Matabele
Journey Man
Part of the astonishing resilience of rugby league comes from the passion and ownership of its tribal supporters. For these tribesmen (me included) the support of one’s team goes well beyond a passing interest in weekly results.
Manly Warringah has become a part of my identity over the years. The club name, emblem, colours and club culture interwoven into soul which means that there is an incredible emotional investment in their successes and failures.
The extent of my investment became immensely apparent to me on Sunday night, jittering nervously under my “we are the silvertails†banner, fingernails chewed until my fingers bled, my two sons beside me sucking shirts and pensive.Â
We all yelled and screamed as Manly strode to victory, but for me there were three moments where this vocal barracking entered an almost other-worldly sphere, a great guttural bellowing from deep within that was more than excitement.Â
It was a primeval scream elicited from the depths of my being and giving vent and expression to the terrible lows our club has endured since we last tasted Premiership success in 1996.
Let us consider:
The travesty of 1997: There are few Manly supporters that have watched this injustice of a Grand Final in the eleven years since it was held, and it’s status as “one of the great Grand Finals†grates to the extent I grind my teeth every I hear it.
In reality we had our own hooker cruelly suspended prior to the game, several blatant forward passes in the lead-up to Newcastle tries are burned in memory and then there was the disgraceful stomping incident where a testosterone-fuelled Adam MacDougall planted his studs in the face of our captain courageous without penalty.Â
The fade-out of 1998/99: If having the 1997 premiership stolen through poor officialdom wasn’t bad enough we then endured the poorest of starts in 1998 at the same time as the explosive revelations of institutionalized 1997 drug-cheating broke out of Newcastle. Morally the 1997 premiership should be given to Manly. We won’t hold our breath.Â
A late season winning run saw us fall over the line into the ten-place finals series which gave us the dubious “privilege†of an appointment with the Raiders on a cold and frosty night in Canberra.Â
That hater of all things maroon, Hollywood Harrigan, with his flowing locks and too-tight shorts caned us in the penalty count that night and we exited limply. Little did we know it would be our last taste of finals football for seven long years.
With talk of rationalization in the wind throughout 1999 our on-field fortunes hit a 1990s low as we staggered along in the bottom third of the competition ladder. It was a very bad and concerning time to be a poorly-performed entity with selection criteria being spruiked on a daily basis in the newspapers and four teams about to be culled.Â
The joint venture: And so it came about that the rationalization talk spooked us into a shotgun wedding with chronic under-achievers and hated enemy, the North Sydney Bears.Â
Some people remember where they were when Lady Diana died. I read of our joint venture plans when I purchased a copy of the Weekend Sydney Morning Herald at a service station in Narrabri, driving north for a holiday in Queensland where there was little sympathy for the silvertails.
Two weeks later the Saturday papers were filled with the news of Souths’ execution from the competition.Â
What followed were three years of abject humiliation. Pre-merger talk was that we would create an invincible squad with a combination of players from Manly and Norths. What the paper talk didn’t understand is that a winning team is more than the sum of seventeen talented players.
Team success is built on the bedrock of the club’s culture. Manly’s success has always been built on the playing groups’ legitimate love and loyalty for the club., It helps that we have the most desirable postcode in Rugby League and therefore find it easier to keep our players happy and away from unnecessary distractions.
But for three to five years this “love Manly†culture was submerged under the weight of North Sydney’s tolerance for abject mediocrity and our lack of a spiritual home as we were forced to play half our games before the ritual humiliation of an uneducated Central Coast crowd that took great delight in cheering for our opponents.
I confess that during this period, on the surface at least, I became one of those that paid passing weekly interest to the team’s fortunes and found a sudden interest in the Super 12.Â
But this apparent ambivalence masked a deep-burning anger at what had been foisted on my passion and a growing fear that I would soon be watching the NRL with no investment at all because it was bereft of my team.
In reality, for those three years the NRL was indeed bereft of Manly and was far the poorer for it.
The darkness of the valley of death: It was a beautiful sunny day when I took delivery of a shirt that had “Get ready†emblazoned across the front and “Manly is back†all over the back.
