Well, that was weird.
After starting the season with three losses, at home at Four Pines Park, the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles shocked rugby league by sacking coach Anthony Seibold, a move that club Chief Executive Jason King told Manly Observer was “very difficult and very well considered” and which was “focused around the team’s results and the direction we thought the team was going”.
Keiran Foran was appointed interim head coach and the club’s direction went diametrically north. It was a dead-cat bounce like few had ever seen. The winning was instant and it was everywhere.
There were crushing away victories over Dolphins (52-18), Dragons (28-18) and Cowboys (33-18). They hosted old foes Parramatta and sent them packing, 33-18. They travelled to Leichhardt and flogged Wests Tigers 46-18. When arch-rivals Melbourne Storm were dominated 30-4, Four Pines Park verily heaved.
No prizes for guessing who the Brookie Hill faithful anointed their Great Saviour.
Foran’s head was stuck up on the Manly Vale KFC. Brookvale Oval was named “Foz Pines Park”. And the organic, viral fever of “Fozball” begat so many banners, memes and Instagram videos – glorious given the man himself couldn’t tell you what “Fozball” is.
King and his board had seen enough. With Foran barely two months in the job, they rode the lightning of local goodwill and signed Foran as head coach until the end of 2029. When Manly surged into third on the ladder, the club’s suits looked like oracles. It was like a bull run on Wall Street. Buy, buy, buy.
Then the market corrected. There followed six losses on the trot – including to clubs they’d flogged first time around, Dolphins, Eels, Cowboys and Storm. What was that about? Nobody knew. It just meant Manly would have to rely on mathematical improbability to make the eight. No cigar. Fozball was finished.
Reuben Garrick has played 180 games for the Sea Eagles and tells Manly Observer that “people always say rugby league is a roller-coaster, but I’ve never seen a season seesaw as much as this one”.
“I think that probably shows how hard the NRL is. You’re always going to get a smack in the face at some point, especially with so much change happening around the club,” Garrick says.
From this observer’s perspective, Manly’s “middle” looked deficient. Veteran prop Sio Taukeiaho played just five games leaving Taniela Paseka as the sole big unit. Simi Laiafi, 19, is too young, Jake Trbojevic, 32, is (sorry, champion) too old, and Nathan Brown, for all his crowd-pleasing Kamikaze charges off the Brookie bank fence, is – again, from this perspective – a back-rower cos-playing as a front-.
Garrick doesn’t see it that way.
“The way the game changed with the rules at the start of the year made it hard to build your squad and know what sort of depth you needed,” he says.
“Last year, a power game with bigger bodies probably would have suited our squad more. This year it changed, and you’ve seen some squads with smaller packs doing a bit better — the Dolphins, for example. They have that leg speed through the middle and all those sorts of things.
“But you need experience in the middle as well. When you’re missing that, you have to change the way you play footy. You might shift the ball a bit more. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”
If, as Paul Kelly sang, fortune used to hide in the palm of Don Bradman’s hand, a case can be made that the Sea Eagles live or die on the back of the fitness of the Great One, Tom Trbojevic. While ever his hamstrings remain in good fettle, Manly is a weapon. When a hamstring twangs – as has happened nine times – everyone just does their best. And, as Garrick says, sometimes it works.
Excuses? No-one at the club will offer any. But lessons? There’s a few, according to halfback Jamal Fogarty.
“I think it comes down to consistency, and that begins with individuals getting themselves into peak condition. You have to come back for pre-season in really good shape. If everyone does that, we can build consistency because we can do more work under fatigue at training,” Fogarty says.
“Then it’s about individual preparation every day. It’s a long season, and when players put their minds to it and dedicate time to their preparation, the team goes really well.
“But it’s the NRL — you only need two or three guys to be off and you’re going to lose.”
Of course, as with all roller-coasters, Manly’s season contained plenty of upside.
Joey Walsh came from St Augustine’s across the road and proved himself a quality playmaker. Clayton Faulalo played three positions towards season’s end and excelled in each. Tolu Koula ran so fast he was picked on the wing for NSW.
In the forwards, Haumole Olakau’atu rampaged across his edge like a Cydesdale through wheat. Fogarty singles out explosive Fijian lock Caleb Navale, and Brandon Wakeham, a half or five-eighth who’d been “in the wilderness” but made the nine jumper his own.
“We have a good group of young guys who are local to the area, which plays a big part – they represent their people and where they’re from,” Fogarty says.
Garrick is heading to the Roosters in 2027 and says he’s confident the club is on the right path.
“The identity being built here at the moment has a hard edge. It’s the sort of identity we want to return to — what this club once was,” Garrick says.
“I definitely think it’s heading in the right direction.”
