Rookie Eels coach Jason Ryles admits it’s “going to take time” for the rebuilding club to turn things around following their season-opening 56-18 thrashing by the Storm.
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Following his first game as an NRL head coach, Ryles took “full responsibility” for his side’s dismal performance that saw them leak 46 points in the first half alone.
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Parramatta only avoided the wooden spoon last year with a final-round victory over the Wests Tigers and the club has undergone wholesale changes since sacking Brad Arthur last May.
They moved on 12 players, including captain Clint Gutherson and the club’s 2024 player of the year Reagan Campbell-Gillard, while also losing rising stars Ethan Sanders and Blaize Talagi to rival clubs.
But Ryles also signed nine players which included current and former New South Wales and Australia stars Zac Lomax and Josh Addo-Carr.
Parramatta have the longest premiership drought in the NRL, dating back almost four decades to 1986, and Ryles said supporters will have to stay patient for now.
“I take full responsibility in regards to the amount of change I have brought to the club, but at the same time it doesn’t happen overnight,” he said.
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“I’ve got no doubt over the course of time and the buy-in the players have given us is enormous. It’s one of those things, we got a tough lesson tonight.
“We’ve had a lot of change and a lot of change in personnel. The program has changed and then I’ve changed a lot of things we’re doing on the field.
“So it’s going to take time and a lot of that comes back onto me. There were periods of the game where we had really good periods, but then we just fell away.
“Obviously come up against a quality opposition tonight against the Storm… they made us pay for our little errors.”
Ryles said there were still positives to take out of the loss and pointed to his side’s willingness to improve in the second half instead of dropping their heads.
“There was some, dare I say, positives to come out of it, but at the same time we still have a way to go in regards to where we want to get to,” he said.
“The biggest takeaway for us, I thought a lot of things improved for us in the second half and it was based around our intent into contact… we had a dramatic improvement in the second half in parts of our game.
“Our commitment to contact in that first half probably wasn’t where it needed to be.
“But in the second half we turned that around, within 15 minutes we went back out there and turned it all around.
“In regards to our missed tackles, I think we had 30 in the first half and 17 in the second half, so that’s a massive improvement.”
Ryles gives Storm praise after loss | 06:01
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Despite his lack of experience as a head coach, Ryles was resolute in his ability to lead the club back to finals football.
“I won’t say I’m sitting here wondering what to do, because having someone like Nathan Brown sitting next to me who has done this numerous times has been a great resource,” he said.
“But I’m seeing all the little parts of where we are going to get better, we’ve got some players, two debutants, Isaiah (Iongi) has played one game.
“That’s not an excuse, but the reality of it is, they need to play more footy and the only way is to put them out on the field.
“I know they’re not flash in the pan players, they’re going to be around for many years if they keep tracking the way they are.”
As for star halfback Mitchell Moses late scratching for the season opener, Ryles revealed it was a minor training incident.
“He’d been out for a couple of weeks, he’d been unloaded. We unloaded him and we slowly built him back up to get ready for Round 1,” Ryles said.
“Then we had a little incident which we didn’t expect to have on the Friday before we had a few days off. Simply, we had been preparing without him.”
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