Manly Sea Eagles fan and Dee Why local Adam “Rad” Hockley has been so enthused by Kieran Foran and the winning ways of the Manly coach’s “Fozball” style, that he marked the man’s first game in charge with a tattoo on his leg.
While on holiday in Phuket in April, Hockley instructed a local artist to inscribe on his left leg, just below the knee, the words “Fozball Est. Round 5 2026”.
“I was going to do it in Thirroul after the Dolphins game but I couldn’t find a shop,” Hockley tells Manly Observer. “Then I went to Phuket and I was going to wait, but first night fever took over!
“It was funny explaining what Fozball and Manly is to the locals.”
Then today – and we stress this is NOT AI – Foran’s face replaced the Colonel’s at KFC Manly Vale. It’s clear that Fozball fever is real. Hockley is one thus afflicted.
“I was just on the tools, cleaning a couple of pools, and then I see this bad-boy pop up. Kieran f***in’ Foran has replaced the one and only Colonel Sanders at Manly Vale KFC!” Hockley enthuses on Instagram.
“It was all a great laugh; it was all fun. But these guys have taken it to the next level.
“Where else in the country – where else in the world – does your local KFC change the one-and-only Colonel Sanders to the coach of your local team.
“Fozball is real. We are winning the comp,” Hockley says.
It wasn’t always this way. Indeed, it was only in April that the world seemed to be falling in. After three straight losses, club owner Scott Penn sacked the coach, Anthony Seibold. It seemed premature. Surely you get half-a-dozen games to turn things around?
But no – with the flick of a New York ballpoint, Seibold was out and Foran was in, in the interim. Yet Penn’s penmanship has proven inspired.
Rarely has new-coach bounce-back been so pronounced, so mercurial, as that experienced by the Sea Eagles under fresh coach Foran.
First game, they ran in 52 points past competition contenders Redcliffe Dolphins. They beat up on the Dragons in Wollongong, the Cowboys in Townsville, the Eels at home at Four Pines Park.
When they smashed the premiers, Brisbane Broncos, 32-4, and followed that by smashing resurgent Wests Tigers, 46-18, on their spiritual home track at Leichhardt, the fans were ahead of the Colonel’s people riding the creative zeitgeist.
After winning four straight it was “Foran-oh”. A sign read “Fozmaxxing”. An Instagram account, @fozballmanly, sprung up, detailing a family trip to Bunnings to create a banner that read “Guess What? You can’t hate Foz!!!” a play on the famous “Guess What? Manly Hates You Too” banner.
Sharp-eyed merchants were straight on the phone to China with orders for “Fozball”-branded caps and hoodies.
The Brookie Hill tragics renamed their ground “Foz Pines Park”. Tonight against Souths, for one night only, the club has made it official.
As Rad Hockley would tell you, Fozball fever is real.
Foran himself, however, is not so sure.
“I’m not sure what Fozball is,” Foran told SEN Breakfast on Wednesday. “As a player I wanted to play the game hard, use my brain and pull apart the opposition and work hard defensively. I suppose my coaching style isn’t too dissimilar to that.”
Foran told Fox Sports that when he took over as interim coach, “it was all about getting the guys to play a style of footy in which I myself felt really strongly about and tried to get them thinking that way.”
“I was a wholehearted player, that’s how I attacked my entire career, that’s how I want to coach and that’s what I asked of the playing squad: to invest in those parts of the game that I feel makes a side successful and they’ve done that straight from the get-go.”
Chairman Penn needed little convincing. After seven wins and two tight losses (to Penrith Panthers and Cronulla Sharks), the club’s majority owner announced this week that 35-year-old Foran would be Manly’s head coach until the end of 2029.
It’s a portend of something greater, reckons local superfan and content creator, Ella Kasmar.
Kasmar was one of many visitors this week to the chicken shop by the B1 stop at Manly Vale, delighted, though possibly paid ot be, that instead of a giant rendering of the brand’s founder and icon, Colonel Sanders, there was a graphic of Manly coach Foran, bearded, smiling, in the Colonel’s famous string tie and white suit.
“This is the coolest thing I have ever seen,” Kasmar exclaims on Instagram.
“‘Fozball’ has taken over the Norther Beaches. It’s taken over the world. And all the signs are pointing to one thing. That is a Manly premiership.”
“KFC”, according to Kasmar, stands for “Kieran Foran Coach”.
“We’ve signed Foz until 2029 and we can go four in a row – ‘Foran a row’,” Ms Kasmar explains.
“It all makes sense.
“This is so sick.”
