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I thought our issues over the last 2 weeks were all about coaching and not our players.
They all suck FFS!!!
Was thinking when I read the headline that Kenty was about to sink the boot in. Wasn't too inaccurate a piece and he didn't smash us with stoopid comments like his mate Hoops does.Vicious rumours derailing Parramatta Eels’ NRL title push | Paul Kent
It is a lonely place when your short-term future might depend on a fragile piece of bone still in repair.
More when the bone is not your own.
Parramatta Eels went through a light session in their Queensland hub on Monday, trying to find reason in last Thursday’s heavy loss to the Sydney Roosters, knowing what the next month will bring.
It is as tough a run into the finals as any team in the NRL.
They worked on their defensive systems and their left and right-edge attack before it was back to the hotel and quarantine. Teams have to resist the urge to extend their training sessions, and overwork, just to enjoy the sunshine.
The key to their turnaround, though, remains the small piece of bone in Mitch Moses’s back.
He cracked it early in Origin III and hasn’t played since and the Eels have been quietly chaotic.
For reasons coach Brad Arthur is trying to understand they have gone away from playing for each other and focused their efforts inward and that has upset everything.
“We just need to front load our effort instead of making it reactionary effort,” Arthur said to his team Saturday and so, since then, they have been working hard at it.
Right on time, though, rumours of unrest at Parramatta began and now a wild rumour is going around the game that the Eels are quietly sounding out Wayne Bennett to take over next season.
They are as much based in fact as there is the chance of Bennett playing the lead in Baywatch: The Musical. Yet it suits the narrative, apparently.
Whenever a team is in trouble everybody wants to sack the coach, proving there is nothing more friendless on earth than a losing coach.
This risk for coaches has doubled since football club members realised some years back that football club boards could no longer stack the vote and so, suddenly, they were answerable the sometimes wild swings of fan emotions.
Better to sack the coach and save themselves, is the unwritten boardroom law.
That fans are an emotive lot, and don’t often behave according to the rules of good manners or smart business, only heightens the drama.
The spectacular absurdity of this current swill surrounding Arthur is that, so far as anyone can tell, these dangerous rumours began about a week ago when a viewer wrote in to your faithful agent here for the #askKenty segment on NRL360, asking if Parramatta would ever consider inviting Bennett to take over the Eels after he exits South Sydney.
It was as crazy then as it is now, with even Bennett stating numerous times that he will return to Brisbane next year for more pressing matters than coaching football teams.
In the week that has followed the query has had time to complete two or three full laps of the NRL rumour mill until somebody thought that the second or third hearing gave it the whiff of legitimacy, so there must be something to it.
“I’ve heard it,” Parramatta chief executive Jim Sarantinos said on Monday.
“It’s not true. I don’t know where it’s coming from.”
Arthur is contracted next season and so, as far as Sarantinos is concerned, that is where the matter closed.
At this, Parramatta are in territory that last affected South Sydney this greatly.
No team is currently waiting longer for a premiership than the Parramatta Eels.
Their last premiership was 1986, meaning Eels fans are now in their 35th season since they lasted wanted to burn down a grandstand.
The easy solution for many is always, when the wins don’t come, to change the coach.
Half the Wests Tigers fans are currently convincing themselves it is the only way ahead, pressuring the Tigers’ board to reconsider the future of head coach Michael Maguire.
As absurd as such speculation can sometimes be, as it currently is with Arthur, the mounting pressure on Maguire reveals the true dangers if pressure is allowed to gain momentum, which is accelerated by losses.
Suddenly, boards get nervous and so to appease their fans they move on the head coach, all done with the happy coincidence that they also save their own backsides.
The pressure at Parramatta is exaggerated by recent losses and the reputation that the Eels are late-season faders, which is not fully true.
Parramatta won four of their final seven regular season games last year and eight of their final 11 in 2019, although they have struggled with early exits once in the finals.
Arthur, a practical man immune to hysterics, gives these statistics no more attention than they deserve.
“The stats are there but we have just got to be better,” he says.
“We can’t be worrying about that now.”
Instead, he watched Moses back doing weights last week and is expected to name him when teams are lodged on Tuesday afternoon.
Moses was thought to be well enough to play against the Sydney Roosters but Arthur played the long game, preferring to rest Moses an extra week to safeguard any chance of refracturing his back because it was not fully healed.
That speaks of a coach who understands where games are won and lost.
More, it speaks to one that intends sticking around for the long haul, rumours be damned.
Our Footy Club Board are not popularly elected but are selected by the PLC Board based on criteria determined by Mad Max. Who could trust the emotions of Eels fans?
It’s still their duty to act in the best interests of the club and if a better alternative is available especially one that has won 7 premierships than it would be remiss to not explore it.
Relax Avi.
Not really bro. I’m older now and a little wiser but it won’t be the correct move not when there are better alternatives available now.
Do you think he’s a better coach than BA? Is he a better man manager? Recruiter? Is he good for our culture? That’s what you need to ask yourself. To be honest I’m not sure.
f**kING YES!
