The Parramatta Eels can write off their 2023 chances if they lose to the Panthers next week
The Parramatta Eels are one loss away from reaching the point of no return, writes Brent Read, providing their round four opponents and greatest rivals with even more motivation.
You can’t blame Parramatta supporters for wanting to forget last year’s grand final. In the coming days, they won’t be able to avoid it.
The grand final rematch is looming and long-suffering Eels fans are about to receive a reminder of how they had their hearts broken again months ago.
Penrith blew them off the park in the opening 20 or so minutes. It was devastating. The Eels had no answer and one of Australian sport’s most celebrated droughts was extended for another year.
It hurt the players. It devastated the supporters. It frustrated the officials. And if the opening three rounds is any indication, the hangover has extended into 2023.
Parramatta’s backs were already to the wall after they suffered a third consecutive loss to open the season at 4 Pines Park on Thursday night.
Rare is it that a side loses its opening three games and goes on to win a premiership. Rarer still that a side has lost its opening four games and manages the feat.
It’s only happened once in the game’s history - 90 years ago when Newtown overcame a horror start to win the premiership. That slice of history adds another layer to the grand final rematch for Parramatta.
Sure, it’s only round four. But history suggests the Eels’ game against the Panthers is season defining. Parramatta simply can’t afford to lose.
A defeat would essentially mean they can’t win the premiership. The drought will go on. Blue and Gold hearts will break again.
The good news is they’ll get some cattle back for that game. One of them will be Ryan Matterson, who remarkably opted to take a three-game ban rather than pay a fine after being charged by the match review committee at the end of last season.
Hasn’t that decision come back to haunt the club? Matterson is a good player on huge money - he may have been the difference against Cronulla and Manly. Yet he chose to sit out rather than stump up.
Matterson is believed to be on a contract worth about $600,000 a season. At worst, the Eels will play 24 games. Let’s say Parramatta pay Matterson roughly $25,000 a game.
The fine - $4,000 - was a drop in the ocean. Parramatta are run by money men. Chair Sean McElduff was a banker. Chief executive Jim Sarantinos a former consultant and partner at finance company Ferrier Hodgson.
Surely they could see the folly in allowing Matterson to sit out three games rather than hand over what amounts to a rounding error for the back rower. If not them, then coach Brad Arthur should have had a word. Hindsight is 20-20 but sometimes that’s all we have got.
So Matterson will return but the bad news is that it won’t matter unless they fix up their defence. The Eels are conceding points for fun, a far cry from last season when they went all the way to the final weekend of the season.
They leaked another 34 points on Thursday night against Manly, the soft nature of some of the Sea Eagles’ tries suggesting Penrith could pile on the points yet again unless Parramatta can find some starch.
That job falls to Arthur, who had his contract extended by another year earlier this week despite the abject way they have started their year.
Arthur had some clauses in his contract that automatically triggered an extra year - he hadn’t met all of them but the club took a leap of faith anyway, pointing to Parramatta’s record over the past four years.
That period coincides with the completion of a review into their football department. Since then, Arthur has turned the Eels into perennial finalists and McElduff insisted he had done enough to warrant a new deal.
“The short story is we reckon he deserves it and if you think about it, if you don’t extend him, it gives rise to the continued speculation about him (Arthur),” McElduff said.
“If you have that continued speculation, it gets even worse. You’re not making decisions based on two or three games, you are making it through a three or four year period.
“That is the rationale. We know it is bumpy at the moment but we are not making short term decisions.
“We did our footy review in 2018 and we have given him what we believe he needs to do his job properly.
“I think his performance over the last four years has been really good. We didn’t win last year but we got there.
“That’s my logic and my perspective. And that’s why he got what he got. He still has to perform and get results but he has some clear air to do that.”
That air will be a little less clearer unless Arthur can find a way to extract some revenge for last year’s grand final.
* * * * *
The ARL Commission made the momentous decision this week to introduce a mandatory stand down period for concussions. Not a moment too soon either.
With a class action underway in the AFL, a warning shot has been fired across the NRL’s bow.
At some point, some lawyer, somewhere will convince some former players to launch action against the game. It seems only a matter of time.
The best way the game can protect itself is by protecting the players. A mandatory stand down period does just that by giving them time to recover and easing the pressure on coaches and doctors to make a premature call.
The issue isn’t going away. Former Manly hardman Mark Carroll became emotional this week as he urged Newcastle star Kalyn Ponga to take his time with his recovery from a head knock and revealed that he had been undergoing multiple tests on his brain.
Carroll played in a brutal era. He gave as good as he got. He knew something was wrong and was inspired to undergo testing when he saw the confronting story of former South Sydney captain Mario Fenech, who has been dealing with his own issues.
