In early August, Steve Sharp sat outside a harbourside café in Pyrmont and made a solemn pledge. It seemed believable enough.
"If we're sitting around this table again this time next year, Sharp said in an interview with Fairfax Media, "judge me on where we are on the table and financially at that time, provided we're given a clean break by the interfering factions at the moment. We've been criticised and chastised, rightly or wrongly, for only two months of work."
If the last two-and-a-half months of calamity since are any indication, the Eels chairman won't even make it to the Christmas party.
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Many in the beleaguered club considered the shock appointment on Wednesday of Brad Arthur ahead of Jason Taylor as the breaking of a new dawn, a chance for some stability.
With chief executive Scott Seward, general manager of football Daniel Anderson and now the head coach in Arthur now in place - along with a new major sponsor - Parramatta can finally start about with the business of trying to resemble a professional footy club.
If only it was that simple.
The ham-fisted machinations in the past few weeks that arrived at this point means any dawn is a false one.
Sharp had publicly declared Arthur should get the job weeks ago, and the reason behind his thinking was to put pressure on fellow board members to vote that way.
When he was outvoted 3-2, with the majority of directors wanting Taylor a former caretaker who took over from Brian Smith midway through 2006 it created a situation that went very close to making Sharp's position untenable.
The deal-breaker for Taylor was he didn't want to be under the control of Anderson, who had taken on a wide-ranging role at the club that punted him within a year of guiding them to the grand final in 2009.
There have been whispers the Eels board was nervous about Taylor's departure from South Sydney following the infamous David Fa'alogo karate kid incident, and that he also wanted too much cash.
Eels insiders say it was more a case of him wanting a say in the newly created general manager's position, which will result in Anderson being in charge of every facet of the football operation at Parramatta.
Either way, the Eels were so far down the track with Taylor he had all but been assured the role. This surprising backflip in preference of Arthur now embarrasses the Eels and even Sharp.
The chairman has his man, but at what cost to his credibility and that of his board?
To that end, is Arthur now on a kamikaze mission?
Highly regarded at the Sea Eagles, and also wanted by many players at the Eels, he told Manly now was the time to have a crack at the main game.
Having missed out on the Cowboys job, he wanted what all rookie coaches want a start.
Manly's seasoned players could not speak highly enough about his influence this season, but he's now in charge of an Eels roster that seemed reluctant to tackle the corner post let alone a rival player this year.
The talk about Jarryd Hayne being courted by the Bulldogs and rugby union won't go away. Neither will the speculation of Will Hopoate's cold feet.
Those within the club keep assuring that both players have made it crystal clear they will be staying.
Preventing the side from claiming three wooden spoons in a row is only part of the cancer that's infected Parramatta.
When NRL boss Dave Smith sat in on one of their board meetings a few weeks ago, he was surprised about three things: the passion of the directors, how much money the club had in its back pocket . . . and how riven the club was by outside factions.
In other words, Denis Fitzgerald and Roy Spagnolo. Sharp says he's a puppet for neither.
But in the last two-and-a-half months since speaking at Pyrmont that afternoon, the chairman has given little indication he's as appropriate for the job as they were.
BUZZ ROTHFIELD ‏@BuzzRothfield
Tim Mannah ‏@tim_mannah
