Let's Get to The Real Issue, Daily Telegraph - By Hayley

In a week where there shouldn’t be much shortage of news about the Grand Final teams, the Daily Telegraph still manage to write a story having yet another dig at the Parramatta Eels. You can view the story here.

Below is the list of the “whopping 8 players” who were either Parramatta Juniors or have played at Parramatta in the past:

- Daniel Tupou: Played Toyota Cup for the Eels in 2010 and 2011: at the time Parramatta had enough depth in this position. If a player wants to sign at a club that will give him an opportunity in first grade, who are Parramatta to stop him. A lot of clubs release players to give them an opportunity elsewhere to play first grade.

- James Maloney: Played NSW Cup in 2007 and 2008: Melbourne and the Warriors have also let Maloney go, how come nothing is said about that?

- Daniel Mortimer: Played for the Eels from 2009 – 2011, including the 2009 Grand Final.
Morts is a player that I did not want to see released and didn’t agree with him playing NSW Cup.

- Jorge Taufua, Jamie Buhrer and David Williams: all were Parramatta juniors but never played for Parramatta. Considering Parramatta is such a large area with 22 different clubs playing under the Parramatta District, it’s not that alarming.

- Jamie Lyon: Played for Parramatta between 2000 – 2004: he “packed up and left” because he was retiring from the NRL. I’m not sure what the Eels could have done here.

- Justin Horo: Played for the Eels between 2010 – 2012: Horo is another player I did not want to see released and also thought he should have been playing more first grade for Parramatta.

Wow, 8 players out of a total 34 that will run on the field on Sunday (note the sarcasm). Three of the 8 players were Parramatta juniors so you can hardly count those as players who were “allowed to walk away”.

Sometimes clubs need to let players go if they don’t fit in with their future plans, it’s the nature of the beast. It happens at every club, not just Parramatta. The Eels are lucky enough to have a large junior district and unfortunately they can’t keep everyone, that’s why there’s so many Parramatta juniors at other clubs. If Parramatta kept every junior who showed promise we would be 10x over the salary cap.

I’m sure if I sat down and did this type of analysis on any club, I would find the similar results. To be honest though, I couldn’t be bothered; I have better things to do with my time.

This is not the first time the Telegraph have written an article like this on the Eels. From memory they wrote a similar article about how many Parramatta juniors and ex-players are playing for other teams earlier in the year. Maybe they should be focusing more of their time on the clubs who are buying and not breeding. Aren’t we supposed to be developing grass roots football? Parramatta is doing this very well and other clubs are leveraging off that rather than developing their own juniors. Now that’s a real issue to write about.

Love,

@LadiesWhoLeague