Eels don't have the team needed to mix it with the rest . . . unfortunate
Rubbish. The club has 6 internationals and 2 Origin reps.
They just had a coach groomed under another coach whose reputation FAR exceeds his ability.
We have a long standing tradition of starting slowly. This goes back to the early Brian Smith days. Our GF years - and remember we had f*cking gun sides in September 01 and 09 - were seasons that started in shoddy fashion. In fact I remember the season we started by putting 60 on Penrith - and got towelled by Brisbane in the first week of the finals. We needed Newy to beat Saints to stay in, and what happened? Joey Johns broke his neck!
We need things to change though clearly. Kearney needs to go - or dramatically improve our defence - which was good last year. Then we need Ben Smith back to tighten up our ruck defence. Not to mention Hayne. With him in out team we weve been great this year - but we only had him for 15 minutes ](*,).
I also think Kearney needs to show some ticker and relieve the captaincy off Hindy. Tim Mannah was barking at the troops in the last minute last night - it's his time. Hindy is respected and liked, but not feared. Nathan Cayless was a great skipper for us - we always looked far better when he was on the field. This year you cat say the same about Hindmarsh. Our best game - against the Warriors, was when Hindy was injured. It reminds me when Ray Price retired and Sterlo became skipper. We were premiers in possibly the best GF match up ever over the supreme Canterbury side under Waren Ryan - and we lost 2 players in their late 30's - one who only played 2 games in his last year - and missed the finals. The only time the forwards fired up that year was in a game against Souths when Sterlo got hit high, and the likes of Bugden fired up and we smashed them. But we were firing up all season the year before.
Our recruiting has been good. Sandow and Roberts have been great for us - Sandow has scored half our tries. Tonga is a major disappointment though.
There is no way we wont win a game, but there is no way we will make the finals either. It reminds me of the year Cronulla lost a heap of games by a few points, the next year the got a new coach (Sticky), and they started winning them by a few points - and came equal first.
Kearney also needs to put a major rocket up Justin Poore and Fui - they did less than half the meters that Mannah did and had a tad more game time.
