Eels star Clint Gutherson rubbishes leaked report, backs fuming coach Brad Arthur
Clint Gutherson has backed his coach Brad Arthur's fiery defence of the club's operations, as the Parramatta Eels prepare for their first preliminary final in more than a decade.
The Eels have adopted a siege mentality going into their grand final qualifier in North Queensland, with their captain insisting that any rumours about unrest within the club were nothing more than outside noise.
"It's been like that for years - there's always something that comes out at big times in the year for us," he said on Nine News.
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Following last week's crushing win over the Raiders, Arthur was forced to defend the club after leaked findings from an internal review alleged a culture of nepotism and problems with lines of communication in youth development, among other issues.
The coach took aim at people with "agendas" having an axe to grind with the club - and his skipper echoed those sentiments.
Parramatta Eels captain Clint Gutherson. Getty
"As captain, you come in here, you know what you're looking at every day, you know what you're going to get out of the team and I can't say I've ever seen anything like that," he said.
"We're a tight-knit group here, and everything we do, we do it together - we're all on the same mission."
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Arthur in in his ninth year at the helm of the club, finally getting past the second week of the finals after falling at that hurdle in 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2021.
While they haven't been able to sniff that elusive first premiership since 1986, they have been consistently solid in Arthur's tenure, barring a disastrous 2018 campaign.
"I think anyone that's at Parramatta is pretty hard done by, if you're in that role," Gutherson said of his coach.
"But Brad's got us to where he needs to at this time of year and we have to go up there and trust what we've been doing for the last six months, and see what we can do."
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