Eels coach Brad Arthur has emulated master coach Craig Bellamy in taking some unwanted and undervalued NRL players and building a squad capable of winning a premiership.
Arguably Bellamy’s greatest asset has been his ability to identify talent that may not have reached their potential in the NRL and bringing the best out of them at the Storm.
In doing so he is able to bring players to the club for unders and build a formidable team when they start to reach greater heights as individuals.
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A closer look at the Eels’ roster shows a number of similarities with Arthur being able to bring players to the club that were not at the top of their game and bringing the best out of them at Parramatta.
Arthur signed on as the Eels’ full-time coach in 2014 and has coached 120 wins from 227 matches over nine seasons at the club.
He has overseen a period of sustained success with multiple trips to the top four and the finals, without ever reaching the preliminary final stage until now.
When looking for players who he identified as potential stars you need to look no further than Eels skipper Clint Gutherson.
Arthur brought Gutherson to the club in 2016 as a 21-year-old who had scored four tries in five games for Manly since his debut in 2013 but whose career had stalled after back to back ACL injuries.
Gutherson, who had played mainly as a winger and five-eighth at the Sea Eagles, was thrown a lifeline by Arthur who saw his as the fullback he could build his team around.
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Now 28, Gutherson has scored 67 tries in 159 games for the Eels, predominantly at fullback during his seven seasons at the club and he is signed until the end of 2025.
Gutherson has also become the club’s captain with Junior Paulo and is one of their best leaders, with his ability to set the standards for the side on and off the field, given he is the fittest player in the side and one of the hardest trainers.
Arthur saw that in order to build a successful team he needed to improve the side’s fitness and to drive that change he needed a captain that could lead by example.
“I’ll always be forever grateful for Gutho,” Arthur said in May.
“Obviously we provided the opportunity for him here at the Club but he has repaid us more than tenfold.”
Another untapped talent that Arthur identified was Shaun Lane, who came to the club as a 23-year-old in 2019 after scoring 15 tries in 48 games for the Bulldogs, Warriors and Sea Eagles since his debut in 2015.
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Lane has gone on to score 15 tries in 96 games for the Eels over four seasons and has been one of the Eels’ most consistent peformers.
“Is there a better back-rower at the moment than Shaun Lane?” Broncos legend Corey Parker questioned during a barnstorming display from Lane against Brisbane in August.
“He has been such a weapon for the Eels this season.”
Such has been Lane’s impact on the team that Arthur summoned him into his office after a poor Eels display earlier this year.
“He asked me into the office and felt like I’d been one of the more consistent players in the team over the second half of the year,” Lane told the Sydney Morning Herald.
“He just asked me how I’d been approaching my performances in that time frame.
“It’s a difficult job we do, it’s obviously high stakes and lots of pressure. You’re always sore and there might be lots of reasons why you don’t want to play sometimes. Unfortunately the nature of the game is you have to perform and we get paid accordingly.
“To be a good footballer you have to play at times when you might not want to or things may not be going right personally or you’re not feeling well.
“That’s what the good players are able to do. He agreed with me on all of that when I said that’s how I think things should be and he relayed that information to the team.
Such has been his rise that James Hooper revealed on foxsports.com.au that Lane is on a shortlist of back-rowers to win a spot in Australia’s 24-man World Cup squad.
Another gem Arthur picked up was former Warriors second-rower Isaiah Papali’i, who came to the club looking for an opportunity in 2021.
Papali’i was considered a prodigy from a young age at the Warriors, but struggled for consistency after scoring seven tries in 73 games over his first four seasons in the NRL since debuting in 2017.
Now 24, Papali’i was named one of the 2021 Dally M second-rowers of the year in his first season at the Eels.
Papali’i gave the Eels a real X-factor and point of difference on the edge and he has proved the perfect partner for Lane in the starting back row.
He was rewarded with a monster contract from the Tigers, but such has been his form for the Eels, both player and club are pushing for a backflip on his deal to remain at the club long-term.
It wasn’t all diamonds in the rough that Arthur saw value in. Former Panthers prop
Reagan Campbell-Gillard, who joined the club in 2020, had seen his form drop off to such an extent that Penrith were willing to let the Origin and Kangaroos representative walk.
Arthur, however, saw him as the front-row enforcer to drive his team alongside Junior Paulo. Since switching to the Eels, Campbell-Gillard has rediscovered his best form scoring six tries in 66 games over three seasons at Parramatta. He returned to the Origin arena with the Blues and looks set to earn a call-up to Mal Meninga’s Australian World Cup squad in 2022.
His resurgence prompted strong praise from Cameron Smith this month.
RCG (Reagan Campbell-Gillard) for me, he’d be the equal (best) form forward in the competition,” Smith on SEN 1170 The Captain’s Run.
