Last weekend I watched Ricky Stuart almost in tears on the sidelines watching Papalii do his stuff at the end, and then how highly he spoke of him in the press conference. At first I thought it was cringe worthy how he was on the sideline, but on reflection, the passion he has for the Raiders shines through immensely, and it seems to be rubbing through onto the squad as a whole, and you even have guys who he has had issues with on board and pulling in one direction.
Now to move this around to where I relate it to Manly. Our last golden era, Des and Toovey on the coaching staff were Manly through and through, if anything happened to the players, Des is first one there in their corner and publicly batting for them in the media. Max Delmege, couldn’t question one bit his love for the club. All players had complete buy in and loved Des and the entire club pulled in one direction.
There has always been a theory about Manly only having success with Manly people, and I have never brought into it, I’ve always thought it should be the best person for the job regardless.
For me I think my viewpoint on this has completely changed. Not every coach needs to be carrying on like Ricky Stuart on the sideline, but I look at Seibold, and could I ever see him having that type of emotion and passion in him if Jake had an afternoon like that ? No I can’t. I don’t see anything in him that gives the squad anything to buy into whole heartedly, that isn’t saying he is a bad bloke, he just doesn’t seem to inspire, and none of the assistants have it in them either. The current owners, they tip money into the joint, but is there ever anything more coming from them that suggests the club is anything more than the plaything to them ? They certainly haven’t been shy of knifing club legends in the back
We look at the DCE saga, and we will never know the reasons why, but we have the guy at our club in Josh Papaliis shoes, and he can’t wait to get out of the joint, why ? I’m not marking him innocent in eroding of Manly culture either, but why does he so desperately want out of a joint he can hold all the records at ?
I’m sure people can point at Des in 2011 as part of starting this downward spiral as well, and it may be a fair point, but what pushed him in that direction ? That’s another question with many answers that we will probably never know which one is correct
So to round this off, how do we get back to installing the Manly DNA back into the joint ? Personally I have absolutely no idea lol. Penn is a known quantity so we know what we get there. Mestrov doesn’t inspire me at all, listening to him on the podcasts with James Graham last year, he was more about pulling the likes of Penrith down a level, rather than striving to push Manly up to that level. Coaching wise, Seibold isn’t it for me, but who is out there that has that Manly passion to inspire the players ? I don’t see any obvious option immediately, in the future Jake may be a great option to have coming through the coaching ranks
When I look at all the above, the current way we are playing, what we have in terms of promising players coming through, especially in the forwards, things are looking decidedly bleak. The Warriors recruitment and retention boss was on the radio here a couple of weeks back publicly laying out their plan for the next 5 years and where they are looking to go as a club, and it was a great listen. I wish I had something like that from us that we could actually hold onto with some hope
Going back to the topic title, passion for the club, mine has declined rapidly in recent times. The result good or bad doesn’t have the same emotion in it anymore, Can anybody lift me back up ?
