Brad Arthur has issued a call to arms to his Parramatta charges, declaring he needs players who are willing to bleed for the blue and gold.
After painful months of soul-searching following their wooden-spoon 2018 NRL season, the Eels are attempting to turn over a new leaf.
Part of coach Arthur’s plan was on show at the club’s Old Saleyards Reserve base at North Parramatta on Saturday morning as 150 players across all four grades as well as their women’s under-18s side took part in a unique training session.
Senior players such as Blake Ferguson, Mitchell Moses, Corey Norman and Tim Mannah trained shoulder-to-shoulder with the club’s junior players, many of them still teenagers.
From Arthur’s perspective, the purpose of the session was twofold.
First, the Eels have identified the need to be a development club. If they can do that, the players who come up through the grades will naturally feel an affinity for the jersey and that will eventually pay dividends in the first-grade side.
Second, Parramatta have admitted they need to be tighter as a group and everyone at the club must buy into their values and goals.
“Unfortunately we had a long time to plan this pre-season. For a long time we knew we weren’t going to be playing finals,” Arthur said.
“We talk about what was important for us and what we needed to go, having players that want to bleed for the jersey was important.
“And that comes from within your juniors, that started really early in the piece that we needed to have two club sessions. We wanted to have our boys do a couple of Saturday sessions. It’s something we haven’t done in the past in the pre-season.”
The idea for the session wasn’t born out of their football department review but addressed many of the issues identified in it, specifically culture and leadership.
Back-rower Tepai Moeroa said the playing squad was stung after management presented them with the results of the review.
“To be honest, we knew it was coming but it just made it real,” Moeroa said.
“When it came out and they said, ‘This is what we’ve found’, it really hit home that we were rubbish. Everything we were doing was rubbish and not good enough. We came last.
“It was real hard to take.”