‘Punched in the face’: Inside Ryles’ Eels revolution... and brutal purge set to spark NRL rise

There’s never really been a manuscript for a rookie coach on how to survive an NRL baptism, and less so how to behave in the 80 minutes each week when you’re either a hero or one day closer to being sacked.

The older ones still all do it differently.

Watch every game of the NRL Telstra Premiership Finals Series before the Grand Final, LIVE with no ad-breaks during play on Kayo Sports | New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.

Wayne Bennett sits there with arms folded, occasionally talking out of the side of his mouth, looking like he has nothing better to do than coach rugby league.

Craig Bellamy combusts every few minutes, stomping to the back of the box when he sees something he doesn’t like, scattering staffers like ten pins.

Ivan Cleary has a permanent expression etched on his face, somewhere between complete Zen and mildly amused.

Ricky Stuart rarely bothers with the box, the most open of open books in the freezing Canberra sideline air.

Then there’s Jason Ryles, the greying old prop forward who leaves all the gadgets and contraptions to others, and rides most plays like a fan in the stand.

If he’s upset, you know about it. If he’s happy, you know about it. And it might only be his first year coaching in the NRL, but he already has a signature cut-to-me television moment: standing up with an open palm and banging the glass in the coaching box like he’s just backed the last winner at Randwick.

“He can be really calm, and then he can be at it,” says former Wallabies and England rugby union coach Eddie Jones, one of Ryles’ coaching mentors. “But then he can settle down, then break a walkie talkie or radio, and then he’s at it again.

“That sums him up.”

How to sum up Ryles’ first year in charge of the Eels and perhaps the toughest coaching job in the NRL – trying to end a crippling 39-year title drought and the expectation of an enormous fan base – is not an easy task.

The measure of any team’s success usually starts with making the finals, and on that score, it will be a disappointing year for Parramatta. But if there was one team which won’t make the play-offs you would really love to watch for longer given their current form, the Eels are the popular pick.

It’s a long way from an opening round they best forget. It’s hard to think of a coach in modern times who had a more brutal introduction in his first NRL game, scorched 56-18 by his old boss Bellamy and the Storm. It was 46-6 at half-time. If there was a mercy rule, it would have been enacted.

Eels pip Warriors in controversial end | 01:18

“It was a Mike Tyson moment, ‘everyone’s got a plan until you get punched in the face’,” says Eels chief executive Jim Sarantinos. “But he stayed true to the plan.”

Ryles has had excuses, most notably Mitchell Moses only playing half of their matches with significant foot and calf injuries. But after bumbling their way through the first month of the season when they were rooted to the bottom of the table and winless until round five, Ryles has morphed his team into one, even the harshest critics would argue, looks like it’s going somewhere in the years to come.

When he first presented to the Eels board to succeed Brad Arthur in what was a virtual shootout with Josh Hannay (who will take over the Titans next year), Ryles clearly explained his vision for how the Eels would scale a mountain they’ve never been quite able to reach in recent decades.

He’d already been through a process with the Dragons. St George Illawarra offered their former favourite son a four-year deal to take over from 2024. Not comfortable with who would surround him in terms of football IQ at the Red V, Ryles sensationally knocked it back.

He went back to Melbourne where it was assumed he would succeed Bellamy when he retired. Within weeks of returning to the Storm, Ryles and the club’s owners realised Bellamy wasn’t going to leave any time soon.

Fox thriving in Eels colours | 01:04

One of his first plans was to make Parramatta faster right across the park. He sat down with captain Clint Gutherson, the heart and soul of the club, and told him he was free to leave if he could find a longer-term deal elsewhere. The Dragons pounced. Another veteran Reagan Campbell-Gillard left too.

“The speed, agility and quickness were the focus,” says Parramatta general manager Mark O’Neill of the Ryles way. “Once we knew that, it was very easy to train that way, but we could also recruit that way.

“The new guys to the club in Jack Williams, Isaiah Iongi, Joash Papalii and Josh Addo-Carr, even Dylan Walker has good leg speed through the middle and experience, it’s really sharpened us up. The boys have had to adapt to that.”

Ryles will start next season with arguably one of the swiftest roster turnovers in recent NRL memory.

