Eels star hobbled: Ankle surgery puts Brown out indefinitely

Parramatta have suffered injury on top of insult with five-eighth Dylan Brown to undergo surgery for a syndesmosis injury suffered during Thursday night's heavy loss to the Rabbitohs.

The Eels announced on Friday that Brown would be out indefinitely after suffering the injury late in the 27th minute of the 38-0 defeat when Souths defenders landed on his leg while tackling him.

Brown battled on impressively after suffering the injury - including two impressive cover tackles to stop tries - but was replaced in the 56th minute.

Eels coach Brad Arthur in his post-match media conference said the 20-year-old playmaker had opted to stay on the field as he initially did not think it was too serious.

"He soldiered on, we gave him the option if he was all right to stay there. As it got worse in the second half there was no point in keeping him there," he said.

"It just got to the stage where we were only going to put him at further risk. In my view it didn't look like we were doing enough to fight back into the game."

Arthur admits he was "very surprised" by his team's horror 38-0 thrashing by Souths on Thursday night but believes the steely mentality that propelled the club into the top four can be recaptured.

He labelled the loss "ordinary" but wasn't ready to hit the panic button after a largely impressive 15 round prior to the loss.

"We're not a team at the moment that's prepared to roll our sleeves up and build a game," Arthur said.

"I am very surprised. We were not prepared to roll the sleeves up and play the long game and build our game. Last week we were prepared to do that but we still lacked a bit of patience last week then straight away second or third set tonight we lacked patience [forcing a pass to lose possession].

"You have to be able to defend it. You can't say our defence is good if you leak 38 points."

Arthur said there were no signs during the week that something like the Souths result was brewing.

"We trained all right. Sometimes you can not be at your best training then you come to a game and they jump out of their skin. That's hard to judge," he said.

"We'll see next week [if we can turn it around] but for me it's an easy fix, go back to owning out effort areas and go back to being a team that's prepared to build a game and if that takes us to the 79th minute so be it but that's what we were doing and that's what we need to do.

"Things change pretty quickly in a week but we're the only ones that can do something about it."