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HERE’S the first question Parramatta chairman Max Donnelly needs to put to chief executive Bernie Gurr and coach Brad Arthur when they kick off this investigation into the disaster of 2018:
Why is Clint Gutherson our most suitable captain?
Answer this and you’ve gone to the heart of the biggest issue at Parramatta today.
This is not a slight on Gutherson, because he is one player who couldn’t be trying harder to lift the Eels off the bottom of the NRL ladder.
But the fact a 23-year-old with just 50 NRL games under his belt has been left to carry the can surely highlights a glaring lack of judgment in the Eels’ chain of command.
Again, no slight on Gutherson, but every other NRL captain has at least twice as many games experience as the Parramatta skipper.
The closest to him is Roger Tuivasa-Sheck (125), followed by Ryan James (126) and Boyd Cordner (138).
This investigation might find out recruitment and retention is not Gurr’s jurisdiction, and it might not be the coach’s responsibility, either.
But surely someone is at fault — and that person needs to be held accountable.
You go back to the signings of Kieran Foran and Anthony Watmough in recent years, and Jarryd Hayne, who was brought back to replace Semi Radradra.
On a scale of one to 10 — 10 being diabolical — how do these three rate?
Many people are also blaming the fall down the ladder this year on Radradra’s departure. As good a player as Semi was, I reckon it has only exposed a bigger problem that has been brewing for years.
And it was in full view last Saturday night when Gutherson almost broke down in tears after the embarrassing loss to Newcastle.
Donnelly and Gurr sat down yesterday to start the process of trying to get to the bottom of what has gone so horribly wrong.
Maybe they need to look back at the club’s golden era to understand why leadership is every bit as important as talent when it comes to putting together a playing roster.
We spoke with Eels legends Mick Cronin and Peter Wynn about it this week. Both are absolute gentlemen and there was no way they were going to be roped into bagging the current administration or playing roster for this predicament.
But when they spoke about the hidden secrets of Parramatta’s glory days under Jack Gibson, they both brought up leadership and respect as two vital components.
“Jack used to say, ‘We are not going to like each other all the time. But we’ve got to respect each other all the time’,” Cronin said.
And Wynn made an equally valid point. He recalled how one of the first things Gibson did when he arrived in 1981 was hand-pick four leaders to take charge of the 60-man playing group. It included Bob O’Reilly, Ray Price, Mick Cronin and Ron Hilditch.
Not only had all four played for Australia, but they had a standing in the game that reflected the club’s greatest strength.
Yes, they also had the likes of Peter Sterling, Brett Kenny, Steve Ella and Eric Grothe, who were all on the verge of becoming superstars.
But without strong leadership, even Cronin questioned if the Eels would have had the success they did. Four premierships in six years — and not one since 1986.
To this day, Wynn still remembers not only the names of the individual teams — but the coloured tee-shirts they trained in. Because if you didn’t wear the right tee-shirt on the right day, you wore a fine instead.
“We competed for everything,” Wynn said.
“And you not only wanted to do it for your captain, but you didn’t want to let anyone in your team down.”
The big reward at the end of the season was a dinner for the winning team.
But it wasn’t what you got out of it that mattered, it was about what you put in.
Wynn still remembers defending alongside Cronin in the 1983 grand final like it was yesterday.
“It was early in the game and Manly was attacking,” Wynn recalled.
It was just a moment when you had been busting your butt and I had ‘Crow’ next to me saying, ‘C’mon Wally, keep going … keep hitting them up, Wally’.
“It’s funny how little things like that you never forget.
“You drew inspiration from having those blokes around you.”
But right now, Parramatta’s roster has reached a point where Arthur had to call on Gutherson, with 50 NRL games of experience, to lead the way.
Obviously Arthur believed no one else in the group was up to it, with Tim Mannah and Beau Scott approaching the end of their careers.
But it’s not like the tailend for Mannah and Scott has arrived without warning.
A couple of weeks back, we questioned Parramatta’s culture in the wake of Kenny Edwards’s drama — that ultimately cost Edwards his place at the club.
Edwards was caught doing a runner from the police and failed to inform the club.
Not surprisingly, players took offence at the suggestion their culture was the issue.
Then we found out Corey Norman was also in strife for drinking while injured, caught out after images of him were spotted on social media.
A couple of years back, Norman himself was being groomed for a leadership role.
Now the club is trying to get rid of him because it looks like he can’t work with his halves partner Mitchell Moses.
As Cronin pointed out, you don’t have to like your teammates, but you must respect them.
But, apparently, this is not the Parramatta way these days.
Maybe the players don’t realise they have a culture problem because for many, this is the only culture they know about.
Donnelly and Gurr were locked in a meeting yesterday discussing who should be in charge of this investigation while Arthur and the players were in Darwin preparing for Saturday night’s game against North Queensland.
The decision to be made is whether the job should be handed to a person outside the club, such as Michael Maguire, or done internally.
Surely, between Donnelly, Gurr and Arthur, it is time to take ownership, given they work at the coalface every single day.
Fans are also entitled to ask why it has got to this point where you are contemplating paying an outsider to tell you what is painfully obvious. At least for anyone watching this train wreck from a distance.
