Thirty-six years is a long time for anybody. For an NRL club, it is an age. For Parramatta, it’s an eternity. The Eels fraternity have felt every ebb and flow since 1986, the year of their last premiership and the final of four titles during the fruitful 1980s.
In the parched decade that followed they felt the increasingly intense desperation to reincarnate the version of Peter Sterling who had made all that magic happen. And they have keenly felt the abyss that stretched into the noughties and beyond, and could – finally – be remedied by the time this Sunday’s grand final against Penrith is run and done.
