Parramatta Eels only have themselves to blame for shocking season
COMMENT: The Eels’ season from hell can be traced back to one selfish decision after the 2022 grand final that should never have happened.Dane Eldridge
August 15, 2023 - 7:16AM
There are fringe extremists online peddling a crazy theory that Parramatta made last year’s grand final. And incredibly, it’s true.
You’d be forgiven for forgetting the Eels were the second best team in the comp 12 months ago considering how seamlessly they’ve reverted to being a raw wound.
But let this be a reminder: no matter how authentic it feels at the time, success at Parramatta is always an aberration.
With a premiership drought stretching in to its 37th year, nobody really knows why the Eels bother anymore. That’s why their 2022-to-2023 reversion has been totally on-point.
Whenever this club feels like it’s unlocked it’s boundless potential, reality hits and before they know it, they’re dropping down the table again as quickly and as sloppily as an RCG knee.
Usually Parramatta’s issues are deep-seated and physiological, the kind beyond anything that can be outlasted by Gutho working his bum off.
Most can be traced back to rogue administrative malpractice or Sterlo’s retirement, but this time around they’ve punctured their own hard-earned confidence themselves.
It began with the egregious decisions to surrender Reed Mahoney and Isaiah Papali’i, the former which was compounded by stumping up equivalent cash for the older and more rickety Josh Hodgson.
This was exacerbated by the actions of Dylan Brown and his long-term suspension, plus the Mitchell Moses contract saga which dragged on so long it called for a shot clock.
But in the Eels season of self-inflicted woe, none match the Ryan Matterson suspension as one of the wildest gutter-balls of all time.
A deeply spiritual man of faith, Matterson sat out the first month through suspension to save paying a paltry $3000 fine.
By all likelihood the savings went directly to the parish collection plate – which is fine, if there’d been help in return from upstairs.
With the Eels losing their opening five games by squeaky margins, not only did Matterson’s decision look like a clanger in hindsight, it also appeared God didn’t get the message and/or is a closet Dogs man
All in all, the Matterson decision symbolises the Eels’ state of woe.
A brighter future beckoned in the minutes approaching last year’s grand final, but only 80 minutes later they’d been eviscerated in prime-time and have yet to recover.
It’s continues the existential decrepitude of a club that has survived two global financial crises, countless PMs and seven waves of feminism without a trophy.
The club is in the bizarre position of being an attractive financial powerhouse with a core of anguish, kinda like a Ferrero Rocher you bite only to find it’s filled with carob.
Parramatta haven’t won a premiership since 1986 — the longest drought of any NRL team.
No wonder Eels fans live rooted in the past yearning for the glory days of the team’s superstars, and I’m not talking about Sterling or Brett Kenny.
The bloke they miss most is Kenny Edwards.
They’d love to have him back out there again in the blue and gold, if only to fake cramp to run down the clock on another godforsaken season.
