By Michael Chammas and Adam Pengilly
Brad Arthur was at home when the phone call came in. The Eels coach had already left the club’s Kellyville headquarters just after noon, but was now being summoned back for a meeting by the club’s chairman Sean McElduff. Arthur knew his fate was sealed.
At 4pm he walked in, greeted by McElduff and Parramatta chief executive Jim Sarantinos. Ten minutes later, after offering very little in the form of resilience or hostility upon his termination, he walked out for the last time.
The night before, as he and the players waited at Brisbane Airport to board their 8.45pm flight back to Sydney following the shellacking at the hands of Melbourne at Magic Round, Eels powerbrokers were bracing themselves to pull the trigger they’d been threatening to pull for the previous three weeks.
At a board meeting on May 1, the club’s directors decided that Arthur was no longer the man for the job.
Only the board and chief executive officer knew, and that’s how it would remain for the next 19 days as the club enacted a secret plan to convince Wayne Bennett to turn his back on South Sydney in favour of the challenge of ending rugby league’s longest-standing premiership drought.
The Eels, through several conversations with this masthead over the past two months, maintained they wouldn’t do anything behind the coach’s back. They told Arthur the same.
Brad Arthur has been sacked as Eels coach.Credit: Getty Images
His manager, Chris Orr, unconvinced by Arthur receiving the cursed “full support of the board”, even reached out to South Sydney to gauge their appetite in Arthur within 48 hours of Jason Demetriou’s sacking. By that stage, the Rabbitohs had already identified their man.
The Eels knew that if they were any chance of executing “Operation woo Wayne west”, it had to be the game’s most tightly guarded secret.
“My job is to look after the club,” McElduff said when pressed on his decision to pursue Bennett while Arthur was still contracted.
“What I really said was I wasn’t going to play this out in the public and I didn’t play it out in the public. I wasn’t going to jeopardise any chance of the deal happening. My first obligation is to the club and I wouldn’t have been doing my job if I didn’t go and speak to Wayne Bennett.”
Parramatta officials courted Wayne Bennett, but the Dolphins coach is poised to return to South Sydney.Credit: NRL Photos
Those conversations began on May 2, a day after the board meeting that sealed Arthur’s fate, when McElduff made contact with Bennett.
“I promised them that I would maintain their confidentiality, so I’m keeping it that way,” Bennett told this masthead on Monday night.
“All I’ll say is that I was impressed with the club and the way they handled it.”
Bennett told the club that he did not want to enter conversations while the club was still committed to Arthur. One can only presume Bennett became aware of Arthur’s predicament because the Eels bosses soon organised to fly to Queensland to visit the coach at his farm in Warwick.
Eels chief executive Jim Sarantinos.Credit: Wolter Peeters
Secret plot almost foiled before it got off the ground
On May 11, while the rugby league world poked fun at the Eels for not entering the race for Bennett’s services, Sarantinos and McElduff boarded a flight to Brisbane the morning after the team’s 30-14 loss to the Broncos.
Their cover was almost blown when they spotted, and dodged, a well-known News Corp rugby league journalist, who happened to be on the same flight to join his family on a weekend holiday up north.
Two days later, South Sydney officials flew up to Bennett’s farm and met with him about his return to the Rabbitohs. It’s where they agreed to a three-year deal worth around $3 million to secure his South Sydney second coming.
Parramatta Eels chairman Sean McElduff.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
The Eels, though, tabled Bennett an offer of their own. It’s why the master coach was so keen to hose down the Herald’s story last week that he’d agreed to a deal with South Sydney, whose board endorsed his appointment last Tuesday.
On Monday morning, knowing that he was about to pull the trigger on Arthur, McElduff called Bennett with the 11th hour Hail Mary pitch. He got a “thanks, but no thanks”. Bennett’s mind was already made up, with an announcement at South Sydney expected as early as Tuesday.
“When I called him on the 2nd of May he said, ‘I’m a fair way down the track with the Rabbitohs’,” McElduff said.
“He said: ‘I know the club, I know the players, and I feel like I have unfinished business there’. For the last 18 days I’ve been trying to flip him. At the end of the day he wants to be at the Rabbitohs. I tried hard but we didn’t get there. To be perfectly honest, he was always going to the Rabbitohs.”
Jason Demetriou leaving Heffron Park before he was sacked earlier in the year.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
Eels fans will question how long it took the club to act. Some will argue that they should have forecasted the demise of Jason Demetriou at South Sydney given the drama that engulfed the club at the end of 2023 and parted ways with Arthur at the end of last season.
They would have been at the front of the queue for Bennett given he was always leaving the Dolphins at the end of this season.
Instead, they opted to back the coach who still had the strong support from the senior leadership group led by Mitchell Moses, Clint Gutherson, Reagan Campbell-Gillard and Junior Paulo.
So much so that in a recent conversation about his future, Campbell-Gillard indicated his preference was to head to England to play in the Super League once his contract expired in 2025, but would be willing to play another season, only if Arthur was at the helm.
Brad Arthur with Mitchell Moses and Clint Gutherson.Credit: NRL Photos
The Eels, who also denied Zac Lomax’s request for a coaching clause in the four-year deal he recently signed, did not let the players’ feelings towards Arthur impact on their decision.
Moses, Gutherson, Campbell-Gillard and Paulo received phone calls from club powerbrokers on Monday afternoon to inform them of the coach’s sacking before Sarantinos texted the rest of the playing group.
He notified them that assistant coach Trent Barrett would on Tuesday be the one overseeing the video session Arthur had prepared in his final hours as Parramatta coach.
What Arthur had in the form of support from the players, he lacked in positions of power. The board and management were fed up with performances that didn’t reflect the commitment and performance levels they expected from a roster that only 18 months earlier had reached a grand final.
