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Today, the NRL news cycle is all about Parramatta. Everybody seems to have an opinion and everybody seems to have an interpretation.
Two articles from Fox Sports have really stood out.
One of them is by an amateur writer, a footy fan describing how he feels unwilling to bring his kid up as an Eels supporter after this last bitter disappointment.
The other is by one of the most reputable journalists in the trade, Paul Kent, who argues that Parra only seem more innocent that Melbourne or Canterbury-Bankstown because they’ve made more of a fuss about the disciplinary process.
Parra salary cap scandal
» Press conference: Parra breached the cap by $3 million, players may be investigated
» Parramatta docked 12 points, fined $1 million for salary cap breaches
» Don’t make the innocent pay for Parramatta rorting the salary cap
» Will the Eels take the NRL to court?
» How Parramatta’s punishment compares to previous salary cap breaches
» Read the full statement from the NRL
I find myself somewhere between those emotional and analytical extremes.
As a Tigers fan, the salary cap scandal necessarily doesn’t mean as much to me personally as it does to a dyed-in-the-wool blue and gold supporter.
At the same time, I’m surprised to find that I am quite moved and distressed by the situation at Pirtek.
To some extent, that’s because Parramatta is a neighbouring team.
While they enjoy some of the fiercest rivalries in the NRL, there’s also a sense in which the western teams look out for one another. When one bleeds, they all bleed.
At the same time, the Eels seem to epitomise the underdog spirit of the game as a whole.
While I’ve encountered haters of virtually every team, I’ve never encountered anyone who genuinely hated Parramatta.
Sure, people might joke about the Eels, sledge the Eels, throw banter at the Eels, but only because everyone has a residual soft spot for them as well.
In part, that stems from a bad run, but lots of teams have had a bad run over the last decade.
The Eels, on the other hand, are the only team in recent memory that have made it to the grand final only to be left without either a clear win or a clear loss.
Sure, they were defeated on the night, but given that the Storm were also stripped of the premiership where does that leave them?
In the wake of last year’s grand final, Wayne Bennett made a convincing argument for why golden point doesn’t provide proper closure.
Compared to the Eels’ situation in 2009, though, the Broncos got enough closure to last them a lifetime.
Some pundits, such as Kent, have implied that there is a sense of things coming full circle here.
The Storm copped it for breaching the cap in 2009, so now the Eels have to cop it for breaching the cap in 2016.
Of course, the NRL has to be consistent in its processes and procedures.As much as I hate to admit the fact, it does seem as if the case against Parra is fairly airtight.
Still, there’s a crucial difference between the punishments handed down to the Eels and the punishments handed down to the Storm.
Whereas the Storm received their punishment after winning a premiership, Parra have received their punishment as they face their first real chance at a premiership since they lost to the Storm.
Say what you like, while the Storm may have technically had the premiership stripped, they still had the actual experience of winning.
If salary cap restrictions had been in place they would never have been able to show up against the Eels in 2009.
There’s a cruel irony, then, in the fact that the blue and gold have been stripped of points just as they’re starting to recover from the blow of that grand final defeat.
While I’m not saying that the club doesn’t deserve to be disciplined, I think we have to understand that Eels fans will now be going through something that very few other footy fans can understand – and certainly not Storm fans.
It’s even harder in that the Eels now look to be stripped of some of the players that have built such hope for Parra fans over the last eighteen months.
With all the debates surrounding Semi’s eligibility for Australia, nobody thought to question his eligibility for Parra.
He may have come of age at Pirtek, but even his identification with the club doesn’t seem secure now that some pundits are raising the possibility of Corey Norman moving elsewhere.
Combined with Kieran Foran’s ongoing issues it’s a sorry time for Eels fans.
Here’s hoping that the rest of the competition will pull together to support them at one of their darkest hours.
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