Disclaimer: The writer has been a Manly Sea Eagles fan for 43 years.
So Manly fans, that’s it for another season. The Sea Eagles have now equalled their longest grand final drought since entering the premiership in 1947 (Northern Eagles period not withstanding).
After making it to within a win of the grand final last season, where did it all go wrong? While the injury to Tom Trbojevic certainly blunted Manly’s attack, it cannot be solely blamed for the Sea Eagles’ demise. In truth, teams were starting to work out Trbojevic before he was ruled out for the season; although his absence again heavily impacted on the try scoring ability of Jason Saab.
Manly went into the season with much the same squad as the one that lost to Souths in the grand final qualifier in 2021. They added boom Brisbane forward Ethan Bullemor, but he was restricted to less than a dozen matches as he took time to fit in at his new club.
The Sea Eagles in 2022 reminded me a lot of the 1979 season. Manly won the premiership in 1978 against expectations, yet struggled to gain any momentum the following year despite retaining almost their whole grand final winning team. They always looked like qualifying for the finals, but just couldn’t quite get there as other teams improved to their level.
That is what has happened, to some extent in 2022. Brisbane, North Queensland and Cronulla have shown significant improvement this year, while Manly have stood still. They had a culture of expectation about them which blew up during the ‘jerseygate’ fiasco before a crucial round 20 match against Sydney Roosters. Coming off a lacklustre loss to St George-Illawarra, the Sea Eagles could ill afford the build up to the match against the Roosters and suffered accordingly.
A woeful second half against Parramatta, and a diabolical performance today against Gold Coast has sealed Manly’s fate.
This is a team which has a number of young stars on the rise such as Haumole Olakau’atu, Reuben Garrick, Taniela Paseka, Tolutau Kolau and Ben Trbojevic; and should have easily qualified for the finals this year. Instead they’ll be watching on in September, and Daly Cherry-Evans may have missed his last chance to captain Australia.