Best Manly recruit from each Club

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Re Max whitehead (norths) above. That first 1947 team had a few norths players but they were actually from manly, and had no choice but to play for the longshoremen in those days. Max lived at manly beach.
 
He really shouldn't qualify because he started his first grade career with Manly and became a Test player with us. He did later sign to play 2 seasons with Balmain, but he only played one season before returning to play for the Sea Eagles again.

It was a stretch but we did recruit him back from Balmain. We have recruited direct from Balmain 1st grade Hilton Kidd, Jack McIntosh, Bill Garvin, Ted Dawes, Roy Dykes, Kevin Mosman, Jack Sinclair, Ian Foye, Peter Kelly, Stephen Knight & Ian Thompson. I had only really heard of Thompson but looking into them maybe Stephen Knight could replace him former Australian Rep and helped us win 1978.
 
Haha you might get him in on a technicality but he was always a Sea Eagle man really, he even became CEO didn't he?
 
Some fun facts about our recruitment history:
- We have signed 215 players who had previously played 1st grade in Australia or England
- 22 from England's top flight competition
- The most players we have recruited from one club is North Sydney 31
- Of current NRL clubs we have recruited the most from Easts 27
- Of current NRL clubs we have recruited the least from Warriors 1 (Feleti Mateo)
- Nate Myles (Titans) & Matt Parcell (Broncos) are both only the 2nd recruits from there previous clubs
- 2004 was our biggest recruitment drive signing 14 new players, 2016 will be the second biggest with 10 first graders joining us and 1999 3rd with 9 signings.
 
Wasn't Knight a Manly RU junior?
Yes. He was also a M-W RL junior. During the 13 import rule era, when he was playing for Manly, he was listed in the Big League programme as a local junior. Imports had an a asterix next to their name. That means that after turning 15 (in his case around 1963-64), he must have played at least two full seasons in the M-W junior league, under the rules defining what constituted a local junior.

Relaxation of the import rule to allow long serving imported players (i.e. Graham Eadie) to be classified as 'local juniors' only came into force a couple of years after Knight's retirement in 1979.

Hope that clears it up. And my apologies if that additional advice falls into the 'suck eggs department'.:)
 
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Yes. He was also a M-W RL junior. During the 13 import rule era, when he was playing for Manly, he was listed in the Big League programme as a local junior. Imports had an a asterix next to their name. That means that after turning 15 (in his case around 1963-64), he must have played at least two full seasons in the M-W junior league, under the rules defining what constituted a local junior.

Relaxation of the import rule to allow long serving imported players (i.e. Graham Eadie) to be classified as 'local juniors' only came into force a couple of years after Knight's retirement in 1979.

Hope that clears it up. And my apologies if that additional advice falls into the 'suck eggs department'.:)

Did Knight make his 1st grade debut at Manly?
 
It was a stretch but we did recruit him back from Balmain. We have recruited direct from Balmain 1st grade Hilton Kidd, Jack McIntosh, Bill Garvin, Ted Dawes, Roy Dykes, Kevin Mosman, Jack Sinclair, Ian Foye, Peter Kelly, Stephen Knight & Ian Thompson. I had only really heard of Thompson but looking into them maybe Stephen Knight could replace him former Australian Rep and helped us win 1978.
Thomson joined Manly from one of the Queanbeyan teams (the Kangaroos from memory), under Don Furner's tutelage. I think he also spent some (playing) time in Newcastle, where his Uncle Allan was a locally produced international ('67-68 Kangaroos) and of course a Sea Eagle player ('69-72), before coaching M-W in 1980.

His one year stint at Balmain (where his dad Jim had an association) was probably a low point of his career. He barely played any 1st grade there.

And Ian was an Australian rep in 1978 (vs NZ) and a Kangaroo at season's end - after helping Manly to another premiership, along with the likes of Tarzan Knight.
 
It was a stretch but we did recruit him back from Balmain. We have recruited direct from Balmain 1st grade Hilton Kidd, Jack McIntosh, Bill Garvin, Ted Dawes, Roy Dykes, Kevin Mosman, Jack Sinclair, Ian Foye, Peter Kelly, Stephen Knight & Ian Thompson. I had only really heard of Thompson but looking into them maybe Stephen Knight could replace him former Australian Rep and helped us win 1978.
steve knight was a good player for us,could fight like ali,he took balmain apart the day they hamstrung john gibbs,knight had them from all side and kept dropping them.
 
Yes. He was also a M-W RL junior. During the 13 import rule era, when he was playing for Manly, he was listed in the Big League programme as a local junior. Imports had an a asterix next to their name. That means that after turning 15 (in his case around 1963-64), he must have played at least two full seasons in the M-W junior league, under the rules defining what constituted a local junior.

Relaxation of the import rule to allow long serving imported players (i.e. Graham Eadie) to be classified as 'local juniors' only came into force a couple of years after Knight's retirement in 1979.

Hope that clears it up. And my apologies if that additional advice falls into the 'suck eggs department'.:)
played u12 for the seaforth pirates,always big and fast.
 

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