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The Sea Eagles were well and truly plucked by the Panthers and coach Anthony Seibold insists it’s not all doom and gloom.
But even he admits if they put in a third straight display of turnstile defence against the Storm on Friday night that there will be no way to sugarcoat the problems with their team.
Manly looked like they would be top-four contenders after an opening burst in which they thrashed the Bulldogs and upset Parramatta before going down by a point to Souths.
But they lost their way in Mudgee with a 32-32 draw with the Knights before they were sent into oblivion last weekend at Penrith when they conceded 32 unanswered points in the first half alone as the premiers ran in five tries through some, at times, embarrassing defensive efforts on the way to a 44-12 hiding.
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Their problems have been in the trickiest place to defend on the field – a couple of passes wide of the ruck where halves, centres and second-rowers need to work in unison and with force, particularly close to their goal-line.
Don’t be surprised if Melbourne direct their attacking plays to the right on Friday night as Manly’s left-edge players have been defending like matadors over the past two weeks – a flurry of hands as they ultimately let the oncoming charge race through unimpeded.
Against the Panthers it was the quartet of Kelma Tuilagi, Kaeo Weekes, Brad Parker and Reuben Garrick that was brought undone.
Five of the seven tries came down that route with the first four from close range where there was no desperation shown by the Sea Eagles.
Manly made the final scoreline less embarrassing with two tries from kicks when Panthers took foot off gas.
The previous week against Newcastle, Cooper Johns was defending in the five-eighth’s spot which will normally be reserved for Josh Schuster but he has been sidelined with a thigh problem and has again been ruled out for the Storm stoush.
Manly conceded four of their six tries down their left against the Knights, all from within the red zone with a few simple passes and one with a grubber behind the line rather than any extravagant tactical plays.
A common theme in the Manly malaise is how disjointed their defensive line has been with some players rushing up at different speeds to their teammates who should be directly alongside them.
Johns is back on the left edge after Seibold conceded Weekes was thrown into the deep end too early against the Panthers while Raymond Tuaimalo Veaga replaces Garrick on the wing after he suffered a head knock last Saturday.
“Against South Sydney, the game that went to golden point for a 13-12 loss for us, I thought we were good defensively that night. They’ve got a lot of threats. We handled Cody Walker and Latrell Mitchell pretty well,” he said at his captain’s run media conference on Thursday.
“We were a little bit off in the first half against Newcastle and certainly way off in the first half against Penrith.
“There’s been no changes, you know, from a tactical, technical side of things, but we’ve had some changes to some personnel and cohesion is a big thing in team sports, so when you make some changes to your edges, those things take a little bit of time.
“We’ve got some players defending next to each other who haven’t. We’ve had another week to embed some of those players into the group and we feel like at home, it’s there for us to go and chase and be better defensively.”
The Sea Eagles are smack bang in the middle of the premiership ladder in ninth with their 2-1-2 record but can show they are made of sterner stuff by beating the Storm.
“We feel as though our first four weeks of footy have been a big improvement on the back end of last year. And we let ourselves down a half or footy,” Seibold said.
“If we can’t get up at home Friday night against the Storm then something’s wrong with this. I think we’ll get up but whether we’re good enough to get the job done … we feel as though we can go and give a really good account of ourselves.”
While fullback Tom Trbojevic is fine to face Melbourne after overcoming a hip pointer, Seibold said the 26-year-old star needed to improve on his performance against the Panthers after having a rare off night.
“Tom’s got some really good processes in place in and around how he prepares each way. Look, he wasn’t at his best on Saturday, and I spoke to him about ways that he can improve his game and he knows that that wasn’t one of his best games,” he said.
“But if you look at the early rounds, he was one of our leading players for the first four games. He was off on the weekend but he wasn’t Robinson Crusoe. It’s not just Tom, we’ve had to look at why we’re so far off.”
(Photo by Brett Hemmings/Getty Images)
Storm coach Craig Bellamy was in a similar position to Seibold a couple of weeks ago, cranky with his team’s defence after an uncharacteristically slow 2-2 start to the year.
But after conceding just two tries in the road win over Souths and a solitary four-pointer in last Thursday’s 28-8 home trouncing of the Roosters, he’s as happy as someone known as “Bellyache” can be.
“The last two weeks we’ve been a lot better defensively, that’s been the big turnaround,” he said at his Thursday media op.
“We still think we can improve a lot in a few parts of our game but certainly our defence the last two weeks has been more about what we see ourselves as being capable of.”