NRL circles have openly questioned the consistency of Eels playmaker Mitchel Moses, citing his new $800,000 per year deal requiring a greater level of performance week in week out.
Speaking on Channel 9's Wide World of Sports, Eels legend Peter Sterling claimed Moses has "got to live up to that price-packet and earn it every week".
"Only time will tell" highlighted Sterling, "When he's great he's fantastic but when he's not so good... the team struggles."
"He's a key player for them and I've said before he's the personality of the team in many ways."
In a chat to coach Brad Arthur, Sterling also lamented Moses "had a bit of attitude about him" and was a "cocky individual" despite attempting to address this over the off-season.
Fox Sports Expert and former Cronulla and Canterbury player Michael Ennis also echoed this view after the Eels heavy loss last Saturday to the Sharks.
"When he's been in that mood he's as good as any other half in the competition. But there's been other weeks where [he has been] unsighted."
Moses' game last week arguably summarised this point, with an error along with seven missed tackles and a missed conversion pairing with two try assists and some critical plays moving forward for the Eels.
Moses is the key player for the Eels on the fringe of a solid spot in the top eight despite their negative record. A key clash with the Broncos looms this week in the busy Origin period, with a chance for the Eels to jump a game ahead of the Broncos and fix their poor run of form and percentage.
Moses is still young and his best football is clearly ahead of him but the Eels need performances of consistency moving toward the pointy end of the season. Their #1 playmaker has his chance to silence questions over his very public contract with on-field Eels results a good start to doing this.
Moses will be able to play better if the forwards become more dominant and give Moses the space needed to create play, the forwards are very lazy therefore the halves including Moses have to much defending to do the example is the number of missed tackles, Cronk doesn’t have to do that many tackles and the same goes to other creative halves.
Whilst I can understand, and agree to an extent with Stero’s comments, we need to give him (Moses) a chance to form/build a combo with a halves partner too.
3 different inexperienced 5/8’s for 3-4 games each in a season, in a rebuild/contract year, for a player that was shopped around etc etc,. well I think we have to be fair.
I’m happy with his re-signing.
Can hardly say he’s being overpaid. Any other established ‘genuine’ halfbacks bar probably Townsend and Green are on more or least equal.
1mill+
Cronk
DCE
Foran
Taylor
Morgan
800+
Brooks
Pearce
Can hardly say he’s being overpaid. Any other established ‘genuine’ halfbacks bar probably Townsend and Green are reportedly on more or least equal.
1mill+
Cronk
DCE
Foran
Taylor
Morgan
Cleary
Hunt
800+
Brooks
Pearce
Reynolds
Definatley up there with these blokes in class and probably ahead of some. Dont disagree with Sterlo but why have a crack at the blokes contract. The percentage he takes of the cap compared to other halves with similar output is right on par.
“ Definatley (definitely) up there with these blokes in class “
Hahaha are you joking? He is nowhere near close to most of them guys, brooks and Taylor maybe.
Cleary is certainly way over paid & not worth what he’s getting right now. Still , he’s not on a million plus. It’s under that amount.