The way forward

[Mark from Brisbane]

My greatest fear is if these "guns" coming through all fail to fire! Obviously a lot of pressure to put on young shoulders however if they do bloom it'll be a quick rise out of the doldrums.
But if not.....

That’s the risk you’d have to be prepared to take.

But if the superstars won’t come because ,

1) we are unattractive
2) we don’t have the 3rd party dollars to compete

Then what else are our choices ??

 

[Pete W]

To me it all starts at the top. Hard to move the club forward without having a very strong leader someone totally committed to building the club back into a premiership force, someone with excellent footy knowledge and connections within the game to wheel and deal and make shxt happen. Someone who has full and total control to make the changes necessary without fear or favour from whoever owns the joint. Someone who will take a long term approach and rebuild the club from all the angles that you highlight.

Easy job ....... ????

Bring back Arko

 

[Nordburg]

Based on our results and where we seem to be heading then no. He's not terrible, I mean he's at least stayed longer than most of the CEOS we've had and seems ro have the support of the Penn family. but the results are what they are and I agree with your assessment of the future. Our future is kind of beige ..... probably not bottom of the barrel but hovering around the bottom half of the ladder for the foreseeable future.

It's not an easy job or position to recruit but people like Gus Gould, Frank Ponissi, Nick Politis always find a way. No matter what, they just seem to get shxt done and they drag the club with them and you're either on the bus with them or they quickly chuck you off it. Obviously an NRL club is lots of moving parts but a really strong leader with a powerful vision and unrelenting commitment "to make Manly great again" would I think be a decent start.

So you talk about results,yet don’t even mention 1 of the appalling coaches from the last 10 years,that have overseen the clubs demise.Time for the owners or whoever is now making the big decisions,to get someone in that wants to sort out the club,not just the first grade squad with quick fix,band aid solutions

 

[madmax]

Based on our results and where we seem to be heading then no. He's not terrible, I mean he's at least stayed longer than most of the CEOS we've had and seems ro have the support of the Penn family. but the results are what they are and I agree with your assessment of the future. Our future is kind of beige ..... probably not bottom of the barrel but hovering around the bottom half of the ladder for the foreseeable future.

It's not an easy job or position to recruit but people like Gus Gould, Frank Ponissi, Nick Politis always find a way. No matter what, they just seem to get shxt done and they drag the club with them and you're either on the bus with them or they quickly chuck you off it. Obviously an NRL club is lots of moving parts but a really strong leader with a powerful vision and unrelenting commitment "to make Manly great again" would I think be a decent start.

Bear in mind we have more sponsorship than we’ve had in many years!!! Mestrov can only do what the Penn’s allow him to do.

 

[TheSoaringEagle2023]

You want radical? I'll give you radical:
We merge with Newcastle and become New Manly.
We command the geography north of Sydney Harbour, through the central coast and north past Newcastle to the Queensland border. Imagine the junior talent in this region!
We play half our home matches in Newcastle and half at Brookie.
We add some blue to our jersey to embrace the Newcastle colours and come up with a design similiar to the jerseys we had when Pepsi was a sponsor.
Our logo becomes a 'Knight in Flight...'
Such a plan would improve our on-field results markedly. What is would mean for the fan bases of both clubs probably would be polarising.

That would go down well with The Spud and The Chief.

 

[madmax]

Bite the fu<king bullet & get some youth in the team! Yes we may struggle for a while but how the fu<k else will we know? I’m happy to go thru a difficult 2026 if we give players like Walsh, Large, Hart, Bryan, Navale, Muagututia, Pua’avase, Laiafi a chance!!!!! At least we’ll know what the future may bring & who knows there could be a few surprises! I’d go all out as follows:
Trbo
Saab
Koula
Garrick
Lehi
Walsh
Fogarty
Paseka
Simpkin / Muagatutia
TKO
Olakau’atu
Hart
Navale
Res: Talau, Brbo, Bully, Laiafi
FMD it’s time!!!!!!

 

[Frogz]

nd you

Bite the fu<king bullet & get some youth in the team! Yes we may struggle for a while but how the fu<k else will we know? I’m happy to go thru a difficult 2026 if we give players like Walsh, Large, Hart, Bryan, Navale, Muagututia, Pua’avase, Laiafi a chance!!!!! At least we’ll know what the future may bring & who knows there could be a few surprises! I’d go all out as follows:
Trbo
Saab
Koula
Garrick
Lehi
Walsh
Fogarty
Paseka
Simpkin / Muagatutia
TKO
Olakau’atu
Hart
Navale
Res: Talau, Brbo, Bully, Laiafi
FMD it’s time!!!!!!

Still, you haver Garrick in centres...please no. Drop Saab and have Hoppa and Garrick on wings

 

[Under the Sticks]

Our problem has been our Big 3 have not played consistently well (or at all) enough in the past 8 years. Many teams relinquished 3-4 big paid players.

Mestrov seems to be doing a reasonable job and has things moving forward with what’s in his control.

As the new teams come in the big talent will get spread around further and hopefully even out the competition in 27 and 28.

 

[1972]

It’s pretty depressing being a Manly fan currently , I’m not sure we are at rock bottom but we certainly are nearing those rocks.

So , given that we aren’t going to get new owners anytime soon , and highly highly unlikely to find a super rich benefactor we as a club are going to have to discover a new way forward.

