Eels coach Brad Arthur has faced some tough questions over his future after his side’s 48-16 loss to the Storm.
Parramatta dropped their fourth straight game after another second half fade out which Arthur labelled as “embarrassing”.
The Eels trailed 16-10 at halftime before conceding six tries in the second 40 minutes.
“The second half was embarrassing. We fell in a hole for a period of 10-15 minutes and lacked resilience in that period and just kept digging the hole deeper,” Arthur said in his post-match press conference.
“It’s happened too often in the last month or so. When we get under a bit of fatigue, we lack residence in defence and we drop our head when things go against us.
“We’re putting ourselves at a level of fatigue from a lot of the stuff we’re doing in the first half.
“We only had 30% possession in the first 15 minutes so we’re our own worst enemy with that and it catches up with you and we’re not resilient enough to hang in there and just defend one set.”
The Eels are battling on the injury front, with their two best players in Mitch Moses and Clint Gutherson out.
Arthur refused to use it as an excuse though, calling on the players to step up in the leadership department.
“They’re (Moses and Gutherson) great leaders, but it’s an opportunity for other guys to step up. I feel like everyone has to lead themselves don’t they? We have 13 guys on the field, so instead of trying to worry about who is going to lead the team, we got to worry about leading ourselves instead and worry about what our job is,” Arthur said.
Arthur was then grilled about his future and whether he thinks he’s the man to lead the Eels out of this hole.
“It’s going to be the same but I’ll never walk away from a fight and we’re going to keep fighting hard,” he said.
“I still believe in this team but they need to believe in themselves and believe they can get themselves out of it with one set of six in defence.
“I do (know there will be external pressure). The facts will be at the end of the year but we need to get better at managing the game while we have Mitch out to allow us to not have those periods of 10-15 minutes where we are under the pump.
“It’s five minutes after the game but there hasn’t been any indication from the club (that he’s under pressure). All they want to do is get around us and support the players, coaches and the rest of the team but at the end of the day, what matters is what we do for the 80 minutes on the field.
When asked if the external pressure from the media and fans was unfair, Arthur said he has no choice but to control what he can control.
“Nothing is fair in our game,” he said.
“We can’t be sooks about it, we just got to get on with it and we can only go on the fact and the facts are is we aren’t playing good enough and I’m the coach of the team and we’ve got to do something about it.”
The press conference was then cut short after an Eels media staff member interjected and said “Ok, that’s it”.
Parramatta have arguably had one of the toughest draws in the NRL so far but they get a great chance to stop the slide when they take on Souths next weekend.