 24-16 in the finals ... favourites going into the grand final on September 30 against Newcastle ... Knights turn on a superlative opening 40 minutes in front of 90,414 at the Olympic stadium to lead 24-0 on the way to a 30-24 victory ... "They deserved it," Parramatta coach Brian Smith says of the Knights.
October 2001: Centre Jamie Lyon scores two tries on debut for Australia ... Michael Vella, Nathan Hindmarsh and Daniel Wagon are also selected for the Kangaroo Tour ... Hindmarsh doesn't travel due to injury.
November 2001: Lyon makes an impression on the curtailed Kangaroo Tour, UK newspaper
The Sunhighlighting his love of pig-shooting. "And he's no oil painting either," say the headline writers ... The Eels prepare to commence pre-season training.
December 2001: Those not involved in the Kangaroo Tour embark on the annual Eels on Wheels tour of rural areas ... "Now we're working harder to make sure that if we get another chance, we don't let it slip," says captain Nathan Cayless.
January 2002: Eels open pre-season with 42-14 win over Wests Tigers ... Hopes high for team's new halves, Adam Dykes from the Sharks and Andrew McFadden from Canberra.
February 2002: Departures going into the new season: Joel Clinton, Jason Cayless, Ben Duckworth, Chad Halliday, Wade McKinnon, P.J. Marsh, Chad Robinson, Mitchell Sargent, Jason Taylor, David Westley, Troy Wozniak.
March 2002 Kick off season by flogging Penrith 64-6 ... $2.60 with bookies to win the premiership ... Crash 16-22 to Wests Tigers in round two, followed by a bye.
April 2002: Lead Melbourne 30-10 at half-time at Parramatta Stadium on April 6 - and lose 30-32 ... 20-20 draw with St George Illawarra ... 22-14 win over South Sydney ... 38-0 belting of Canberra.
May 2002: Dykes suffers the shoulder injury that will eventually end his season in 36-6 win over the Sharks ... second-rower Nathan Hindmarsh is allowed to play by having City-Country match count against his suspension - even though he wasn't picked for the rep game ... Andrew Ryan picked by both sides, eventually settling for Country.
June 2002: Beat Brisbane 22-18 two days after Origin II ... Michael Buettner says he was instructed to mention Gorden Tallis to the referee during the match - Tallis's relationship with referees is in the spotlight ... Tallis angry at Smith, saying his name has been "dragged through the mud" ... loss to Newcastle, a draw with the Roosters and another defeat by the Bulldogs ... broken ankle rules out Lyon for the rest of the year.
July 2002: Eels players are sent to the sin bin four times - Dykes, Hindmarsh and Buettner twice - as Newcastle come from behind to beat them 24-18 ... Referee Bill Harrigan dropped and later trains with Parramatta to mend bridges ... One-point loss to Cronulla follows, then 10-26 defeat at the hands of the Warriors ... NSW SportsTAB makes an issue of late Eels team changes ... Bottles are thrown onto the field, two players sent to the sin bin and two more reported in a 6-26 home loss to the Broncos ... Brisbane coach Wayne Bennett says his team is "pre-judged" by officials, bringing a $10,000 fine.
August 2002: Manly upset Parramatta 19-10 ... Brett Hodgson's season in jeopardy due to a knee injury ... 54-0 win over South Sydney plunges the Rabbitohs into crisis.
https://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/15/1029113983185.html
