As a former Eels player myself, I’ve been following recent developments at the club with great interest. While there have been glimpses of what they can produce in certain games, there is a distinct lack of intensity in much of what they do.
They seem to drop off in intensity at key moments, too, which puts the team under extra pressure.
And, of course, their big name players haven’t fired this year.
I’m a massive fan of Chris Sandow but I’m disappointed in his performance so far this year, and he would be disappointed in his own start to his career at Parramatta.
Playing for Wentworthville would not have been on Sandow’s agenda this year.
Sometimes you go to another club and you get into the habit early on of waiting for something to happen on the field, rather than actually making it happen.
In Chris’ case, there’s a pretty simple remedy which I would be drilling into his head if I was Coach Kearney: RUN, CHRIS, RUN.
He started to do that against the Bulldogs last weekend, in the limited game time that he got. But he really needs to do it week in, week out.
Kearney has come out publicly and said that he’s not running an overly structured game-plan at the Eels, which many supporters have accused him of doing.
If that’s the case, then Sandow is the type of player who should be able to run the game on the field.
Part of his problem, though, I think, is that he has a guy at the club like Jarryd Hayne who is just so dominant. Hayne often jumps into the line at unexpected times, which means that Sandow instinctively takes a backward step – understandable given that he’s still relatively new to the team.
So Hayne tends to over-ride Sandow and seems to be calling the shots.
The old adage in football still rings true: you can only have one boss of a football team, not two.
In that case, based on my own experience as a player in that position at the Tigers, Sandow would need to address this with Kearney and Hayne, say to them it’s not working, and determine who will be the dominant voice on the field.
At the end of the day, everyone wants to turn up and see Chris Sandow play well.
Let’s hope he quickly recaptures that spark that made him such an entertaining player at the Rabbitohs.
Gary ‘Wiz’ Freeman is one of the great halfbacks in New Zealand rugby league history. Now an outspoken and popular media personality, he joins The Roar as an expert rugby league columnist.
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