Jason Ryles was the most wanted coach after his apprenticeship with Craig Bellamy – but can he bring a premiership to a team that hasn’t won a title in 39 years?
Challenge ahead … Parramatta coach Jason Ryles.Credit: Edwina Pickles
When Jason Ryles was appointed head coach of the Eels in July last year, a Parramatta premiership player and former club official sent me a text. Aware of my relationship with Ryles who was then an assistant at the Storm, the ex-player wrote: “Tell Jason to surround himself with his own people. That (Parramatta) river isn’t full of eels, it’s full of piranhas. He’ll kill it there if he lives by his sword.”
As it transpired, Ryles’s actions suggest he instinctively reached the same conclusion. He installed Nathan Brown, his former head coach at the Dragons, as his No 1 assistant, telling this masthead, “I knew I needed more experience in the coaching group. Brownie was available, he was my coach at the Dragons, had also coached the Knights and Warriors and had only ever been a head coach. He’s also good with the attack. He’s complements me.”
Ryles, 46, also wielded his own sword when he moved on fullback and captain Clint Gutherson and veteran prop Reagan Campbell-Gillard, as well as sidelining regular forwards Shaun Lane and Ryan Matterson.
Ryles says, “The changes needed to happen but happened naturally. The fullback and front rower got longer and better money deals elsewhere. I also knew I had to regenerate the roster. The roster was older and not as fast and athletic as I wanted. I didn’t know how it would all work out but it went well in the end.”
Jason Ryles with assistant coach Nathan Brown.Credit: NRL Photos
It’s addition by subtraction. By releasing highly paid older players, Ryles has money in the salary cap to reward a greater number of talented youngsters. The downside is a team which can’t stay the distance with the top clubs, as demonstrated in the last two losses, 18-10 to the Panthers and 30-12 to the Bulldogs. “We can’t hang in there for the long period,” Ryles said. “We have a lot of young kids here.”
Ryles’s approach to players is similar to the legendary coach Jack Gibson who won Parramatta’s first premiership, 34 years after the club’s entry into the top league, a drought exceeded by the current one where the Eels last grand final victory was in 1986.
Gibson coached by osmosis, the imperceptible assimilation of knowledge. While Ryles is not Gibson, he does encourage players to figure things out for themselves. As one of his colleagues said of Ryles time in Melbourne, “He likes to plant the seed and let it germinate in the player’s mind.”
Jack Gibson during his time coaching Parramatta.Credit: Fairfax
For example, I asked how he treated Zac Lomax who was signed by former coach Brad Arthur for less money than he was receiving at the Dragons because he was a winger wanting to play centre. Ryles started him there in the opening round, a humiliating 56-18 loss to the Storm but Lomax has starred for NSW as a winger and will be compensated for the money lost by leaving the Dragons via the NSWRL’s payment of $30,000 for each Origin match. “I let him work that out for himself,” Ryles said of a talented player who confused himself and must now realise he is a winger, not a centre.
As for the warning to Ryles that the Parramatta river is “full of piranhas” – suggesting a club with marrow-deep grudges and a witches brew of ancient hatreds – Ryles makes it clear he quarantines himself from what are now called “external factors” and is a player’s coach.
“The biggest thing for me is the support I get from Mitch (Moses) and Junior Paulo. I keep them in the loop on what I plan to do, while always getting their opinion but not compromising my relationship with the other players.”
Ryles has a finely tuned sensitivity meter. He knows a coach must never under-estimate the petty jealousies in the dressing room. Clubs, such as the Rabbitohs, have imploded by the coach investing too much power in two senior players.
Gibson faced a simmering mutiny when he joined Parramatta in 1981 after the club had failed to recover from the 1977 grand final loss to the Dragons – then captained by Steve Edge. A veteran Parramatta player predicted “Jack Gibson will f— this club”, after Gibson recruited Edge as captain, rather than giving the honour to an Eel. Gibson’s Parramatta won three successive premierships with Edge as skipper.
