Hahahaha sorry I had a very, very rare sleep in. Same person from inside the club shared this as things I have shared previously.
I’ll do my best to remember as I had a thousand beers yesterday. Should have not put my Ring cameras on mute lol.
Feedback I got was a lot of frustration between the playing group and Jim CEO, Mon, Ben Rogers is it?, and some other guy from R&R.
Matto has openly told pretty much anyone that he is “collecting his paycheque”. He is not necessarily seen as disliked as he gives the impression of caring more about family and his devotion to religion. Massively upsetting to hear we waste a top 30 spot in him though.
Mitch Moses is intense, like really intense internally. Was told he was picked because he is our best player, not because he is our best leader. In fact, far from it.
Moses is apparently VERY pissed off with the club atm. We have got “a shitload of cap space” but I was told we haven’t even come close to landing one. The only thing of note we’ve really landed was Pezet who is a rookie and gone after his learning year with the club.
An example I was told was when Talagi was being courted to stay, we rolled out Steve Ella. The comment was no disrespect to Steve Ella, but Talagi didn’t even know who he was, let alone admired him. Penrith rolled out Nathan Cleary and it was a no contest!
We have this new super impressive training facility and wonderful setup, loads of cap, great brand but I was told “no one wants to come to Parramatta”.
The thought from the playing group is one of frustration and anger around the squad and depth. There have been times when they finish training and all put their hands in and say “1,2,3 f**k Jim!”. I can only assume this is not around JR but I didn’t ask.
Ryles plays an extremely structured footy and outgoing players have openly criticised the lack of “off the cuff” footy with offloads. Dylan Brown despite getting a massive offer was not enjoying the style of football much. Carty has been very open with his criticism of the teams style. My comments to this was the older style of footy won us nothing and we agreed.
There is a school of thought we are effectively playing a very Melbourne style without the cattle to make it effective. I’m told that’s the thought from Moses and a couple senior players.
I am not implying they are unhappy under Ryles, that’s not was not what was said to me I want to be clear on that. In fact the feedback was the “footy culture” seems really good. But there is significant disharmony between the playing group and Jim and Co.
Players are concerned about the impression people aren’t lining up to knock on our door. None of the Melbourne players had any interest in us with the Lomax swap.
This could absolutely be Juniors last season, but he may go another one. Apparently BA is still a “fatherly figure” to Junior and they talk every day. There is a thought BA will take him wherever he is in an immediate coaching capacity. I believe this will be a huge opportunity missed if it happens.
I was told Gutho absolutely hates Parra now. He has told others he will not have anything to do with the club post football which although I’m not a huge fan of him personally he was our best player for a very long time. He is far from a leader though but I had suspected that. There is a school of thought he should have been playing centre and at the same time been able to turbocharge Ionghi’s development whilst finishing as a Parra legend, that’s all gone now.
The comments to me are that we don’t really have any legends of the club that are relevant. We have Cayliss, Burt, etc but they are hardly considered legends of the game broadly speaking and even Hindy never won a competition. We just don’t have the strategy or firepower.
I’m sure there is more stuff I’ll remember but wanted to share. I’ve tried to seperate my opinions for another post and keep this as close to how it was said to me directly.
Hope you guys bloody appreciate this effort during my headache lol.
