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The Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles had a down-and-up season in 2015, managing in just 12 months to go from contender to basket case back to contender.
2015 in review: Collapse, then rebirth
After years of kicking the salary cap can down the road, clinging on to the squad that delivered two titles, four grand final appearances, and ten consecutive years making the eight, the Sea Eagles abruptly collapsed at the start of 2015 like Jake and Elwood’s car at the end of The Blues Brothers.
The team lost nine of its first 12 games, and star halves Daly Cherry-Evans and Kieran Foran both signed deals to leave the club in 2016.
But then a funny thing happened on the way to wrack and ruin.
After first pinching that truck full of cash from the lotto ads and driving it up to Cherry-Evans’ house to get him to re-sign, the club rapidly improved on the field, winning eight of their final 12 games as generation next players like the Trbojevic brothers excelled.
To cap it off, the club undertook a spectacular offseason recruitment drive, and hired up-and-coming coach Trent Barrett to turn around their fortunes.
Offseason story: Hiring Trent Barrett
The biggest casualty of the Eagles’ struggles in early 2015 was coach Geoff Toovey, who was told he would not be required for 2016 early in the season, and then asked to coach out the remainder of the year.
His replacement is former Steelers, Dragon and Sharks player Trent Barrett, who cut his teeth as an assistant coach at the Panthers. As the first club outsider to coach the club since the Stone Age, the pressure will be on Barrett to do whatever it is that the Sea Eagles board felt Toovey couldn’t.
Roster management
2016 gains: Lewis Brown, Isaac John, Apisai Koroisau, Darcy Lussick, Tim Moltzen, Nate Myles, Matt Parcell, Martin Taupau, Dylan Walker
2016 losses: Matt Ballin, Cheyse Blair, Michael Chee-Kam, Kieran Foran, Clinton Gutherson, James Hasson, Peta Hiku, Justin Horo, Jack Littlejohn, Dunamis Lui, Ligi Sao, Jesse Sene-Lefao, David Williams
A strong contender for best overall roster management, the Sea Eagles have gone from absolute tire-fire status last April, when it looked like they were losing both starting halves, to now having a more than competitive squad again.
To be abundantly clear, losing Foran is a colossal blow and it’s not readily apparent that the team has a natural replacement for him on the books for 2016. However if we accept that it probably wasn’t going to be possible to keep both Foran and Cherry-Evans, then using the money saved on Foran to invest in strengthening a forward pack that simply didn’t have the quality of players required and got trampled far too often in 2015 was a smart move.
While Nate Myles is perhaps on the downswing in his career, he is still a first-choice Queensland representative, and an experienced professional to partner with fellow recruit (and notorious hothead) Darcy Lussick, along with young Jake Trbojevic. Meanwhile, Martin Taupau will add raw aggression and tackle breaking potency to a forward pack that struggled to make the first man miss in 2015.
The Sea Eagles also got involved in the great centre-go-round of 2015, effectively trading out New Zealand international Peta Hiku for Dylan Walker of the Rabbitohs. Whether Walker is a better player than Hiku remains to be seen, although Walker may get shifted to five-eighth to accommodate Tom Trbojevic in a backline that remains ludicrously strong.
The club has also brought in two playmaking hookers to replace departed stalwart Matt Ballin. The first is Apisai Koroisau, he of the Rabbitohs 2014 title team via a throwaway year in Penrith in 2015. The second is Matt Parcell from the all-conquering Ipswich Jets. Parcell was last seen shredding the Newcastle Knights NSW Cup team to pieces in the state championship game on grand final day.
Fans will no doubt be sad to see two-time premiership player Ballin leave, and players like Justin Horo, Ligi Sao and Jesse Sene-Lefao all made useful contributions in 2015.
Overall however, this was smart business for the club, as they moved aggressively to build a new championship team after the last era of greatness collapsed around them at the beginning of 2015.