But it covered a heart open to a nagging fear that announcing the last rites on the Bears and the joint venture was a pyrrhic victory.Â
In 2003 we still had a coach that knew nothing of our culture and a playing group that largely consisted of the scraps from the benches of other teams’ reserve grade outfits.
We surprised enough teams to keep our proud avoidance of the wooden spoon intact, the best being a game I managed to attend where we won the first golden point game in the NRL over hated arch-rivals, the Eels.Â
But the back end of that year was highlighted by week after week of successive 50 point drubbings, the most embarrassing being when a twelve man Canberra still managed 50 points on us at our once-proud citadel of Brookvale Oval.
We entered 2004 with a favourite son back at the helm in Des Hasler. At least we had a coach that understood our culture, but how on earth were we to avoid the wooden spoon with a side that was once again cobbled together at the last minute from the discards of everyone else?
At this time the Hoodoo Gurus were singing their irritating ditty “That’s my team†which included the line “to see my team fulfill a Premiership Dreamâ€Â.Â
To me the thought of Manly fulfilling the dream of winning a game seemed lamentable, let alone featuring on the big stage on the first Sunday in October.
2004 included the blackest of nights where I watched the Wallabies beating the Springboks in a Tri-Nations game with a radio pressed against my ear bearing the dreadful tidings of the Penrith Panthers inflicting our-then greatest ever hiding.
But there were also some points of light. Despite some scare-mongering the club privatized. It was an inevitable step. Without privatization there is no doubt Manly would have limped to a weary collapse within two to three years.
And two top line players (Ben Kennedy and Brent Kite) showed enough faith in the club to knock back big offers from elsewhere to become our first big name signings in nearly a decade. The BK initials would be the impetus for a remarkable resurrection.
The candle keeps getting snuffed out: Our northward trajectory began in 2004, but there were still moments where it looked like the candle of hope was still perilously close to extinguishment. Â
Finally in 2005 we made it back to finals football, falling over the line into eighth place and a Parramatta Stadium flogging by our hated Eels rivals.
That day I witnessed one of my favourite moments of Manly bravado when a rather inebriated Manly fan stood on his chair in front of a bay of jubilant Eels supporters with the score 20 points against us.
He launched into a stirring tirade of Manly’s superiority whilst the Parra horde bayed for his blood which was inevitably drawn when security ejected him from the ground.Â
All of us in maroon that day were subjected to mocking taunts, though at least we could console ourselves with smug satisfaction when the Eels collapsed to their inevitable September choke a fortnight later.
But the afternoon did show the gaping chasm between our own middle of the table straights opposed to the top flight.Â
Though we signed Orford and Bell from Melbourne, the gap was again glaringly highlighted when the Dragons pounded us 28-0 (and their fans pounded us post-game) in September 2006 and we said a sad farewell to Ben Kennedy.
But within Kennedy’s farewell lay a kernel of hope that our winning “love Manly†culture was well and truly restored. Kennedy played for three clubs and spent seven years at Newcastle that included a Premiership.Â
Yet after just two years on the Northern Beaches, Kennedy declared himself a Manly man and committed to mentoring our next crop of forwards. A conversion experience nearly as astonishing as one that happened on a road to Damascus.
2007 Grand Final: Despite predictions of a decline following Ben Kennedy’s departure, our team stormed into the 2007 Grand Final and we dared to hope.
We shouldn’t have.Â
I paid $155 to sit on the halfway line a million miles away from the action and witnessed a severe throttling that made our hopes of fulfilling that Premiership Dream as remote as I was from the action.
The Hoodoo Gurus sang their dirge for the final time and metaphorically a rampant Melbourne side did to Manly what Crocker physically did to Brett Stewart on the night.