“There’s no secret to why these teams are still in the finals, it’s because their starting prop forwards are all in good form.
“If you look back at a lot of premierships won by teams for however many years you want to go back, you look at their starting props and the form they take into that finals series, more times than not they win the comp.”
Cambell-Gillard is signed until the end of 2025 and will be a leader for the club up front for the next three seasons at least.
Paulo, meanwhile, left the Eels in 2016 after 53 games for the club, but Arthur was instrumental in bringing him back to Parramatta, after three seasons at Canberra from 2016 to 2018.
The now 28-year-old has blossomed into a representative star playing nine Origins for the Blues from 2020 to 2022 and has played 92 games over four seasons since returning to the Eels.
Paulo has also blossomed into a leader and is co-captain of the team alongside Gutherson, while his brilliant passing and offloading game combined with his power running gives the Eels a real point of difference.
Paulo also compliments Campbell-Gillard perfectly, which gives the Eels the ideal front row partnership to set the tone for the side’s power game.
Paulo is signed to the Eels on a long-term contract through until the end of 2026, which shows how important he is to the side’s future.
Ryan Matterson was another opportunistic signing by the Eels after he wanted out of the Tigers following his only season at Conord in 2019.
Matterson was a premiership winning forward with the Roosters in 2018 and after he cut his Tigers deal short, the Eels pounced.
The 27-year-old has scored 11 tries in 56 games for the Eels in three seasons and was rewarded with the starting lock position this year, pushing out Nathan Brown.
Matterson will be a cornerstone of the Eels pack going forward after signing a monster extension through until the end of 2026.
Waqa Blake was another former Panthers player Arthur identified as a key to give Parramatta some depth and potency in the outside backs.
Blake had scored 34 tries in 88 games for the Panthers before he signed with the Eels halfway through 2019.
The now 27-year-old has gone on to score 27 tries in 67 games for the Eels.
Granted Blake has some deficiencies under the high ball, but his versatility has allowed Arthur flexibility to cover the centres and wing when injuries strike.
There are other areas in the roster Arthur has been able to maintain, despite some key losses.
Semi Radradra was considered almost irreplaceable when he left after the 2017 season, after scoring 82 tries in 94 games over his five seasons at the club.
However, just one season later, the Eels unleashed another flying Fijian in Maika Sivo on the NRL and he scored 22 tries in 25 games in his debut season in 2019.
Now 28, Sivo has scored 66 tries in 80 games for the Eels at an incredible strike rate and he gives Arthur a potent finisher and a power runner, who acts as another forward with his carries out of the red zone.
However, the key to being a title contender often begins and ends with your halves pairing. Not many premiership winning sides in NRL history haven’t fielded a dominant halves pairing at the scrumbase.
The Eels have struggled to find a halfback and five-eighth since club greats Peter Sterling and Brett Kenny hung up the boots and they were the halves during the club’s last title winning season way back in 1986.
In his fourth season at the Eels in 2017, Arthur made the best signing of his time at the club in luring Mitchell Moses to Parramatta, after a mid-season switch from the Tigers.
Under Arthur, Moses has gone from a promising five-eighth at the Tigers to one of the most consistent halfbacks in the game.
Granted Moses has not been able to get the Eels over the hump in terms of a premiership yet, but he has helped transform the club into a consistent top four threat and finals team.
The now 28-year-old has scored 34 tries and 1,050 points in 195 NRL games and earned his Blues Origin debut last season.
Moses has consistently featured at the top of the NRL try assists tally over his career at the Eels and with the exception of Nathan Cleary, there isn’t many better kicking games in the NRL.
The variety in Moses’ kicking game has set the platform for the Eels and when combined with their power game when it is on song, Parramatta are near on unbeatable.
The fact that the Eels beat the Storm and Panthers twice in the 2022 regular season is proof they have all the tools to go all the way and match the best teams in the competition.
Moses is considered a priority signing for the Eels when he is free to negotiate with rivals as of November 1.
His halves partner Dylan Brown emerged in 2019 and despite some early injury concerns, the five-eighth has developed into a genuine match winner and real point of difference for the Eels.
The knock on Brown in recent seasons is that he can drift in and out of games, but given he is still just 22 that is understandable at this stage of his career.
However, Brown has come of age in 2022 and has arguably been the Eels’ most dangerous player this season.
The gifted playmaker has proved the perfect partner for Moses and the duo bring out the best in each other’s games.
When Brown plays well the Eels usually follow suit and he now has the team 160 minutes away from premiership glory.
The sum of these astute signings by Arthur has the Eels on the verge of breaking the longest NRL premiership drought, which stands at 36 years.
Arthur deserves plenty of credit for bringing a host of players to the club and helping them achieve their best football as individuals.
Now the final hurdle is to put those individual performances together as a collective unit and ride it all the way to grand final glory.
