Eels coach Brad Arthur has strongly denied suggestions the club needs to bring in Wayne Bennett as a coaching director, declaring “I don’t need anyone holding my hand”.
Parramatta has endured a mixed start to the year that hasn’t been helped by the loss of halfback Mitchell Moses to injury, with Arthur now under pressure and Bennett linked with a possible move to the club.
It’s not the first time Arthur has heard these rumours during his lengthy stint with the Eels, and he understands that the pressure will remain unless they start winning games.
“No (I would not benefit from that),” he replied when asked about Bennett’s possible arrival.
“That’s not me being arrogant, but I’ve been here for 11 years so I don’t need anyone holding my hand with how to coach. Either the club thinks I can coach or they don’t. Whether I coach here or wherever, that wouldn’t suit me.”
The Eels are in the bottom four and desperate to bounce back after they missed the finals last year having played a in a grand final in 2022, but Arthur has received public support from Eels chief executive Jim Sarantinos.
“I’ve been here 11 years, and every year there’s some talk of it. I get it, it’s part of the job. We need to win. We were disappointing last week, but we’ll bounce back,” Arthur said.
“I think Jim made it pretty clear a couple of weeks ago around his thoughts on that.
“It’s great to have that support, but the club has put that support around me and they always have. I’m sure if there was something I needed to be concerned about then I’d be the first person to find out.
“Knowing how the club operates, they know my approach is to be upfront, and they’re the same. We’ve got enough respect for each other so if there’s any of that talk, I’d be the first one to know about it.”
Some of the pressure will be eased if Parramatta can beat the Cowboys, with Arthur dropping winger Maika Sivo and bringing in Daejarn Asi to replace youngster Blaize Talagi at five-eighth as they continue to struggle without Moses.
“Blaize has done a fantastic job. He’s a kid,” Arthur said.
“It was tough going down to Canberra because they were coming after him, and he handled it physically which is always the concern when you put young guys there because you don’t want to bash them up.
“When you bring them in, you want them to be able to handle it physically, but when you bring them in, you want them to stay there permanently. You don’t want to put them in for a week, and then if they can’t handle it physically, they lose confidence.
“He learnt a lot of lessons around detail – you’ve only got to be off a bit of detail here and there in the NRL to be found out, whereas you can probably get away with that in juniors and in Cup.”
Arthur bristled at suggestions that he wasn’t picking young halfback Ethan Sanders because he’d been linked with a move to Canberra next year.
The coach wants him to develop his communication skills in reserve grade before he exposes him to the NRL, with many people expecting a natural halfback like Sanders to come in for Moses given they’ve lacked direction.
“We want him to stay,” Arthur said.
“I get it because he’s got two quality halves in front of him – a State of Origin halfback and a Kiwis five-eighth – so opportunities might be limited. But we want him to stay and we think it’ll be good for his development. That’s up to Ethan.
“The only way I’m going to keep my job is if we win, so I need to pick players in the team that I think can help us win.
“I’ve never been worried if players are here moving forward. The year we made it to the grand final, we had five or six players moving on, but I still picked them every week because I thought they were the best people for the job.”
