NRL: Eels want to jump start season

Eels coach Daniel Anderson admits he's still no closer to finding out why his NRL team started last season so disastrously.

But Anderson hopes a pre-season trip to Perth, where Parramatta will tackle last year's minor premiers St George Illawarra today, will be the tonic needed to inspire a fast start in the 2010 season.

In Anderson's own words, the Eels were ordinary early last year, with a four-game losing streak seemingly ending their finals aspirations.

A seven-game winning run saw them sneak into eighth spot and from there the Jarryd Hayne-inspired side reached the grand final, only to fall at the final hurdle to Melbourne.

"The question's been asked a couple of times and I can blow smoke if you want but no [I don't know why we started so badly]," Anderson said. "At some stage there it clicked.

"There were probably multiple factors to it but in the end confidence is one of those things that is just hanging around and unless you actually grab it, you can look like a team that don't know each other and then the next week everyone's in sync.

"That's what happened, we fell in sync and we were away then. We'd like to do it a little bit more comfortably than we did last year if we are going to replicate it. We do want to start better, we were ordinary in the first half of the year, some real mixed results, but we played pretty well in the back end and it was exciting for us."

The Eels have used their trip to Perth as a bonding session for the group.

"It's good to travel with the team because you do train in close proximity to each other for the whole summer but when you get away you live and eat together and it's a good way to smooth out the social interaction between different players," Anderson said.

While last season's Dally M winner Hayne and St George favourites Jamie Soward and Matt Cooper will be missing due to All-Stars duty, the likes of Fuifui Moimoi, Krisnan Inu, Daniel Mortimer, Darius Boyd, Jeremy Smith, Ben Creagh and Ben Hornby have all made the trip to Perth.

Both sides have promised to put on an entertaining show in a bid to help WA's chances of snaring an NRL side, possibly as early as 2013.

In other trial games, Wests Tigers overcame a boggy surface and a slow start to beat the North Queensland Cowboys 28-4 in Mackay on Friday night, while the Manly Sea Eagles beat the Cronulla Sharks 18-4.

- AAP