So twelve months later I opted for the cheap seats to at least witness the 2008 decider with the maroon and white army – the vociferous and proud supporters who this time could sniff that this would be the night when the phoenix would finally rise from the ashes.Â
This time I also bought my two boys with a rationale that if Manly were to get up on the night, it would create a transcendent memory for them that would last a lifetime.Â
What I didn’t expect were the afore-mentioned three transcendent moments of my own where my primeval roaring gave vent to the frustrations and turmoil of the previous twelve years.
The first roar came with the opening try to Matt Ballin. This roar was about the realization that the try from a young but not over-awed player meant that this night we would not be stood over by a finals opponent as had happened the previous three years.Â
The second came when Brent Kite crashed over directly in front of where we were sitting to put the score on the board that would make it impossible for Melbourne to stage a recovery. This was the moment where the Premiership dream became a certainty.
How fitting for Kite to make that score. His faith in signing with us in the dark depths of 2004 is often overshadowed by Kennedy’s signing at the same time. But Kite’s impact and legacy on our club will be longer lasting, particularly next season when he inherits that mantle of elder statesman that has been Beaver’s for a decade.
So on to the final roar – and the one that also bought tears to the eyes. The only constant for Manly over the last twelve years has been Steve Menzies. The character he showed by remaining with us through the hardest years of the club’s history and in the face of tempting offers from the high-flyers is indescribable.
When Beaver crashed over it completed the fairytale, and I defy anyone to name a player in the history of the game that has been more deserving of a fairytale than Steve Menzies.Â
How we all enjoyed the bubbling euphoria of the trophy presentation, the victory lap and the wild scenes of jubilation at the club after the game.
Many words of thanks have been said in the Premiership postscripts. The players thanked each other and the fans (a really nice touch) and Des Hasler thanked his staff.
Yet to my ears there was one thank you that was not really made publically, though I am sure it has been said many times privately, which is perhaps more fitting and appropriate.
But if the fans were allowed a rostrum to make known their thoughts on this Premiership success I am sure they would make mention of the investment, nay the donation, made by Max Delmege and Scott Penn over the past four years.
None of the redemption of the past few years would have been possible without this financial expression of the “love Manly†culture, the faith they showed in the club to rebound from the depths and the largesse required to make it a possibility.
If I may be so bold as to speak on the fan’s behalf, thank you Max and Scott.Â
Manly Warringah has become a part of my identity over the years. The club name, emblem, colours and club culture interwoven into soul which means that there is an incredible emotional investment in their successes and failures.
The extent of my investment became immensely apparent to me on Sunday night, jittering nervously under my “we are the silvertails†banner, fingernails chewed until my fingers bled, my two sons beside me sucking shirts and pensive.Â
We all yelled and screamed as Manly strode to victory, but for me there were three moments where this vocal barracking entered an almost other-worldly sphere, a great guttural bellowing from deep within that was more than excitement.Â
It was a primeval scream elicited from the depths of my being and giving vent and expression to the terrible lows our club has endured since we last tasted Premiership success in 1996.
Let us consider:
The travesty of 1997: There are few Manly supporters that have watched this injustice of a Grand Final in the eleven years since it was held, and it’s status as “one of the great Grand Finals†grates to the extent I grind my teeth every I hear it.
In reality we had our own hooker cruelly suspended prior to the game, several blatant forward passes in the lead-up to Newcastle tries are burned in memory and then there was the disgraceful stomping incident where a testosterone-fuelled Adam MacDougall planted his studs in the face of our captain courageous without penalty.Â
The fade-out of 1998/99: If having the 1997 premiership stolen through poor officialdom wasn’t bad enough we then endured the poorest of starts in 1998 at the same time as the explosive revelations of institutionalized 1997 drug-cheating broke out of Newcastle. Morally the 1997 premiership should be given to Manly. We won’t hold our breath.Â
A late season winning run saw us fall over the line into the ten-place finals series which gave us the dubious “privilege†of an appointment with the Raiders on a cold and frosty night in Canberra.Â
That hater of all things maroon, Hollywood Harrigan, with his flowing locks and too-tight shorts caned us in the penalty count that night and we exited limply. Little did we know it would be our last taste of finals football for seven long years.