The issues ( apart from funding which I’ve done to death ) are ,

**Recruitment & our non ability to attract stars

**Our reliance on several highly paid players sucking a huge chunk of our salary cap.

**Our lack of quality talented juniors compared to other clubs.

**Our poor performing reserve grade

**Our football department ( top to bottom)

I’ve neglected to add , injury crises as I think at times all clubs face this so let’s leave that one out of the conversation.

If there’s any more major issues please feel free to list.

Now , I do not have the answers , but could comment on each of the above however I thought I’d throw this open to the ST team as to , how would you improve each or a number of those issues???

Now it’s a given that there will be plenty of “ sack the coach “ responses , and fair enough if that’s your view , but surely even the most avid of you that are anti Seibold must realise it’s not just the coach that’s the core of our problems so I’d really like to hear everyone’s views on what the fix might be, so by all means “ sack the coach “ but please that’s not much of a response without ways to fix the other issues at the core of our problems.

Please feel free to add a major issue , and if you do I’ll edit the original post to reflect that as well.

Need owners who want to win not make a profit.

 

[redlineg]

Sack the coach, invest in Manly DNA - coaching staff, juniors, pathways. Rebuild from the ground up with a passionate, development focussed coaching team.

Stop looking for a quick fix recruit until the building blocks are in place, then selective target who we need just like we did with Ben Kennedy. Go back to where we were in 2004/05 and use that as the blueprint. Forget the “premiership window” bull**** and enjoy the journey. Fans will stay on board if they can see the club building to something.

Without a billionaire owner, it’s the only way.

I kind of agree to an extent.
Our club has proven that in the past that Manly DNA is required for success
When you think about previous CEO like Arko who bled for the club and our last premiership winning coach Des and Captain Jamie Lyons they bled maroon and white
However, since our last premiership in 2011 we have have had 5 first grade coaches, all of which would have needed time to ‘rebuild’ their squads after taking over
With Seibs job on the line, we need to think how we resolve this
My two cents is we consider the Walker Brothers as a coaching possibility for the following reasons
1. They seem to have done a good job bringing up Sam Walker (Ben’s son)
2. They are in high regards in Queensland turning sh@t into gold winning Queensland Cup in recent years
3. They could resolve our impotent attack stats within opposition 20m noting that we are good in terms of long distant tries. The teams they have coached have great attacking prowess,something not seen since 2011
4. On DNA, Ben played 26 games for the Northern Eagles as well as 16 games for Manly Sea Eagles. More than any coach since Toovey last effort to get us in a grand final
5. Last reason is that the price could be in Penns budget?
Also would consider Ballin
We need new ideas to lead us to a premiership
My two cents anyway

 

[HK_Eagle]

Penn’s biggest show of fight for this club was to have the new Excellence Centre named after him.

 

[Terry Zarsoff]

Penn’s biggest show of fight for this club was to have the new Excellence Centre named after him.

And hopefully if and when he has flocked off, it will be renamed something more appropriate.

The cheek of those two (father and son).

I believe they have never been ratepayers of Northern Beaches Council, nor its predecessors.

 

[HK_Eagle]

And hopefully if and when he has flocked off, it will be renamed something more appropriate.

The cheek of those loathsome scum, father and son.

I guess he looked at the Politis model and how the Chooks play out of the Politis Ground, and train in the Politis School of Excellence… 🙄

 

[TheSoaringEagle2023]

I guess he looked at the Politis model and how the Chooks play out of the Politis Ground, and train in the Politis School of Excellence… 🙄

Should be renamed Brookvale Retirement Village

 

[manlyfan76]

Imagine its 2020 and a Saudi backed group want to buy Manly. Unlimited money and resources available and a determination to succeed at any cost.

But heads go into the Curl Curl sand again and there is no sale.

Fast forward to today and there is now a Rugby360 competition backed by unlimited Saudi money and we can't afford marquee players.

The Fluffy Way.

 

[manlyfan76]

That’s the risk you’d have to be prepared to take.

But if the superstars won’t come because ,

1) we are unattractive
2) we don’t have the 3rd party dollars to compete

Then what else are our choices ??

Part 2 is 100% on fluffy.
Just do some dodgy deals with business partners for third party deals and pay them extra for stock you buy or whatever.

He must not be liked in his business world.

 

[Mark from Brisbane]

Part 2 is 100% on fluffy.
Just do some dodgy deals with business partners for third party deals and pay them extra for stock you buy or whatever.

He must not be liked in his business world.

100%

The others manage don’t they ??

 

[Mark from Brisbane]

I think we all know the limiting factor in our club, but given that , and the fact we are stuck with it , the question still remains , how do we move forward ?

We have to find a way ( the club of course not us sausage roll eating nufties ).

 

[Brookie1973]

Sorry, but I don’t buy this anti-Penn obsession some people seem to have. We have made finals under his ownership haven’t we? How did we do that? Just spit-balling here, but maybe the coach had something to do with it? Maybe having a decent coach with some clue as to managing a team and roster might have something to do with it.

Would I prefer an Uncle Nick as owner? Yes, obviously. Is it going to happen? No. Unless you are planning to band together and form a consortium to buy him out, we are stuck with the owner we have. Can we improve and compete with the right coach? Yes, we can.

 

[Terry Zarsoff]

Assuming the team fails to make the finals this year, the 11 seasons from 2015-25 are the worst seasons, at first grade level, in the history of the Manly-Warringah club.

Those seasons coincide with majority control by the Penn family*, plus their silent partners, Messrs Wolman and Andrew.

Four seasons when they made the finals during that period, going no further than Week 3 on one occasion (2021), is a modest return for a club which previously had such a proud record.

*I don’t think Penn Sr. is involved anymore