Asterisk and reward: Time to stop mocking the Eels over extended drought when they were best and fairest team of 2009
I’m struggling to comprehend why Parramatta fans have reached their wits end and neutrals are having a field day with the team that has not won a premiership since 1986.
Sure, it has been an awful start to the year under unproven coach Jason Ryles, with two opening losses already on the board, just 24 points scored and 88 having been racked up by the Storm and Tigers collectively in opposition.
Yet it strikes me that the current troubles might be ignoring the consistent play the Eels have managed during the NRL era.
While a lifting of the trophy might not have taken place since the Crow, Pricey and Sterlo were in control of the blue and golds, Parramatta’s record across the last 28 years is better than some of the haters will admit to.
When the best national rugby league competition in the world rebranded as the NRL in 1998, the Eels set about securing places in the finals for five years on the trot. Three preliminary finals and a qualifying final surround a grand final appearance in 2001, where the Knights were simply just too perfect in the opening half for the Eels to pull back the deficit.
Under long-term coach and perennial runner-up Brian Smith, the team went close in a 30-24 loss that had the Parramatta faithful dreaming of days gone by.
In the aftermath and unlike the past, no stadiums or facilities were burnt to the ground and the team, after a few short years outside the finals, were back in hunt come 2005, where Parramatta launched into four seasons of finals play across five years.
Preliminary finals appearances in 2005 and 2007 bookend a qualifying final in 2006. By 2009, the team was in the decider again and beaten by a cheating Melbourne Storm, thus creating one of the most significant asterisks in the history of modern rugby league.
Let’s face it, we all have in pencilled into our historical minds as an Eels premiership and the foyer of the Parramatta Leagues Club should possess a statue saying the same.
The depression brought to Parramatta fans via the Melbourne Storm salary cap scandal that saw the club stripped of the 2007 and 2009 titles, one that was estimated to be worth around $1.7 million across five years, was never compensated for.
Surely Eels fans were entitled to a t-shirt, funded by the cheaters down south, that clearly identified them as champions of 2009. Instead, the season was written off and soon after, Parramatta entered a few poor period of play as a result.
Seven seasons, two wooden spoons and nothing better than a tenth place finish on the ladder might sound like an awful period for a rugby league club. However, considering the amazing achievements of the Eels in the years proceeding and following, it was one worth suffering through.
From 2017 to 2022, the Eels were in the finals each and every season, barring the poor campaign of 2018 where another wooden spoon was claimed and the club won just six matches for the year. Four semi-finals and another runner-up performance and a loss in the grand final to the Panthers in 2022 has me wondering just what Parramatta fans really want.
Across the 28 seasons of the NRL era, the club has appeared in five preliminary finals, three grand finals, two qualifying finals and four semi-finals. Okay, the three wooden spoons weren’t much fun but what do Parramatta fans need to be satisfied.
The little man on my shoulder whispering in my ear is suggesting they might need a legitimate premiership, a team that turns up each week and a coach proven and capable of getting them to the top of the mountain.
I would argue what that would actually achieve. Such a change would take away the most consistent and reliable laughing stock of the NRL for the neutral; a team that we can always rely on, no matter the circumstances.
Parramatta fans should be reveling in the achievements above whilst the rest of us giggle from afar at their belief that any of it means anything without a premiership win. It is that conundrum that keeps the Paramatta Eels funny and irrelevant.
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