In the sporting world, the word rebuild is tossed around and used when a team, after trying to contend for a championship or premiership and a big shake-up with the organisation from the roster to the coach and potentially staff across the board has occurred.
While the Parramatta Eels are struggling to climb back into the eight, the word "rebuild" was used when the club decided, in the middle of the 2024 season, to sack Brad Arthur after failing to get back into the finals and to continue the momentum they had from making the grand final in the 2022 season.
The Eels would sign Jason Ryles as coach for the 2025 season on a four-year deal, who was the Melbourne Storm assistant coach under Craig Bellamy.
The discourse across the media has been negative about the new direction the Eels are heading in and how the "rebuild" has not been trending positively.
But the definition of rebuild, whether that's in an overall sporting context or the NRL context, needs to be examined closely, because while the Eels have changed their coach and their roster, it's not because they are in a rebuild.
First, the context of the Parramatta Eels' 2023 and 2024 seasons, along with recruitment periods, needs to be discussed.
The Eels lost the grand final in 2022 after just making the top four without losing back-to-back games
The off-season leading into 2023 was getting tougher than just a loss on the biggest stage, losing Reed Mahoney, Isaiah Papalii and Marata Niukore to struggling teams with significant cap space while recruiting Bailey Simonsson and Josh Hodgson.
Niukore and Papalii were getting above-market deals going to the Wests Tigers and New Zealand Warriors, respectively, while Mahoney was getting a deserved pay rise at the time with the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, given he was a huge piece of the Eels spine and premiership aspirations.
In 2021, Mahoney missed the Eels' finals campaign with a shoulder injury, and the Eels lost to the Penrith Panthers in the semi-finals in the Queensland bubble.
Mahoney became one of a few players in the transfer market with leverage in the off-season at the time, given the Eels ran two non-dummy-half players during the finals and had a combined six errors in the 8-6 loss where no team scored a try for more than 60 minutes.
No team scored a point in the second half of the game.
With a spine of Clint Gutherson, Dylan Brown, Mitch Moses, and Reed Mahoney that downgraded to Josh Hodgson, who spent the entire 2022 season recovering from an ACL injury, to replace Mahoney, the Eels struggled with a tight salary cap space that they spent keeping a core group of players who have since then either left the club because they weren't performing well or retired for physical and mental health reasons.
In 2023, the Eels were riddled with injuries that made the chase for the top eight impossible and finished 10th behind the South Sydney Rabbitohs, who were in a similar predicament at the time.
The Eels recruited Morgan Harper and Kelma Tuilagi while losing Josh Hodgson to retirement, as the club now relied on Brendan Hands as the dummy-half, who was on a development deal in 2023.
A 3-7 record to start the first 11 games of the season led to the sacking of Brad Arthur, and Trent Barrett became the interim coach for the remainder of the season.
During this period, Wayne Bennett would sign with the South Sydney Rabbitohs and return to Redfern to coach rather than heading to Parramatta.
The inability to recruit Wayne Bennett as the coach led the Eels to believe in Ryles as the coach to turn the club around.
Beloved players such as Maika Sivo and Reagan Campbell-Gillard were told to look around for offers as the club didn't want them in the long term.
Negotiations with Clint Gutherson went from promising to inevitable that he would leave after indirectly swapping Blaize Talagi, who signed with the Penrith Panthers, for Isaiah Iongi, who was a star player in the Penrith NSW Cup side, to become the Eels' fullback for the future and is signed until 2030 after he signed an extension last season.
Two more promising Eels juniors, Matt Arthur and Ethan Sanders, decided to leave the Eels, with Sanders looking for an opportunity at Canberra under Jamal Fogarty, and Matt Arthur joined the Newcastle Knights, as the Eels looked to separate itself from the Arthur name.
When Jason Ryles was finally confirmed as the Eels coach, he proposed a vision for the club that placed strong values on junior development and pathways, retaining a high percentage of them, and aspiring to premiership glory while finding the true blue and gold roots.
Since then, the Eels have been a bottom-four side for most of two seasons, and recruitment has continued to struggle, despite renegotiating Mitch Moses' contract before the start of the 2025 season until the end of the 2029 season instead of having a player option in 2026 and being able to leave on his terms.
In the Jason Ryles era, the best recruit so far has been Jaydn Su'A, who won't join the club until after this season.
Mark O'Neill has signed Jack de Belin, Dylan Walker, and Jonah Pezet, thanks to a relationship with Ryles, which is not ideal recruitment, even if the team is rebuilding while Mitch Moses is still at the club.
They failed to sign Keaon Koloamatangi, Bronson Xerri, Lachlan Galvin and released Zac Lomax, who wanted to pursue opportunities with R360.
They are also reportedly targeting Moses Leota from Penrith Panthers, who will be 32 by the 2028 season, as he is off-contract at the end of the 2027 season.
Parramatta have not looked beyond Mitchell Moses; the plan has been to put quality players around him and line up most of the players' contracts before or when his expires in 2029.
If this were a true rebuild, the Eels would not have extended Moses in 2023 on a multi-year contract and then renegotiated his terms again in 2025 to sign until the end of the 2029 season.
If this were a true rebuild, the Eels would have prioritised Blaize Talagi, Ethan Sanders and Matt Arthur as the spine for the future and focused on their young crop of players.
The performance on the field has been disappointing, as they have lost multiple games by 6 points or less this season and conceded 50+ points twice.
What's been out of the Eels' control is the injuries their players have suffered this season.
However, the reality hasn't changed that the Eels' "rebuild" is not the rebuild in the way it's seen in other sports; Parramatta have been trying to stay competitive this entire time, and if the club goes into a rebuild, it will be when the club heads into the new decade.
