Eels in the media

[T.S Quint]

Here come the excuses again. Typical loser mentality that so many eels forum supporters have. I get that there are some players that won't care and will want to go to open market and test for their true value, but the majority at that level will be very happy to sign on to their junior/development club to play with their mates and stay home/surrounding that they have set up already at that age, if the incumbent club shows them the attention and love that all athletes/people crave.

By slowing down the process and holding off it make them jittery and then they start to look at their managers to make sure they are still wanted and to start getting offers just in case the incumbent club doesn't come through. Then before you know it another club seizes the opportunity and they are gone.

You snooze, you lose. No excuses!

What a bunch of rubbish.
You think Stefano would have been happy to sign on months ago for less money than he knew he was worth?

He seems to be the only player that we have lost that people are up in arms about, and both he and his manager would have known that there would be interest in him from other clubs due to his talent and rep duties. In no way can you just sit back and say we should have just done this ages ago when Signings are a two-way street.

Maybe he would have signed with us for less. We don’t know that. I’m not about to crucify the club for something that may have been out of their control when I do t know the specifics of it all.

You on the other hand seem perfectly happy to shit on the club despite knowing absolutely nothing about what’s actually going on apart from what you see on the surface.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

Parramatta doesn't develop its own talent. Of the starting 13 ATM only Drown, Mahoney, Jnr and Matterson are Eels developed players.

And even then we had to go to the player market to get Jnr and Matterson back.

Doesn't seem like an efficient way of managing the cap.

All the backups on minimum salary are what makes the cap work, and we must have plenty of them in our top 30 or we wouldn't have such an exciting top 17.

 

[T.S Quint]

Or if we had some sense and spine we would get together with the other major NSW development clubs like Canberra, Penrith and New Castle and unite to demand the ARLC protect and/or create some kind of compensation of sorts to combat exactly this sort of thing or else we will abandon development altogether and mean it.

For mine one of the best ways to stop a lot of poaching from other NRL clubs is to make whatever they offer a junior player be counted double on their salary cap.

Tell them that if we don't get real action on this issue we will become a blood sucking leech club just like the Roosters and see how the hierarchy like that. Knowing them though, it would not surprise that they wouldn't see the ramifications for the sport down the line and still did nothing.

At least I can somewhat agree with you here that some sort of compensation from the NRL for spending so much time and money on juniors when other clubs do very little would be nice.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

Best article i have read from the TCT in a while, it can be a love in some times but it's good to see an article cutting through some of the BS.

Ping @Delboy he was spot on. Waits for the spin from Pou and others.

The spin is coming from the wrist slitters. OH NOEZ WE LOST SOME SLOW MIDGET WITH THE SAME SURNAME AS MICK CRONIN TO THAT POWERHOUSE THE TITANS SOME OF THESE KIDS PLAYED AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLBOYS LIKE JAMAL FOGARTY THIS WILL COME BACK TO BITE US ON THE ARSE!!!

 

[T.S Quint]

Would be better for everybody if the NRL took over the complete development of juniors and just introduced a draft for teams to pick players from.
We would lose the old ways of following players through the grades of your team, but it’s a small amount of people who do that anyway (sorry to the likes of Delboy, Stagger, Obscene Assassin and others who clearly have a huge interest in this).

 

[Poupou Escobar]

Lowball Juniors, let him get into the open market giving other clubs the chance to offer overs and we won't match it( huggy crew tell us do you really want to match silly overs????) . Bring back years later on big money rinse and repeat......


Welcome to Parramatta the development club.

If we had to pay overs to re-sign him as a 20 year old why wouldn't we have had to pay overs to re-sign him as a 23 year old? We may as well just wait until he's a genuine first grader and pay overs to bring him back at 23. It would be no different to if we'd kept him the whole time, but with the benefit of not paying overs while he was playing reserve grade.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

Just a point the majority of these juniors were not looking at development contracts, they were moving into U20s, and some still,in Ball. We were always in the position of losing players but this appears to be a result of the new "committee system" on retention and contract decisions under the control of the HOF.

The interesting point would be if there is a measured response from the club, the HOF has been invisible since appointment, that's good and bad, the hope is we have better players coming through , but who knows. That's shared by most who follow the juniors, we don't have any information .

Are these the same juniors who won a single finals match across all three grades in 2019?

 

[Poupou Escobar]

What I would like is some context to this debate. We have a list of who we chose not to sign, however no list of who we retained.

Clearly the retention cohort made calls here on who they want in their depth chart and who they don’t. Criticism is only warranted IMHO when it is shown that we are worse off and that the depth chart of retentions are a poorer squad.

They couldn't have been much worse than they were this year.

 

[Poupou Escobar]

You may think that the sky is falling, I just think that we don't know what it means to be a development club. So why kid ourselves any longer, waste so many resources, time and money and just adopt the Roosters model.

I hope we've adopted the Roosters' model. They have been killing it in all the grades above Harold Matthews by poaching junior talent and not bothering with loyalty to local kids.

This century Parra and the Roosters have won the following numbers of junior rep comps:

Under 16s (Harold Matts)
6 Parra
0 Easts

Under 18s (SG Ball)
2 Parra
3 Easts

Under 20s (NYC/Flegg)
0 Parra
3 Easts

Not to mention the greater numbers of NRL players the Roosters have brought into their top 30. They have killed us for junior development and I hope we've learnt from them. We've been focusing on the wrong end of the development spectrum. Giving a f**k about Harold Matthews is clearly a waste of resources, but also can blind administrators (and fans) as to the quality of the players. A bunch of above average players in the same team makes a strong under 16s team, but it also makes all the players look better than they are because they have better on-field support from their team mates. The end result is that they are literally rated higher than they should be.

 

[hineyrulz]

Pou in full spin mode, surely the club offer you a job as media manger mate???

 

[Poupou Escobar]

Facts are spin now are they?

 

[hineyrulz]

Your dribble aren’t facts.

 

[Joshuatheeel]

Did you miss the part that it should never have gotten to this point? The same tool for every job type of process is not working at junior level. We should act much quicker with the kiddies is the point.

Ah ok, so who from our juniors that left and are here in the 18-21 year range should be on development contracts in 2021? And you can only select 6?

And who should of the be promoted to the top 30 in 2021 to?

 

[Poupou Escobar]

Your dribble aren’t facts.

Saying the Roosters aren't a development club is dribble. I posted facts to show they are.

 

[hineyrulz]

Saying the Roosters aren't a development club is dribble. I posted facts to show they are.

They develop sombreros.

 

[strider]

Best article i have read from the TCT in a while, it can be a love in some times but it's good to see an article cutting through some of the BS.

Ping @Delboy he was spot on. Waits for the spin from Pou and others.

LOL, their articles are shit until they agree with you? ...

 

[hineyrulz]

LOL, their articles are shit until they agree with you? ...

I'm like @Gronk with the Telecrap

 

[Gronk]

I'm like @Gronk with the Telecrap

Don’t be pickin on me merkin.

 

[hineyrulz]

Don’t be pickin on me merkin.

Never mate.

 

[Gazzamatta]

Obviously we rated Stefano given we increased our offer twice once The Tigpies became interested.
Its now also been commented that our final offer wasnt far removed from The Tigpies with the determining factor being a promise of greater opportunities at Wests.
Correct decision or not I have no idea. Only time will tell.
I wouldnt be surprised if playing a badly out of form Tepai and a declining Gower ahead of giving the Kid a sniff last year created a seed of doubt. 15 minutes may have been a real positive negotiation tactic. How many times last season did our 17th man get very little game time?
I guess we will soon know if our decision was correct.
Given hes an Eels junior I wish him well.