Eels halfback Mitchell Moses.Credit: Getty Images
Ryles has similar faith in his captain, saying of Moses, “We got all the options out of his contract. He’s done until the end of 2029. He’s the cornerstone of where we are going.”
Although a player’s coach, Ryles is not deaf to any murmurs outside the dressing room. He says of chief executive Jim Sarantinos and football manager Mark O’Neill, “At times I can sense their nervousness at some of the decisions I’ve made but they’ve supported me.” Of the possibility of piranha sightings in the Parramatta river, he says, “I’ve experienced challenges in a couple of areas but the club knew it was ready for change.”
Ryles’s journey to the top is different from all the assistants who have been working up the NRL’s food chain to head coach.
Wests Tigers Benji Marshall, like Brown, went straight from playing to head coach and others, such as the Sharks Craig Fitzgibbon, had a long apprenticeship. Ryles spent the interim between playing and being an NRL assistant at the Storm and Roosters as captain/coach of the Wollongong Red Devils, 2014-15. He had his own team.
“It was one of the hardest things I have ever done,” he says. “I don’t recommend it, if you are a front rower. But it helped me enormously because I had to do everything, from putting the witches hats out to dropping players. I had to do all that while being captain, calling the shots and putting my head into the scrum.”
An NRL assistant is excused from performing one of a head coach’s most difficult duties – staring a player in the eye and demoting him to reserve grade. “I’ve drawn on that Wollongong experience when dropping players,” he says, perhaps explaining why he can sensitively deliver bad news in an era when players resemble Ming vases – precious commodities that shatter when dropped.
Ryles’s empathy with players is also born of his own disappointments. “Wayne (Bennett) moved me on (from the Dragons in 2009) and then I got moved on by the Roosters (in 2011).”
In the middle year (2010), the Dragons won the premiership, beating his Roosters. He then joined the Storm but a hamstring injury ruled him out of Melbourne’s 2012 victory.
Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy with Ryles in 2020.Credit: Getty Images
He went to Melbourne, he says, “to play with Smithy.” If learning under hooker Cameron Smith, the NRL’s most capped player made Melbourne the place to be, it is also the club to be tutored by, as he says, “the greatest coach ever” (Craig Bellamy). To follow Bellamy who has “put all the systems in place” was the principal reason he agreed to return to the club as a head coach in waiting, after rejecting an offer to coach the Dragons.
The Dragons claim to have cooled on Ryles when, during negotiations for a five-year contract, the possibility of a pay-out after year three was raised. Ryles says, “I haven’t heard that. Maybe that’s more to do with George (Mimis, his manager). The reason I went back to Melbourne was it was there. They thought Craig was getting closer to the end. If Melbourne wasn’t on offer, I would have gone to the Dragons.” As it transpired, Bellamy will coach into his 24th season in 2026.
Those who live by the sword, die by the sword, we learnt in the gospel of Matthew. It’s unlikely Ryles will die by any sword he wields because the one mentioned at the top of this story was used to gently scalpel away aged talent.
He didn’t live by the sword as a player, being more mind than muscle, more technique than testosterone. A giant in stature, he would sometimes infuriate his coach, even Brown, now his assistant.
Committed Kangaroo … Ryles playing for Australia.Credit: NRL Imagery
“How can we get him stirred up to belt blokes?” coaches asked. The times may not have perfectly suited Ryles as a player, although he represented Australia in 15 Tests and once, when asked if he wanted to tour with the Kangaroos at the time of the September 11 bombings in New York, said he would play in Afghanistan if it meant earning a Kangaroo jumper.
However, the times may well suit him as a coach, given the modern player’s sensitivities, such as the penchant for embracing his opponent after the game and joining an on field post-game collective in prayer. After all, given the NRL’s chaotic contracting rules, why not reach out with a hand to help your opponent to his feet? He could be your teammate next year.
His detractors say he is self-centred but all coaches occasionally confront that jarring combination of selfishness and selflessness. “He’s not a confrontationalist, like Craig,” one former Storm colleague said. Asked to comment, Ryles said, “I’m easy, mate.”
