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Eels coach Brad Arthur has hit back at social media trolls who accused him of nepotism in picking his son by saying Jake’s selection had nothing to do with his surname.
He said on Thursday the club’s injury toll out wide meant he needed to shuffle his backs around and the 19-year-old five-eighth was not to blame for the 35-4 flogging at the hands of North Queensland in Darwin, declaring the whole team collectively performed poorly.
With experienced centre Tom Opacic back after recovering from a neck injury, Dylan Brown has reverted to five-eighth for Friday’s showdown with the premiers at Penrith with Jake Arthur part of the extended squad but set to suit up in the NSW Cup.
“It’s part of footy, he’s alright. The pleasing thing for us is we get a few troops back. He will go back and play Cup, he enjoys playing there and it will be good to have Tommy back and put Dylan back to six,” the coach said.
“It’s unfair but it is what it is. People are entitled to their opinion. I suppose it’s harder when it’s your own flesh and blood but he’s fine. He doesn’t do social media so he didn’t know a helluva lot on what was going on until he got some nice messages from people just checking if he was OK, asking what all the commotion was about.
“We’ve got 19 players available in our squad of 28 and I did what every coach would do is pick your best 17 and I just put them in positions. It worked for us the week before and it didn’t work this week.
“It certainly wasn’t his fault. I just feel like we didn’t compete at every contest and we didn’t have the same attitude or effort as we did the week before,” he added in reference to his son being in the team for the emphatic Round 7 victory in Newcastle.
(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
“If we had played the same way as the week before it’d be a different story.”
Arthur was not surprised by the claims of nepotism and has been expecting those kinds of slings and arrows to come his way since handing his son his NRL debut last year.
“I always knew it was going to happen, it’s just about how you deal with it, how he responds. You can’t lose any confidence. We knew it was coming,” he said.
Jake is off contract at season’s end but his father said it would be up to the young playmaker and the club to decide whether he wants to stay long term but “it’s not something that we need to worry about now”.
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