The game that convinced the Eels they needed a change.Credit: Getty
The second-half capitulation against the Dolphins in Darwin in round seven, conceding 40 points in 25 minutes, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The next month of football was the justification of a position they had already formed, regardless of the star power that was on the sidelines through injury.
Perhaps the Eels’ failed pursuit of Bennett speaks to a desire for an experienced coach to take over as Arthur’s successor.
“Not necessarily,” McElduff responded.
“I wouldn’t read into that. His record speaks for itself and he was looking for a job and we explored that option.
“He’s successful, he’s a seven-time premiership winner, experienced and proven to get the best out of his team. It’s all the attributes you would want from an NRL coach. But we’re open to all options.”
Said Sarantinos: “It needs to be a big club and that’s what we have to be aspiring to. We aspire to be challenging for premierships every single year.
“I’ve got no doubt the club is in a far better position now than when Brad came in as head coach in 2014. Given the results of 2023 and 2024 so far, we just felt as though this was the right time for a change.”
Isaac Moses is one of the game’s most influential agents.Credit: Ben Symons
Why Parra pulled the trigger now
There’s a feeling at the Eels that Arthur presided over a football team that ultimately held too much power, enabling a culture that didn’t align with the values club administrators wanted the football department to enforce.
It’s why NSW State of Origin coach Michael Maguire’s name is in the mix, but consideration will be given to whether his coaching philosophies are not too dissimilar to the man he could replace.
Word out of Parramatta over the last couple of months is that powerful player agent Isaac Moses has been leading the push for the Eels to cut ties with Arthur. It’s in direct opposition to the view held by his cousin Mitchell Moses, who was one of Arthur’s biggest supporters.
Blake Green during his playing days at the Knights.Credit: Getty
For the past couple of months Isaac Moses has been telling anyone who would care to listen that Arthur was on his way out and Bennett was being earmarked to replace him. Arthur knew his views, too. What sway the agent has in the club’s decision on the new coach will be crucial.
He acts on behalf of Mitchell Moses (player option in 2027), Will Penisini (player option in 2026) and off-contract rookie sensation Blaize Talagi, who has opted against taking up his option with the Eels for next season and has opened conversations with the Dragons and Knights, among others.
Sources with knowledge of the situation, talking under the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely, told this masthead that Isaac Moses is pushing the case for his client Blake Green.
The demise of Arthur could be dated back to the days after the 2022 grand final loss to Penrith. The decision of Ryan Matterson to take a three-game suspension over a fine cost the Eels dearly in the opening rounds of a winless start to the following season in his absence.
Brad Arthur’s father Ted at his Blackheath home looking over his Eels memorabilia.Credit: Wolter Peeters
The Eels never managed to get back on the front foot, with their plight compounded by injuries and suspension – most notably a seven-week ban handed down to Dylan Brown after he pleaded guilty to two charges of sexually touch another person without consent mid-way through the year.
The foot injury to Mitchell Moses in the early rounds of 2024 would mark the beginning of the end for Arthur.
There would be very few of the 5266 fans who watched Parramatta’s first game of rugby league at Cumberland Oval in 1947 still alive today.
Arthur’s father, Ted, is one of them. The Arthur bloodline at Parramatta runs through five generations and will continue to live on through Brad’s son, Matthew, who is making his way through the grades. In an interview with the Herald in the days leading up to the 2022 grand final, Ted said: “Brad doesn’t want to be anywhere else. He wants to be a Parramatta coach more than an NRL coach.”
Arthur will spend his 50th birthday on Tuesday knowing that no other man held that honour longer than him throughout his beloved Parramatta’s 77-year history.
The drought is now 38 years and counting.
Who else is in the mix to take over?
The aforementioned Blake Green is currently an assistant to Adam O’Brien at Newcastle, but is a Parramatta junior who still has family residing in the area. His agent Isaac Moses also represents Todd Payten (Cowboys), Shane Flanagan (Dragons), Anthony Seibold (Sea Eagles) and Andrew Webster (Warriors).
Other potential candidates include former Titans coach Justin Holbrook, who gave the Roosters his word that he would commit to two seasons as Trent Robinson’s assistant. This masthead has been told Robinson is open to a conversation about him exploring his options elsewhere if the right job presented itself.
Michael Ennis and Shane Flanagan after the Sharks’ 2016 premiership win.Credit: Getty
Jason Ryles, who turned down the Dragons’ head coaching role last year in favour of an assistant’s job under Craig Bellamy at the Storm, is highly regarded and one of several names on the Eels’ hit list. It also includes Craig Fitzgibbon’s assistant at the Sharks, Josh Hannay.
Sea Eagles assistant Michael Ennis is another option being discussed. He has previously worked at the Eels under Arthur and has held several assistant and junior representative head coach jobs over the past few years.
Those who have worked with him say he is one of the best motivators in coaching and has an undeniable passion he instils in his players. The difficulty with Ennis is his high-paying job as a commentator with Fox Sports.
Ennis has been reluctant to give up his media career unless it was for the right job. The Eels job could force his hand.
Parramatta have also discussed a potential pursuit of Sam Burgess; however, he is contracted for next season and is already in negotiations for a one-year extension at Warrington in the Super League.
Other options include former Wallabies coach Michael Cheika, who worked closely alongside Mitchell Moses in the Lebanon national side at the 2022 World Cup.
Another left-field option is club legend Luke Burt, who led the Burleigh Bears to the minor premiership in Queensland Cup last year before losing the grand final.
Burt, who is more likely to come into calculations for an assistant role, helped develop the likes of Dylan Brown, Reed Mahoney, Oregon Kaufusi, Greg Marzhew and Alex Twal during his time at the Eels as a lower grade coach. The Bears currently sit atop the Queensland Cup ladder in 2024.
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