The Career of Steve Menzies (1993-2013)

[Chip and Chase]

I've often wondered why the club don't put together a DVD of his 250 odd career tries. How good would that be ?? 2 hours of pure viewing pleasure.

 

[BOZO]

I've often wondered why the club don't put together a DVD of his 250 odd career tries. How good would that be ?? 2 hours of pure viewing pleasure.

Great marketing man you are Chippy !!!

 

[weev]

Those of us who have witnessed the beaver's career from start to finish are truly blessed.
Absolute Legend.

Yer .... except we he switched clubs from the Sea Eagles to the Northern Eagles robbing himself of one club legend status. No stamina.

He also knocked on once.

 

[castle eagle]

The best short pass I saw last year was to Sirro who strode over without BBQ boy even landing a glove on him.

The other thing about those long cutout passes is the intercepts it offers. I thought Chez learned to be careful of those fairly well early on in his career.

hopefully tom has learnt his lesson about being selective as to when to throw a long pass now too

 

[manly al]

Bozo's Fulton description of Beaver as an absolutely sensational player was one of the best accolades that i always found very apt . Total admiration and respect for him also when he knocked back that big money offer from the Eels during or just after the Northern Eagles sad chapter to stick with his beloved Sea Eagles . A few back rowers tried to play a similar style as Beaver previous to his career such as Goldie Walker , but none could match the prowess that Beaver was able to display during his very distinguished footy career . Also one of the few modern back rowers who as a specialist back rower could also revert to playing as a centre and not vice versa . The Beaver and Cliffy show . maybe never to be emulated or matched or if it is eventually , probably well into the distant future .

 

[MadMarcus]

I've often wondered why the club don't put together a DVD of his 250 odd career tries. How good would that be ?? 2 hours of pure viewing pleasure.

Because the NRL would retrospectively add the proceeds to our 2008 salary cap and strip us of our premiership.

 

[nightster]

Terrific, good background music too

true but I would have liked to hear all those 'Lyons to Menzies' calls

 

[Brissie Kid]

Beaver is credited with 151 tries for Manly but it should be 162. The NRL doesn't count the Beagles seasons. I can agree with not counting 2000 and 01, but 2002 is not the same. The Beagles JV with the Bears imploded before the start of 2002 season. Even though 2002 was Manly alone the NRL forced Manly to call themselves the Beagles.

 

[Clint]

He had it all. Speed, ball skills, football smarts, instinct for the try line, a great tackler, team player and club man. He would not be out of place as the next immortal.

Agreed MM. Beaver is remembered for his try scoring feats, but man he was a great defender too.

 

[MadMarcus]

How he is not spoken about for immortal status is bewildering. He was outstanding for his entire career, cannot be argued. That bloke had it all

I think it is because he was never really a long term fixture in the rep teams. But that's more of a reflection of the incompetence of the selectors than Beaver's form.

 

[The McCarrs Creek Eagle]

Spine Tingling. Thank you.

What can I say..... This for me is our best result..... and we could not of done it to any one more deserving than the Cheaters ..... oops I meant to say Storm..... same difference...

Thanks for that Swoop.... love your work....

 

[Lyonstomenzies]

My second favourite player of all time after Cliffy.

He saw me make a jersey tackle in a high school Rugby game that saved a try when he coached the Kilara High Schools Rugby team. After I tackled this guy, I get up off the ground to see him smiling even though his player didn’t score. True legend.

 

[Tragic Eagle]

One of the best second rowers of all time IMO.

 

[Under the Sticks]

Yer .... except we he switched clubs from the Sea Eagles to the Northern Eagles robbing himself of one club legend status. No stamina.

He also knocked on once.

He lost me when he abandoned the club to join the upstarts at the Northern Beagles....he was also a hog and lazy player bludging off Cliffy all that time

 

[SeaEagleRock8]

I’m pleased I was present in the FM Stand that night he graced Brookvale Oval for the final time. He crawled towards us on hands and knees and head-butted the ball to score a classic try. Beea-verrrr!

Unbelievable athlete, brilliant player, a credit to Manly and rugby league.

