Parramatta Eels roster autopsy: Contract clause chaos, junior nursery raiders confronting Jason Ryles
Parramatta coach Jason Ryles has vowed to limit the option clauses that threaten to turn the Eels’ roster into a salary cap minefield. BRENT READ and MICHAEL CARAYANNIS drop the microscope over Parramatta’s top-30 and junior nursery.
Parramatta coach Jason Ryles has vowed to do everything humanly possible on his watch to limit the option clauses that threaten to turn the Eels’ roster into a salary cap minefield in coming years.
The Eels have a handful of players with options in their existing deals, chief among them multimillion-dollar halves Dylan Brown and Mitchell Moses.
One of those options ultimately cost them boom back Blaize Talagi. Ryles only had a matter of weeks to convince Talagi to change his mind, but eventually he ran out of time as the teenager confirmed his move to Penrith a month after the Eels announced their new coach.
The Eels have another six players in their top-30 squad with options of some form, leaving them at the mercy of player agents and rival clubs.
For a club looking to fight their way back up the ladder, it makes recruitment and retention problematic because they won’t know where they truly stand until the options expire.
Ryles is keen to avoid a repeat in the future, vowing to eradicate any clauses in deals where possible.
“We will look to limit those as much as possible going forward,” Ryles said.
“Every club has [them] but ours just get spoken about more than most because of who they are with. So we’re just looking to limit that, but again, that’s not off the table because that’s just not the way the world works.”
Talagi was the first exit but he hasn’t been the only one. Prop Reagan Campbell-Gillard also asked for, and was granted, a release as Ryles looks to reshape the roster with an emphasis on leg speed.
The club has money to spend next season, although there is far more blue sky in 2026.
“As a general brief, I just think we need to be faster,” Ryles said.
“So right across the field, outside our halves obviously, we just need to work on our speed. Big is good but also we need to be fast as well.
“So that’s probably just very generalised but I think that’s the way the game is at the moment. That’s where we’re living.
“The game lives in this high fatigue, a lot of leg speed. You look at someone like (James) Fisher-Harris – 105, 107kg. That’s a Golden Boot front-rower.”
BLAIZE BLOW
Ryles would have loved to have kept Talagi. The 19-year-old is a contender for rookie of the year after a breakout season. But his path to playing five-eighth was blocked by Brown and the Panthers struck, offering him the chance to partner Nathan Cleary.
Ryles has no sour grapes. He would have liked more time to work with Talagi but he concedes he was likely fighting a losing battle.
“One, I came in late,” Ryles said.
“Two, a fair bit happened before I got here, and three, it’s disappointing but that’s the game we’re in. There’s 17 other teams, there’s only so many players to go around and quality players.
“One thing that you can get out of it is Penrith’s cherrypicking from our backyard. Isn’t that supposed to be the best nursery in the country?
“So there’s a compliment to come out of it somewhere. But at the end of the day, if he’s earmarked himself as a five-eighth, we have Dylan so there’s probably a little bit of a blockage there from the pathway for him.
“If I’m a parent and my son has Blaize’s talent and wants to play six, go and play with Nathan Cleary if Mitch Moses is unavailable.
“Mitch wasn’t an option because we have Dylan Brown. It’s disappointing for us. You always look back on it and what could we have done differently?
“But what’s happened is done and we moved on quickly.”
THE NEW GUTHO
The Eels moved quickly when Talagi delivered the bad news. Parramatta list manager Ben Rogers already had his eye on Penrith youngster Isaiah Iongi and, when Talagi announced his move, the Eels reacted swiftly.
Iongi has been earmarked to play fullback as Ryles prepares captain Clint Gutherson for a new role next season.
“As soon as the Blaize situation unfolded, we moved really quickly,” Ryles said.
“I reckon we had it done in about 10 days. We didn’t want to mess around. I watched a heap of vision of him (Iongi).
“So obviously watching him and then doing a bit of background research on him with some people that I respect, that all checked out.
“Then he’s been playing fullback at the club that’s won the last three premierships and he’s going to come into his third (NRL) pre-season with us.
“So he’s done two-and-a-half years with Penrith and he’s sat behind Dylan Edwards and basically learnt off him nearly every session for two years.
“The other part is a lot of the younger kids now that come through generally tend to miss QLD Cup or NSW Cup.
“So you look at Nicho Hynes and Harry (Grant) and all those guys that come through, they’ve played a lot of Cup. They made a lot of errors there.”
Iongi has played 59 NSW Cup games in the past three seasons.
“So that’s a big apprenticeship,” Ryles said. “A lot of Cup, a lot of lessons learnt playing against men.
“What we saw was like, this kid’s ready to go. Obviously we don’t think that we’re signing Dylan Edwards, we don’t think that we’re signing the finished product.
“But we know that he’s well and truly on the way to being a good first grader.”
THE LOMAX CONUNDRUM
Zac Lomax has been one of the stars of the NRL season and his form suggests he is a shrewd signing. The dilemma is where he will play.
Dragons coach Shane Flanagan moved a reluctant Lomax to the wing and turned him into one of the most dominant backs in the NRL.
“My understanding was that he came here to play centre,” Ryles said, knowing he has a decision to make, but is in no rush.
“So my conversations with Zac have been ‘let’s get back to training, let’s work on combinations and let’s see what’s best for the team’.
“He’s super open to that. He’s not said he prefers any position, so we’ll work it out once we get back to training.
“I’ve just been really open with him in regards to his form over the last six or eight months.
“Let’s just get back and see what combinations work and see what’s best for the team.
“Then we’ll go from there.”
HOLY MOSES
If Parramatta are to do anything next season under Ryles, it will largely hinge on their halfback. Moses is the Eels’ talisman. An elite No.7 with the ability to transform Parramatta from pretenders to contenders.
Ryles has quickly forged a bond with his No.7.
“I like him,” Ryles said.
“I’m a front-rower but a lot of my really good mates are halfbacks. I’ve got to check myself sometimes that I’m his coach.
“His personality, I love how keen he is to get better, I love how keen he is to want to contribute and he’s throwing stuff at me all the time.
“We have only sort of just met and he’s just throwing things at me all the time, which I think is great. Like, I love it.
“He’s an ideas man, but in a really good way. So I really enjoy it. It’s only early doors but I actually saw him again this morning, had a chat and we’re talking about footy, how we can play, what our strengths are and what does that look like.
“The best way to describe Mitch, he’s hungry. He’s hungry to be better as a footy player, he’s hungry for this club to be better and he’s hungry to win.
“And that’s a pretty nice combination for a player of his ilk.”
NURSERY
Recruitment is one thing, retention another. The Eels have one of the best nurseries in the country, but too often in recent years their best juniors have been lost or failed to reach their potential. Ryles wants that to change by tapping into the clubs in their area.
Penrith have shown the way with their production line of talent but the Eels lose nothing in comparison when it comes to numbers.
Their problem has been converting those players into a production line.
“It’s probably one of the most resourced pathways in the competition, if not the most resourced,” Ryles said.
“So again, there’s a lot of time and a lot of effort goes in from a lot of people and there’s a lot of care from the club about the importance of our pathways.
“And I just think we just need to keep making sure that we’re giving those kids a pathway. So that’s something that’s really important to me.
“You’re not always going to get all the kids out of your backyard. You’ve still got to bring them in from Temora, like Charlie Guymer, and from Queensland, and from New Zealand.
“You’ve still got to cherry pick those guys in, but you still got to give that pathway for our local area. How do you make sure that we keep doing it?
“We’ve got to get it done up top to give those kids something to aspire to, to come through and to want to play for Parramatta.”
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