Eels CEO gives update to Members and Fans

Hi Everyone 

I wanted to give you a quick update on our Club 

The last couple of weeks have been some of the toughest in our Club’s history as we stood down the vast majority of our staff. 

Like many of you in our Blue and Gold family, our football Club and our Leagues Club are currently navigating an enormous financial impact from the COVID-19.  

And while everyone in the organisation was affected in some shape or form – our long term objective from these decisions is ensuring that we can emerge from this period in the best shape possible. 

Football

From a football perspective, our coaches and players have been getting used to the new environment but I am pleased to say that all our planning in this area is going well.

The personalised training plans and importantly our wellbeing initiatives are underway to ensure that we have the playing group ready to compete from the moment we get the green light to return.

Brad and the coaches are remaining in contact with the players and both Mark and I are keeping the players and the player leadership group up to date with any changes or developments at the NRL level. 

Club Level/Parra Forever

Our Club has been around for 73 years and impacts the lives of so many people in the community. 

I can assure you that we plan to be around for many more years to come 

Those remaining staff at the Club have an unwavering commitment to work as hard as possible to ensure we can sustain and protect our business and have all our people back to work as soon as possible.

Most importantly, we have a responsibility to you our members, supporters and partners to ensure our Club survives and gets stronger for the years ahead.

We have been overwhelmed by the messages of support from our Members, partners and stakeholders who want to help the Club in any way that they can. 

So over the next couple of weeks we are going to launch a number of initiatives under the banner of “Parra Forever” that will allow you to contribute to helping our Club and our Blue and Gold family during this most important period. 

We know that some of you will not be in the positon to do all the initiatives we roll out and that is ok. 

However, our Club remains very much open for business tosupport you our Members, partners and supporters.   

Adversity often leads to opportunity and innovation and as a Club want to use the learnings from this period to position our Club for sustained success into the future.

We are already working with our fantastic partners on a range of innovations to help support them and deliver the value they deserve for their great support.

Importantly we are also going to keep you updated and be delivering some great digital content that will keep you engaged while we wait for the football to return. 

We owe it to our people who like many Australians right noware enduring a period they could not have thought possible only a few weeks ago. 

We are all in this together and we will get through this 

Stay safe and Go the Eels,

Jim Sarantinos,

CEO, Parramatta Eels Rugby League Club Pty Ltd