 

[HappilyManly]

I’m pleased I was present in the FM Stand that night he graced Brookvale Oval for the final time. He crawled towards us on hands and knees and head-butted the ball to score a classic try. Beea-verrrr!

Unbelievable athlete, brilliant player, a credit to Manly and rugby league.

That was Beaver's most inelegant try for sure.
But he made sure that he scored it, irrespective of his messy effort

 

[Dion Johnson]

Nice write up from Roy on Beaver..

If any team wants to stop a Penrith five-peat, this is the player they need​

With a new NRL season kicking off and a federal election looming, it’s time to return to the Menzies era when innovation was not stifled by regulation; when the monied Silvertails ruled.

Power is now in Sydney’s outer western suburbs, where a new stadium is being built for those hard hat Panthers who have won four consecutive premierships and are poised to repeat in 2025.

The Menzies rugby league needs isn’t the former Liberal Bob Menzies variety – Australia’s longest serving prime minister. The NRL already has a Supreme Leader in Peter V’landys.

No, it needs a Steve Menzies, the Manly back-rower who won premierships in 1996 and 2008 and who holds the record for the most number of tries scored by a forward.

Menzies could play on the left and the right side of the field, unlike today’s edge forwards who play on one side, under the coach-endorsed left field-right field division of (defensive) responsibility. They are so wedded to one side, you are entitled to wonder how the right-side players drive a car to training, or how left-side players manage with scissors.

Edge forwards today have become labourers, unlike Menzies who carried the ball out of his own half from either side of the field. Coincidentally, Manly are still the best in the NRL at shifting the ball in their own territory, via clever halfback Daly Cherry-Evans, a strategy probably forced on them by a lack of robust wingers capable of returning the ball forcefully from kicks.

Yet back-rowers who can move the ball, aka Sonny Bill Williams, are what is needed to beat Penrith. If field position and possession is the holy grail of the game, the Panthers are masters of the former. They trap a team in its own half with a high hang-time clearing kick to an opposing winger, driving him back in the tackle with the best kick chase in the NRL

It is so effective that it becomes a game of forcings back, with their opponents finding each successive set of tackles begins closer and closer to their own line, while the Panthers move further away from theirs.


NRL coaches are inherently conservative, but the first to release a back-rower to assist his wingers, centres and fullback in a link to halfway, is a chance of breaking the Panthers’ stranglehold on the game.

Former NSW coach Frederick Fittler encouraged this strategy against Queensland with a mantra of “attack the halfway line as if it is the try line.” But his forwards were so steeped in the NRL club culture of strolling back for three tackles after a kick, it rarely happened.

His opposite, Queensland’s Kevin Walters, when asked whether edge forwards could do more in attack, said: “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

Canberra’s Ricky Stuart, never one to fear experimentation, has been working in the off-season to rush an edge forward back to develop, as he calls it, “some shape in attack.”

When the Panthers receive the ball from a clearing kick, they use their backs as crash test dummies. Their forwards don’t touch the ball until they reach halfway, thereby conserving energy for their brutal kick chase. So, an opposition coach has to move the ball in the Panthers half as well, tiring their forwards, forcing them into making multiple tackles.

The Panthers have been trend setters in capitalising on the flurry of rule changes of recent years. In the 2021 grand final, they exploited the six-again rule by conceding early breaches to trap the Rabbitohs in their own half.

The previous year, when they lost the grand final to Melbourne, halfback Nathan Cleary was frustrated on the last tackle by Christian Welch rushing at him. Welch successfully repeated the pressure for Queensland against Cleary’s NSW Blues.

However, NRL headquarters subsequently ruled that any player making contact with the kicker in the act of clearing the ball attracts an automatic penalty. Welch retired this month at age 30, a victim of his role becoming redundant, a trend to smaller middle players who can keep up in an increasingly helter-skelter game and the NRL’s admirable stance on concussion.

However, if a player is penalised for touching a kicker, why not relieve forwards of the role and release a back-rower to revive attack in the backfield?

Defensive agility was the buzz phrase last year. Let’s try attacking agility this season, with say Melbourne’s Eliesa Katoa, or even the Sharks’ Briton Nikora, or the Cowboys’ Jeremiah Nanai doing a Menzies to stop the Panthers’ reign.

Roy Masters