With the dust barely settled on the storm that was Des Hasler leaving the Eagles’ nest for Belmore, the question needs to be asked: does this stand Manly in better stead for back-to-back success than if he had stayed?
There is often opinion on high-intensity coaches like Hasler, Ricky Stuart, Craig Bellamy and others, that their all-consuming approach leads to increased player burn-out and an inability to get up for the next week, or the next season for that matter.
Will Geoff Toovey’s emergence to the top post at Manly result in a revitalised playing group?
Coming off the back of a certainly draining – although highly successful – five-year period, this may just prove to be the key position change the Eagles need to stay at the top.
St George Illawarra, after a mostly victorious three-year period under Wayne Bennett, look to have been the most recent team to suffer this kind of downfall, with a late 4-1-10 record seeing them bundled out of the 2011 premiership race.
Such a high-intensity game plan, stacked with suffocating defence and consistently pressuring attack, no doubt took its toll on the Saints mental stamina.
It’s been long rumoured that this exact player burn-out occured during Ricky Stuart’s time at Bondi. With disappointing finals misses in 2005-06, it led to the club parting ways with Stuart after leading the Roosters to three successive grand finals from 2002-04, including a premiership triumph. (It can be argued though that Brad Fittler’s departure coincided exactly with this variance in success, so the jury remains out.)
A similar view can be hypothesised for Manly’s 2012 campaign had Hasler been retained. Having reached the summit not once, but twice, in the last four years, it would widely be assumed that the playing group could potentially become jaded (not even factoring in the off-field soap opera that was the Brett Stewart-David Gallop saga under Hasler’s stewardship).
The Sea Eagles playing roster remains relatively stable, with the exception of the loss of young hot-shot Will Hopoate, and two honest clubmen in Shane Rodney and Michael Robertson.
They still boast current international and Origin stars stars in Watmough, Foran, Cherry-Evans, Lyon, Ballin, King, Matai and the Stewart brothers.
Toovey is as maroon and white as they come, he is not a new coach to the club, and by his own admission will leverage off a lot of the current structures, systems and ideas the club has been successful with to date.
Going back to back has proved elusive for NRL teams of late, with the last to do it being Brisbane in 1992-93, Manly may just have the unintentional elixir to help break this trend in the age of high-pressure professional coaches. After 18 years of chokes and stumbles from the trophy holders, they look the best chance yet to break this drought.
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