“There’s always concerns,” Carroll told NRL Tonight on Fox League.
“There’s news coming down so we will wait and see what happens. They stay in your body. I know they are in my body if I do collision punching in the gym, my body goes into shudder mode.
“I am in the process now of learning more about that. Regardless, Kalyn, please look after your health, it is only a game of footy mate.”
Ponga would do well to listen.
FORWARD PASS CONTROVERSY LEAVES 0-3 EELS FUMING
- Matt Cleary
It was the Josh Schuster show at 4 Pines Park on Thursday night when the skilful Sea Eagles No.6 tormented Parramatta Eels and condemned last year’s grand finalists to a 34-30 defeat, their third on the trot.
Yet in a fast, frenetic, entertaining and error-strewn fixture in front of 13,353 fans, it was towering backrower Haumole Olakau’atu who appeared to put the game to bed when he intercepted and scored near the posts with three minutes to go.
“Appeared” because Eels winger Maika Sivo scored with two minutes to play.
Yet Manly held on. And their fans wondered what they had just seen.
Sea Eagles coach Anthony Seibold put it mildly when he said the game “was a bit chaotic”.
“One of the things we did really well was build a good platform in the first 30 minutes. We were definitely in control of the game.
“And the learning is what we did that last 50 minutes. We’re still building as a team,” Seibold said.
Eels coach Brad Arthur said his team hasn’t lacked effort in each of their three losses.
“We’re coming with effort, and plenty of fight and resolve. We’ve been there right at the death in all three games. But we need more than fronting up with effort.
“We need to execute our plan. It’s down to individuals, different stages, lack of concentration. Simple fundamentals getting wrong which is really hurting us,” Arthur said.
Arthur admitted losing three on the trot is “not ideal”.
“But it’s a good test for us. Good test of character, that we stick together, we don’t start looking to blame anyone else … It’s tough but the NRL’s tough.”
Eels captain Clint Gutherson said: “It’s frustrating. We’re scoring some pretty good footy tries and we’re letting in soft tries … it’s hurt us last three weeks.”
A perfect gift for Brad Parker on his 100th NRL match 🤯 #NRLManlyEelspic.twitter.com/prVIvMutvP
— NRL (@NRL) March 16, 2023
Take a bow Haumole Olakau'atu 🥶 #NRLManlyEelspic.twitter.com/YkdBZHFuUE
— NRL (@NRL) March 16, 2023
In the eighth minute Reuben Garrick crashed over in the northwest corner, beneficiary of a no-look pass by Schuster and an on-ball by Tom Trbojevic.
On the back of field position from brutal straight running by Manly’s big men, Daly Cherry-Evans continued to send Manly’s attack left where Schuster’s lying eyes kept Parramatta’s right edge on edge.
Schuster then look-passed three times in a set, the final one polished by Trbojevic who crashed over close to the posts.
It was 14-nil and all Manly after 25 minutes.
The Eels’ errors continued yet Clint Gutherson scored a fine individual try before Matt Doorey was over three minutes later. When Gutherson had a double in the 43rd minute the Eels were somehow in front 16-14.
Schuster then channelled Manly favourite Phil Blake with a dainty chip that Trbojevic chased and planted.
Manly went further ahead when a long Cherry-Evans kick to the eastern touchline saw Bailey Simonsson’s head explode when he tapped the ball back in play where Parker plunged upon it.
When Schuster bombed perfectly it was Olakau’atu who leapt, caught and crashed over. Garrick’s conversion made it Manly by 12.
The Eels replied with a try to Sivo after a floating long pass by Dylan Brown before Josh Hodgson dummied his way to score in front of fans in the Bob Fulton Stand.
Moses’s conversion made it Manly by two.
Olakau’atu scored his intercept. Sivo scored his second. Sports writers though ‘surely not’.
FORWARD PASS CONTROVERSY
The Eels were left fuming after a highly contentious forward pass call proved a turning point.
Trailing 22-16 in the 65th minute, the Eels looked to have again pegged back the Sea Eagles when skipper Clint Gutherson put prop Reagan Campbell-Gillard over from close range.
However, referee Adam Gee ruled the pass forward, despite replays appearing to show it go backwards out of Gutherson’s hands as he fell backwards.
The Eels’ protests fell on deaf ears and the Sea Eagles went down the other end to score and make it a 28-16 lead before a frantic final seven minutes.
It was the second forward pass controversy in this fixture in the past three years. In 2020, the Sea Eagles were robbed when a Tom Trbojevic pass was incorrectly ruled forward in a 19-16 loss to Parramatta at CommBank Stadium.
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