He has shipped so many players out of the club, or seen others retire early, it’s an almost unrecognisable squad from a couple of years ago. On top of allowing Gutherson to walk for one-gamer Isaiah Iongi, who is in the conversation for buy of the year, and Campbell-Gillard, have been the permanent or temporary exits of Maika Sivo, Ryan Matterson, Shaun Lane, Bryce Cartwright, Joe Ofahengaue, Matt Arthur and Brendan Hands.

If Bailey Simonsson leaves Parramatta over the off-season, coupled with Dylan Brown’s astounding 10-year defection to the Knights, it will leave the Eels with just three players from their 2022 grand final side: Mitchell Moses, Junior Paulo and Will Penisini. It’s a helluva roster purge in a short space of time.

Debate ignites over 'Ryles revival' | 02:33

“Most of that turnover will have happened in 12 months,” Sarantinos says. “Over the course of effectively one season, it’s a huge amount of turnover.”

Jones walked into Eels training early in the season and knew his old assistant was on the right track.

Ryles now has established NRL players such as Iongi (22), Sean Russell (23), Penisini (23), Ryley Smith (22), Charlie Guymer (20), Sam Tuivaiti (20), Kitione Kautoga (23), Joash Papalii (21) and Tallyn Da Silva (20) ready to shine in blue and gold for years.

“I’ve been so impressed,” Jones tells foxsports.com.au. “I spent a few days with them. You can see the growth in that team, from where people were saying, ‘what’s Ryles doing? He’s let Gutherson go, he’s let so and so go…’

“But he backs players and you can see he’s learnt massively from Bellamy and Trent Robinson, completely different coaches.

“Bellamy is raw and emotional and he knows what he wants, whereas Trent Robinson is probably always looking for another answer. Rylesy has been able to take a bit of both. He knows what he wants and he’s prepared to look outside and see what he wants.

“Early in the season, he had to keep his nerve – and he did that.”

As a player, Ryles was uber talented. He was almost a dying breed at the time, a ball-playing prop in an era where the game became more systemic and mechanical. He could also be very angry; some would say a tad entitled. As good as his career was, there will always be the nagging regret of not winning a competition with the star-studded Dragons team of the mid-2000s, and being forced out on the cusp of the Wayne Bennett golden years.

To someone who knows Ryles well and asked for anonymity, they said the difference between player and coach “is one of the greatest transformations I’ve seen in a human”. Ryles’ family still lives in Wollongong where his kids are settled, and he commutes at various stages throughout the week to the Eels’ base. Becoming a father was crucial to his new outlook on life.

Jason Ryles has made big changes at the Eels/ Source: News Corp Australia

“He’s that big sort of goofy bloke out of Wollongong (persona), a knockabout,” Jones says. “But as he showed during his own career, he has a massive determination to make it.

“He’s bright, mate. Super bright. He doesn’t come across like that, but he’s very intuitive and can read a room. Players like coaches who can make them better. If they can strike a likeness about them, it’s even better. Correct them with care, like Rylesy can do, they immediately fit in.”

There is only one coach who can say they’ve finished school which includes on-the-job experience under Jones, Bellamy and Robinson.

When Ryles went across the United Kingdom to help Jones’ England rugby revolution, the sceptics were asking: what can an old rugby league front-rower add to the 15-man international game?

Jones knew exactly what it was: defence. Ryles relentlessly worked on tackle technique of the English stars, particularly as World Rugby enforced stricter rules on high contact. Ryles returned the favour, in a way, parachuting rugby union coach Scott Wisemantel onto his Eels staff alongside his old Dragons mentor Nathan Brown. Jones hailed it as a smart move.

As the Eels slid out of finals contention and Dylan Brown’s form stagnated in the middle of the year, Ryles dropped him out of the top 17 altogether (he has since returned in recent weeks). When asked about the decision, Ryles made no apologies. He said “our future is now”.

So, is Parramatta’s future set up for another run at the grand final in the next few years? Or is it too early to say?

“He has made a lot of change, not just personnel, but in the way he wanted the team to play, and that was going to take time to adjust to,” Sarantinos says. “At the start of the season, we said, ‘we need to be playing better in the second half of the season than what we do in the first half of the season’. I think you’ve seen that.”

What won’t change is the fan in the coaching box, banging on the glass like his last depends on it.

“I love it,” Sarantinos laughs. “It’s him being himself. That’s just who he is. He never leaves you under any illusion into how his feeling and what he’s thinking. He just wears his heart on his sleeve.”

Click here to read article