Paul Kent: It’s time for the Parramatta spine to give back to Brad Arthur
Parramatta coach Brad Arthur has done his part in leading the Eels out of the NRL cellar, but if the team is to reach the pinnacle his playmakers must forge their own path writes Paul Kent.
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This was the old days when the furthest science went in rugby league was ensuring the navel oranges at halftime were ripe and the beer in the Esky was of suitable temperature.
It needed to be cold enough to be able to slam down in three good gulps but not so cold it would cause the throat to constrict and inflict temporary brain freeze about the temple region.
Failure to follow proper practice was frowned upon.
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Jack Gibson was at the cutting edge, beginning with this little fight he picked with the selection committee each Tuesday night when the secretary refused to give him full control over team selections.
Gibson argued he wanted to pick the team all himself, on the understanding that if the wrong team was chosen then the wrong results would inevitably follow, after which it was the coach, all on his own, who was steered politely out the door while the selection committee turned their attention to the next bloke.
Jack knew in every team he had nine or 10 certainties he and the committee were already in harmony over but that the trick was getting the three or four others into the team, against committee wisdom, even though he lacked the casting vote.
So he came up with the idea to fight them on three or four sure bets, often going deep into the late rounds, before finally relenting, before talk came to the players he really wanted in the team.
“You’ve got your way with the players you wanted,” he’d then say. “Surely you can give me the last couple.”
Point is, Gibson identified way back then how much better a coach coached with good players, as opposed to the other kind.
Saturday night the Eels’ latest coach, Brad Arthur, sends his team out in what is the next step towards ending the longest drought in the NRL.
Not many would group Arthur and Gibson together but, with each season, Arthur has the chance to be the most significant coach in Parramatta history behind big Jack.
Arthur, who resembles a drill sergeant in profile, has come under considerable heat this season, not all warranted, and is still understanding his players.
The Eels shot out of the blocks at season’s start with such devastation many Parramatta fans began growing mullets in preparation for a return to better times.
But as Parramatta limped into the finals, inconsistent not only from week to week but minute to minute, a few sideways glances have carried the same thought: did Arthur overcook them?
The criticism is more a symptom of a modern era where fans have the patience of an eggtimer. The simple maths — 16 teams, only one winner — is missed by most fans, who each year demand either success or a sacking.
It overlooks how important Arthur has been for Parramatta.
He inherited a Parramatta team in 2014 that had won consecutive wooden spoons, and he improved them six places that year.
He then carried them through the salary cap scandal in 2016 into the finals in 2017, through another year of external upheaval in 2018 and then to the finals again in 2019 and now this year, which is the first time the Eels have made successive final series since 2006-07.
As Parramatta fell into the playoffs, though, a new narrative might be more plausible.
The question might not be the coaching but, as Gibson recognised way back then, the talent at hand.
Earlier this week, Matthew Johns described Kalyn Ponga as being at the “Fittler Junction”, which is about as neat a way to put it as you could describe a player at the crossroads.
In Fittler’s case, the junction was the point in his career when he had to decide whether he was going to remain fun-loving Freddie and continue coasting on his extraordinary talent, rounding out a career that would have been impressive enough, or whether he would knuckle down and go on to fulfil that talent and be remembered as one of the truly great players in the game.
Either decision required a sacrifice of some kind, which is not as easy as it sounds for a young man.
Fittler made the right choice, though, and continues to profit from it today.
Arthur made the decision last year to give the team to Mitch Moses, moving Corey Norman on, and it paid immediate dividends given how the Eels began the season.
But there comes a time to deliver, too.
Moses, now 26, is fast approaching the junction.
For some time the Eels have been granted latitude given the youth of their spine.
Clint Gutherson is 26 like Moses while Reed Mahoney is 22 and Dylan Brown just 20. Their total age is 94.
Penrith is just a couple of birthdays ahead, with Nathan Cleary, 22, Jerome Luai, 23, Dylan Edwards, 24 and Api Koroisau the old stager at 27, for an aggregate of 96.
Yet the Panthers have performed at such a level all season long, youth is no longer an excuse or even a factor.
Parramatta will play South Sydney on Saturday night hoping to rediscover the form that launched their season — form that is much needed — to take them to that place they promised earlier this season.
Much will depend on Moses and the Parramatta spine, whose time has come to repay the coach.
The Eels haven’t won a premiership since Gibson built the dynasty, winning three straight from 1981-83, and then John Monie capably steered the Eels home to a fourth and final premiership in 1986.
None of these Eels were even born at the time.
For Arthur, having taken them to the top four from successive wooden spoons, it could be all that is left to emerge as the most significant coach in Parramatta history since Gibson arrived in 1981.
Jack would grunt at that. It means well done.
NOT ALL NEW IDEAS ARE GOOD IDEAS
In a season stacked with ideas, many of them winners, it’s important to not get carried away with every idea being a good idea.
The NRL is considering extending the Dally M Awards so when the Team of the Year is announced on stage, it will show the full complement of a 13-man team, with two wingers, two centres, two second-rowers and two props.
It all sounds neat and responsible, and certainly presents better, but for mine such thinking has it backwards.
Awards are to name the best player in each position. That is their purpose. The intent was not to present a team of any sort.
The Team of the Year was coined later essentially to present the best positional players in a photo together and the individual awards should remain a priority.
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While on the soapbox, any serious talk about the State of Origin series occupying permanent residency at the end of the season has to be suspended given the carnage of this season.
Countless players have limped through to the end of the season, even more are considering when to have surgery, and with each elimination more players are being left without week to week football.
To then try and fast-track those players into an Origin campaign, with no warm-up games, is too big an ask no matter how impressive the sports science.
It also puts an unfair cost on clubs who get their players back into next season.