With talk of rationalization in the wind throughout 1999 our on-field fortunes hit a 1990s low as we staggered along in the bottom third of the competition ladder. It was a very bad and concerning time to be a poorly-performed entity with selection criteria being spruiked on a daily basis in the newspapers and four teams about to be culled.Â
The joint venture: And so it came about that the rationalization talk spooked us into a shotgun wedding with chronic under-achievers and hated enemy, the North Sydney Bears.Â
Some people remember where they were when Lady Diana died. I read of our joint venture plans when I purchased a copy of the Weekend Sydney Morning Herald at a service station in Narrabri, driving north for a holiday in Queensland where there was little sympathy for the silvertails.
Two weeks later the Saturday papers were filled with the news of Souths’ execution from the competition.Â
What followed were three years of abject humiliation. Pre-merger talk was that we would create an invincible squad with a combination of players from Manly and Norths. What the paper talk didn’t understand is that a winning team is more than the sum of seventeen talented players.
Team success is built on the bedrock of the club’s culture. Manly’s success has always been built on the playing groups’ legitimate love and loyalty for the club., It helps that we have the most desirable postcode in Rugby League and therefore find it easier to keep our players happy and away from unnecessary distractions.
But for three to five years this “love Manly†culture was submerged under the weight of North Sydney’s tolerance for abject mediocrity and our lack of a spiritual home as we were forced to play half our games before the ritual humiliation of an uneducated Central Coast crowd that took great delight in cheering for our opponents.
I confess that during this period, on the surface at least, I became one of those that paid passing weekly interest to the team’s fortunes and found a sudden interest in the Super 12.Â
But this apparent ambivalence masked a deep-burning anger at what had been foisted on my passion and a growing fear that I would soon be watching the NRL with no investment at all because it was bereft of my team.
In reality, for those three years the NRL was indeed bereft of Manly and was far the poorer for it.
The darkness of the valley of death: It was a beautiful sunny day when I took delivery of a shirt that had “Get ready†emblazoned across the front and “Manly is back†all over the back.
But it covered a heart open to a nagging fear that announcing the last rites on the Bears and the joint venture was a pyrrhic victory.Â
In 2003 we still had a coach that knew nothing of our culture and a playing group that largely consisted of the scraps from the benches of other teams’ reserve grade outfits.
We surprised enough teams to keep our proud avoidance of the wooden spoon intact, the best being a game I managed to attend where we won the first golden point game in the NRL over hated arch-rivals, the Eels.Â
But the back end of that year was highlighted by week after week of successive 50 point drubbings, the most embarrassing being when a twelve man Canberra still managed 50 points on us at our once-proud citadel of Brookvale Oval.
We entered 2004 with a favourite son back at the helm in Des Hasler. At least we had a coach that understood our culture, but how on earth were we to avoid the wooden spoon with a side that was once again cobbled together at the last minute from the discards of everyone else?
At this time the Hoodoo Gurus were singing their irritating ditty “That’s my team†which included the line “to see my team fulfill a Premiership Dreamâ€Â.Â
To me the thought of Manly fulfilling the dream of winning a game seemed lamentable, let alone featuring on the big stage on the first Sunday in October.
2004 included the blackest of nights where I watched the Wallabies beating the Springboks in a Tri-Nations game with a radio pressed against my ear bearing the dreadful tidings of the Penrith Panthers inflicting our-then greatest ever hiding.
But there were also some points of light. Despite some scare-mongering the club privatized. It was an inevitable step. Without privatization there is no doubt Manly would have limped to a weary collapse within two to three years.
And two top line players (Ben Kennedy and Brent Kite) showed enough faith in the club to knock back big offers from elsewhere to become our first big name signings in nearly a decade. The BK initials would be the impetus for a remarkable resurrection.
The candle keeps getting snuffed out: Our northward trajectory began in 2004, but there were still moments where it looked like the candle of hope was still perilously close to extinguishment. Â
Finally in 2005 we made it back to finals football, falling over the line into eighth place and a Parramatta Stadium flogging by our hated Eels rivals.
