‘There’s no timeline on our attack’: Jason Ryles urges Eels fans to be patient as rookie fullback steals show

Eels coach Jason Ryles concedes there will be games this year where Parramatta’s attack is “not so great”, but there will also be times when they light it up after new fullback Isaiah Iongi gave fans a taste of his talent with some flashes of brilliance against the Tigers.

The decision to let Clint Gutherson join the Dragons looms as one of the biggest talking points for the Eels this season, but Ryles will look like a genius if Iongi can back up what he did on Friday night.

The former Panther carved through the defence for a scintillating solo try before he turned provider to set up another four-pointer.

His running game has always been a strength, but he’ll need to create a lot out wide given Gutherson set up 109 tries across the past six seasons.

“He’s just going to keep improving with the more NRL exposure he gets,” Ryles said following the loss to the Tigers where halves Mitch Moses and Dylan Brown didn’t play.

“He’s done a really good apprenticeship in Cup with around 60 games and he sat behind arguably the best fullback in the comp (Dylan Edwards) for a number of years.

“He’s had a really good grounding, but it’s just a matter of getting the reps in first grade now.

“We’re starting to see little bits of what we will see, but we’ve got to be patient with him.

“One of Issy’s strengths is that he goes to the game, gets the footy and plays and we just want to encourage him to keep doing that.”

Iongi led the Eels with 111m and six tackle busts but didn’t have much support on a night they missed 37 tackles and only broke the line four times.

Their attack will improve when their key men return for the game against the Storm next Sunday, but Ryles has urged fans to be patient as he looks to put his own spin on things after their horror 2024 campaign.

“We’ll focus on getting our defence right as best we can, and the attack is one of those things that will keep evolving,” he said.

“It all goes back to the strengths of our footy team. We’ve got speed, we’ve got an experienced set of halves and we’ve got a young hooker, but we’ll keep evolving.

“There’s no timeline on our attack. It’ll have its days where it’s not so great, but it’ll have it’s days (where people say) ‘wow, that was good’.

“I thought there were periods where we moved really well in defence, but we had a few individual errors in defence which then led to tries which was disappointing, but it’s kind of where we’re at.

“Our attack was really disjointed, and it’s something we need to keep working on. We had young halves and rotated 28 guys which didn’t help, but at the same time, we’ve got to make sure we keep working on (things).

“It’s a bit of a different way of how we want to attack compared to what they’re used to, so we’ll just keep working on that, but there were some really good signs.”