Curses aren't real. The rational part of everybody's mind knows they're not real.
But when the same thing keeps happening over and over, and no matter how many times the circumstances change a team keeps ending up in the same place, the rational part of the mind gets awfully quiet.
Really, these things only exist inside our own heads. We're only cursed if we think we are. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the parlance of the shrink, our thoughts become things.
Through their consistent stumbles at the second week of the finals through the past few years, Parramatta has stuck to the party line. They have said all the right things, as everybody knows they must.
It would not do to speak aloud of four exits in the second week of the finals in five years. Talking about it would make it far too real for anybody's liking and besides, everyone else other than the blue and golds were talking about it enough.
But even so, even though nobody at Parramatta ever spoke the curse into existence, the Eels' 40-4 win over the Raiders was an exorcism.
Making a preliminary final is a big deal, but any Eel who tells you it didn't feel that little bit bigger now Parramatta has finally vaulted over the step that's tripped them up so many times is either kidding you or themselves.
The Eels got there by doing the things they do so well during the regular season, those same things that have abandoned them at times when it really counted. Junior Paulo was mighty when he ran and deft when he passed, and Reagan Campbell-Gillard and Ryan Matterson acted as his able henchmen.
Isaiah Papali'i proved yet again why he's the best second-rower in the world and why the Eels will miss his rough and tumble ways next season.
In the first half, the only time the Eels dropped the ball was when Maika Sivo was reaching out to score a try. They're tremendous front-runners, and they were in front the whole way.
Parramatta won the game with the width of their attack. When their forwards are offloading and Mitch Moses and Reed Mahoney are firing their long, beautiful passes, they can stretch the opposition until they're so thin they break apart.
That's exactly what happened to the Raiders, who left their best football down in Melbourne. The Eels used the full width of the field whenever they could to get on top of Canberra, and once the Eels are on top it's very, very hard to get them to move.
There is still a long way to go for Parramatta to break outside the cage that was built the day they won their last premiership back in 1986.
Heading up to North Queensland to face the Cowboys in a preliminary final is a hell of a prize for winning. It feels more like a punishment.
The men from the north have never lost a finals match in the tropics and will provide a sterner test than the Raiders, who reached the limits of their capabilities with last week's win. They are dug deep into their Townsville fortress and they'll dare you to do something about it.
But perhaps the Eels, having broken free of their confines, are now free to be themselves, to be the team we see so often in the regular season. There is nothing left to lose and everything left to gain.
They have saved themselves, and coach Brad Arthur, for at least one more season. Another week two finals loss would have been hard to forget and difficult to avoid when hard decisions were to be made.
They don't write classics about the time Caesar almost crossed the Rubicon. They don't tell stories about the time those brave lads nearly went over the top.
At some point there is no longer a nobility in the attempt nor grace in the failure.
There's just the cold, hard truth that you are what your record says you are, and Parramatta's record says they're in the preliminary final for the first time since 2009.
They have wandered through the wasteland in long search of their better selves and now they've found it.
They are big and mean and fast and skillful, and they have never lacked confidence but now they have the results to back it up. They're starting to look every bit as good as so many people believe they could be.
It doesn't matter if they were cursed or not. All that's in the past now. The future has a preliminary final in it, and those nights are filled with possibilities.