That day I witnessed one of my favourite moments of Manly bravado when a rather inebriated Manly fan stood on his chair in front of a bay of jubilant Eels supporters with the score 20 points against us.
He launched into a stirring tirade of Manly’s superiority whilst the Parra horde bayed for his blood which was inevitably drawn when security ejected him from the ground.Â
All of us in maroon that day were subjected to mocking taunts, though at least we could console ourselves with smug satisfaction when the Eels collapsed to their inevitable September choke a fortnight later.
But the afternoon did show the gaping chasm between our own middle of the table straights opposed to the top flight.Â
Though we signed Orford and Bell from Melbourne, the gap was again glaringly highlighted when the Dragons pounded us 28-0 (and their fans pounded us post-game) in September 2006 and we said a sad farewell to Ben Kennedy.
But within Kennedy’s farewell lay a kernel of hope that our winning “love Manly†culture was well and truly restored. Kennedy played for three clubs and spent seven years at Newcastle that included a Premiership.Â
Yet after just two years on the Northern Beaches, Kennedy declared himself a Manly man and committed to mentoring our next crop of forwards. A conversion experience nearly as astonishing as one that happened on a road to Damascus.
2007 Grand Final: Despite predictions of a decline following Ben Kennedy’s departure, our team stormed into the 2007 Grand Final and we dared to hope.
We shouldn’t have.Â
I paid $155 to sit on the halfway line a million miles away from the action and witnessed a severe throttling that made our hopes of fulfilling that Premiership Dream as remote as I was from the action.
The Hoodoo Gurus sang their dirge for the final time and metaphorically a rampant Melbourne side did to Manly what Crocker physically did to Brett Stewart on the night.
So twelve months later I opted for the cheap seats to at least witness the 2008 decider with the maroon and white army – the vociferous and proud supporters who this time could sniff that this would be the night when the phoenix would finally rise from the ashes.Â
This time I also bought my two boys with a rationale that if Manly were to get up on the night, it would create a transcendent memory for them that would last a lifetime.Â
What I didn’t expect were the afore-mentioned three transcendent moments of my own where my primeval roaring gave vent to the frustrations and turmoil of the previous twelve years.
The first roar came with the opening try to Matt Ballin. This roar was about the realization that the try from a young but not over-awed player meant that this night we would not be stood over by a finals opponent as had happened the previous three years.Â
The second came when Brent Kite crashed over directly in front of where we were sitting to put the score on the board that would make it impossible for Melbourne to stage a recovery. This was the moment where the Premiership dream became a certainty.
How fitting for Kite to make that score. His faith in signing with us in the dark depths of 2004 is often overshadowed by Kennedy’s signing at the same time. But Kite’s impact and legacy on our club will be longer lasting, particularly next season when he inherits that mantle of elder statesman that has been Beaver’s for a decade.
So on to the final roar – and the one that also bought tears to the eyes. The only constant for Manly over the last twelve years has been Steve Menzies. The character he showed by remaining with us through the hardest years of the club’s history and in the face of tempting offers from the high-flyers is indescribable.
When Beaver crashed over it completed the fairytale, and I defy anyone to name a player in the history of the game that has been more deserving of a fairytale than Steve Menzies.Â
How we all enjoyed the bubbling euphoria of the trophy presentation, the victory lap and the wild scenes of jubilation at the club after the game.
Many words of thanks have been said in the Premiership postscripts. The players thanked each other and the fans (a really nice touch) and Des Hasler thanked his staff.
Yet to my ears there was one thank you that was not really made publically, though I am sure it has been said many times privately, which is perhaps more fitting and appropriate.
But if the fans were allowed a rostrum to make known their thoughts on this Premiership success I am sure they would make mention of the investment, nay the donation, made by Max Delmege and Scott Penn over the past four years.
None of the redemption of the past few years would have been possible without this financial expression of the “love Manly†culture, the faith they showed in the club to rebound from the depths and the largesse required to make it a possibility.
If I may be so bold as to speak on the fan’s behalf, thank you Max and Scott.Â
