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.