Mitchell Moses is set to run out at Accor Stadium in sky blue on Wednesday night, a reminder of how close Parramatta came to changing its own history. The Eels halfback was at the centre of the club's 2022 run, when they fell just short of ending a premiership drought that still hangs over the blue and gold.
That season has become a permanent what-if for Parramatta. The club lost Reed Mahoney, Isaiah Papali'i, Marata Niukore and Oregon Kaufusi after the 2022 grand final season, while Moses, Shaun Lane and Reagan Campbell-Gillard were injured and Ryan Matterson, Dylan Brown, Maika Sivo and Campbell-Gillard served suspensions in the period discussed. The result is a team forever measured against the version that came within reach of the title.
Michael Ennis did not dress it up. “He’s a winner,” he said of Moses. “He loves big moments, he walks towards them, he wants them.” That is why Wednesday night matters beyond the colour of the jersey. Moses left the Tigers in 2017, and since then he has built a career that has kept him in the frame as one of the best to wear the blue and gold, even as Parramatta's premiership drought has stayed intact.
The friction in this story is obvious. Moses may end up retiring without a premiership ring, a possibility that would sit awkwardly beside everything he has done for Parramatta and everything the club came close to in 2022. He remains the player most associated with a run that looked, for a time, as if it might finally break the drought, but injuries, suspensions and departures have left that side frozen in memory rather than completed in silverware.
Wednesday night gives that history another layer. Moses will line up in sky blue at Accor Stadium, but the conversation around him is still about Parramatta, about the road from 2017 to 2022, and about how a team can be measured not only by what it won, but by how nearly it got there.
