Since the start of 2025, no side has played in more games decided by 13 points or more than Manly.
Twenty-one of their past 27 games have been won by big margins – the Sea Eagles prevailing in 10 and losing the other 11. Historically, few sides in premiership history have a comparable record.
Manly themselves hold the record for most 13-plus margins in one season (21), from 2021 – the last time rugby league’s soundtrack was a ringing set restart bell.
And as far as lies, damned lies and statistics go, the Sea Eagles’ all-or-nothing record sums up the Anthony Seibold era as well as any.
Manly – brilliant one minute, blowing it all the next.
For Seibold’s eventual long-term successor, there is upside to a talent-laden squad and emerging crop of youngsters. Manly’s roster needs renovating, but there is scope to do it.
More immediately, caretaker Keiran Foran has a few days before his coaching debut against the Dolphins, and ideally, re-shaping Manly’s approach in line with the way he played – balancing brilliance with much-needed backbone.
In 2026, with six-agains creating compelling one-way runs of momentum in which a team can go five-to-ten minutes without touching the ball, possession and territory are king.
Put plainly, the Sea Eagles aren’t built to dominate either. Early shifts to capitalise on the speed of Tolu Koula, Jason Saab and co. have made Manly the NRL’s most dangerous side from their own half and yielded breathtaking long-range tries.
So, too, the expansive ball movement that had them averaging 258 passes a game last season, second only to Penrith (262).
Great fun when it works. But front-foot ball, or at least a 50-50 split in the ruck and wrestle, is needed to keep a game plan like that singing. And Manly have lost the ruck battle more often than not in the past two years.
Their three losses this year have averaged 30 fewer passes per game as the weight of possession and field position mount against them.
Several injuries in a forward pack already short on depth played its part last year, especially losing big man Taniela Paseka. Jake Trbojevic’s decline adds another layer.
In pure yardage terms, Manly has been thoroughly beaten in each of their three losses to Canberra (who ran for 185 more running metres), Newcastle (401) and the Roosters (331) this year.
Territory numbers from those games make you wonder how the Sea Eagles were in them at all. Against the Raiders, 58 per cent of the golden-point defeat was played in Manly’s half.
The Knights racked up a 56 per cent share of territory, and the Roosters last Thursday played 68 per cent of the game at Manly’s end.
The issue for Foran and the Sea Eagles is that there is no immediate fix. Wingers Saab and Lehi Hopoate are hardly big bodies and not noted for their yardage carries.
Veteran props Siua Taukeiaho and Nathan Brown were absent last week, but neither has been bending the defensive line – while that hasn’t been Jake Trbojevic’s game for years, either.
Hence, an expansive gameplan built around ball movement and creating space for Tom Trbojevic, Haumole Olakau’atu and Koula. But when the passes don’t stick, Manly can be exasperating – see the slew of schoolboy errors against Newcastle.
Five-eighth Luke Brooks is a front-foot playmaker while Jamal Fogarty at least has the long kicking game to turn a bad set into a good one.
Seibold resisted parachuting prodigious 19-year-old Joey Walsh into his struggling side for sound reason, possibly recalling the way a young Tom Dearden battled through 12 straight losses as his coaching tenure at Brisbane fell to pieces. It took Dearden years to recover.
Meanwhile, with set restarts piling pressure on defences like rarely before, Manly wilt far too easily.
Efforts like the stirring 18-16 upset of Melbourne in Melbourne last winter, and even last Thursday’s first-half against a near-perfect Roosters outfit provide fleeting glimpses of tenacity to match the Sea Eagles talent.
The three tries they conceded in five minutes early in the second half against the Tricolours though, all too familiar.
So too, the short kick-off they attempted afterwards – which Queensland Origin coach Billy Slater noted on The Sunday Footy Show as indicating “to me, there were 25 minutes still to play, that said they weren’t in for the long haul”.
Foran will always be regarded as one of the most wholehearted players in Manly history. The Sea Eagles could do much worse than taking cues from their new mentor.