Likely lineup
1. Brett Stewart
2. Jorge Taufua
3. Jamie Lyon
4. Steve Matai
5. Tom Trbojevic
6. Dylan Walker
7. Daly Cherry-Evans
8. Nate Myles
9. Apisai Koroisau
10. Jake Trbojevic
11. Tom Symonds
12. Lewis Brown
13. Martin Taupau
14. Matt Parcell
15. Brenton Lawrence
16. Darcy Lussick
17. Feleti Mateo
After they threw Fort Knox at him Cherry-Evans is staying, but who will partner him in the halves? Or more accurately, since Cherry-Evans typically operates primarily on the right edge, who will fill the left half position? There are a number of contenders but none really stand out.
Jamie Lyon played 6 in a premiership team, but he seems content just working down the right edge, putting in the odd option-kick here and there, and clowning defenders with his old man running game and silky passing.
Another in-house option is to move Tom Trbojevic, fresh off a few cameos in first grade and annihilating all comers in the NYC at fullback, straight into the halves, a position many feel might be his best at the top level. However Trbojevic is still young and also Bruce Reid-skinny – it may not be wise to expose him to the rigours of first-grade defence.
Isaac John, formerly of the Panthers, is another option. John made seven steady if unspectacular appearances for the Panthers in the halves and is an outside chance to fill the role for the Sea Eagles. Another slim possibility is former Tiger wunderkind Tim Moltzen, whose face appears in the dictionary next to the phrase ‘injury hell’. Moltzen, once a fullback prospect is probably on his last opportunity in the NRL and, when we last saw him at least, did seem to have many of the skills required in the halves.
However, it is fellow new recruit Walker who seems most likely to fill the Foran void, at least initially. Walker made his name as an elusive centre, scoring 13 tries in 2015 while breaking the line 11 times and busting 70 tackles. However while he is a gifted player for whom there has always been an expectation that he might move to the halves, his last stint in that role was short-lived, after Michael Maguire pulled him after just three games at the start of 2014.
In the forwards the biggest question is the best way to use new recruit Martin Taupau. Taupau was effective early in 2015 in a power lock role for the Tigers, but he has also played in the front row. However given that the team has Tom Symonds, Lewis Brown and Feleti Mateo available in the backrow, the temptation will be to include Taupau as part of a traditional prop rotation, along with Myles, Lussick and Jake Trbojevic. However with Jamie Buhrer’s return from an ACL tear put on hold after he suffered a broken jaw at the Auckland Nines, it’s more likely Taupau will be used in jersey 13.
Meanwhile, somehow we got this far in an Eagles preview without mentioning the still-elite Prince of Brookvale, Brett Stewart, the hunter-killer left centre Steve Matai and the metre eater Jorge Taufua. With Dylan Walker at five-eighth and old man Lyon at right centre, they are likely to be joined by Turbo Tom Trbojevic on the right wing to form as strong a group as you will see anywhere in the league.
If the forwards can play the opposition to a draw, these guys could run wild.
Player to watch: Daly Cherry-Evans
When Cherry-Evans announced that he had spurned the Titans to instead re-up with the Sea Eagles the consensus was that the dollar figure was somewhere north of $1 million a year and perhaps significantly more than that. It’s hard to know how accurate salaries quoted in the media are, but if those numbers are even remotely accurate then Cherry-Evans is going to have to do an awful lot on the field to match his paycheque.
To add to the pressure, DCE will for the first time have to operate without the safety blanket of Foran, perhaps the best complementary half in the competition over recent years. While Cherry-Evans has always been the dominant kicker for the team he will now presumably have to shoulder more of the burden of creating tries, an area in which he was only good, not great, the last two seasons, with only 15 try assists each season.
For whatever reason Cherry-Evans has never been a media darling in the way that other star players of his generation have. If he struggles early this season, he will come under swift and vengeful disapproval.
Predicted finish: Fringe of the eight
After retaining Cherry-Evans and then surrounding him with a revamped roster, the Eagles should bounce back into contention immediately in 2016. Fans of other clubs on their third, fourth and fifth year of rebuilding must shake their head.
However, even with the surge at the end of 2015 and the remarkable roster makeover, there are still questions to answer before we can pencil them into the eight. The biggest question mark is how well the team gels and how well they adapt to new coach Barrett.
On paper this team looks like a heavyweight, but let’s see how they look on the field before we get too far ahead of ourselves.
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