Smart Signings: Schuster, the Sea Eagles and just what type of Seibold are we going to get?

It’s silly season. We’ve gone through the finals, the World Cup and the November 1 deadline after which, NRL players who are out of contract for 2024 can discuss terms with other clubs. With that in mind, we’re launching Smart Signings, our new series on who NRL clubs should be targeting to address their biggest weaknesses, using the players that are actually available to them.

You could make an argument that Manly weren’t actually that bad last year. In fact, for a team that lost its best player halfway through the season and then had one of the all time squad bust-ups, finishing with nine wins – five off the finals but comfortably better than everyone below them – wasn’t that bad.

They were 11th on the ladder, and statistically at least, that’s about as good as they were. We have to factor in that they had over $1m of salary cap left on the sideline and a team that was as disunited as any in the league.

You could reasonably expect Tom Trbojevic to have won two or three games on his own and probably brought of a few of the outcasts back onside with him through sheer force of personality on the field.

He’s nothing if not a company man, and between him, brother Jake and Daly Cherry-Evans, it certainly would have been possible for things to have gone differently.

Stats only tell you so much and Manly problems, by and large, weren’t of the structural type – at least not on the field.

They lost six straight after the Pride Jersey fiasco – they were well into the playoff race prior to that – and had already lost several games where variance went badly against them.

There was the Cowboys comeback in Round 15, the late forward pass defeat to Parramatta – in which Turbo was injured – in Round 11 and the Karl Lawton send-off loss in Round 8.

That’s three very changeable results against teams that made the finals right there. You could certainly make the argument that Manly were both unlucky and self-destructive, in a manner that is unlikely to be repeated in any other year.

(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

So what do we know about the Manly of 2023? The coach is gone, so that doesn’t help us.

Anthony Seibold’s tactical genius is very much up for debate and thus we sit in the ‘wait and see’ camp on what he might do with the squad. For what it’s worth, his tactical analysis videos as a pundit on the NRL website were some of the best content made anywhere.

They’ve lost their starting five-eighth, Kieran Foran, their best interchange forward, Martin Taupau, and their bench utility, Dylan Walker. All of these things, obviously, are bad.

But then: it was probably the right time, in terms of career arcs, to let all three go. None were getting any better, they were all well paid and all were clogging pathways for someone else.

The youth aspect of Manly is interesting because they do have talent coming through. Tolu Koula and Christian Tuipulotu debuted last year and are now set to play every week. Kaeo Weekes, the most touted of their young players, also got a run in first grade, as did Zac Fulton.

Manly’s major issue was that they weren’t as good as they had been the year before. Depending on how you see these things, they either adapted best to the post-lockdown rule changes and thus overperformed that year or adapted slowest to the rule reversion in 2022.

They lost Round 1 to the Panthers in Penrith and then Round 2 to the Roosters at the SCG – no shame in either result – but even then, I was asking Des Hasler in pressers about the relative ease in which his backline was ‘caged’ as coaches call, by opposition kicking.  

Without going into the weeds, that’s when they are able to kick well enough to isolate a winger under the high ball and thus smash them. Jason Saab was a huge weak point for this, and it was forcing Trbojevic into too much dog work.

Turbo is a team player to a fault and thus does far too much work. 18 runs per game was the third most of any player in the NRL to play 5 games, which is grand if you’re Dylan Edwards but bad if you’re also a major creative outlet.

Fun facts: Latrell Mitchell has half the number of runs, half the number of metres and a third fewer touches than Tom Trbojevic. He also has double the number of try assists, four times as many line break assists and nearly double the number of tackle busts, while also scoring just as many tries and making just as many breaks himself.

Seibold should have ‘less is more’ as the topic of his first meeting with his star fullback.  

Anthony Seibold. (Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

Seibold’s Brisbane were often guilty of putting the cart before the horse: in 2020, they had a stellar forward pack – Payne Haas, Pat Carrigan, David Fifita, Matt Lodge, Tevita Pangai jnr and Thomas Flegler all featured – but finished last for metres.

Their best spine, however, was Brodie Croft and Anthony Milford in the halves, Jamayne Isaako and Tesi Niu sharing fullback duties and Issac Luke or Jake Turpin at hooker. If you ever heard Seibold accused of pitching his tactics a little over the head of the average footy player, that list probably goes a long way to explaining why.

At Souths, where he was successful, he was delivering his instructions to Cody Walker, Adam Reynolds, Damien Cook and Greg Inglis. It’s not surprising that they could cope with what he was trying to do a little better.

At Manly, things will look more like Redfern than Red Hill. In DCE, he’ll have the absolute smartest halfback around. Nothing will be too much for him. Injury permitting, he’ll have one of the top three fullbacks in the world at the back. Lachlan Croker is solid if unspectacular in the hooking role, but far from a mug.

That leaves five-eighth. Josh Schuster is the man slated for the role and that is, for me, a huge gamble. He’s an undeniably talented player, and I can see a world in which a big-bodied, run-first, maverick style of player works well within a system where an experienced halfback is doing all of the other stuff – in Schuster’s case, particularly kicking, which he has never shown much aptitude for.

Our first Smart Signing, then, is quite contingent on how well we think that experiment is likely to go. If Schuster can take instruction and fit into what will be quite a complicated system, then he can undoubtedly star. He’s got the skills.

If he doesn’t, then at least Manly would have another year to lead in. With a raft of options available for 2024, now is probably a good time to give him a full run in the role.

Me, I’d be asking Luke Brooks if he fancied playing alongside someone good for a change (and at an affordable rate), or seeing his Adam Doueihi might want to get the Souths band back together on the Northern Beaches. Both are undervalued by dint of playing in a poor side (and you can read all about how the Tigers halves aren’t actually that bad here).

You might also see if Sandon Smith, one of the best young halves in the NSW Cup last year at Norths, fancied a trip over the Spit Bridge. If Braydon Trindall, in his last year at the Sharks, doesn’t get a game in 2022 then he will be hot property for plenty of teams.

And please, someone go and put cash on the table for the actual best young 5/8 in the world, St Helens gun Jack Welsby, and put an English half into the NRL alongside someone decent for a change. He is an absolute superstar and, while he just signed an extension with Saints, is far too good for the Super League.

Josh Schuster. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)

Schuster is the key to Manly’s other issue. They’ve got a strange old dynamic in the pack, with a lot of very similar players.

The backrow is set to be Kelma Tuilagi and Haumole Olakau’atu, which should be box office, and the middle rotation will be Josh Aloiai, Taniela Paseka and Toff Sipley with a potential Jake Trbojevic, should Seibold (correctly) choose to ditch the ball-playing lock role that Jurbo had under Dessie.

That leaves Ethan Bullemor, Sean Keppie, Morgan Boyle, Karl Lawton, Ben Trbojevic and new signing Ben Condon to work in around, and they’re all kind of similar.

You might see Lawton on the bench where Dylan Walker was – playing a bit of 9, a bit of 13 and generally being a nuisance – and but beyond that, they’re all much of a muchness.

Seibold liked a very agile pack at both Souths and the Broncos, so that might not actually be a huge issue. He had something of an ideological commitment to the idea in previous years, even when – at the Broncos – it certainly didn’t suit the roster he had.

This Manly set-up could definitely play that way, however. The surfeit of guys who aren’t really edges or middles could be ideal for a small ball-style of attack, much like that which Cronulla worked to great effect.

If Seibold favours the early switches that he liked a lot in previous jobs, then that might be useful too: Koula would love that kind of early ball, Tommy T might get it slightly wider and not have to chase work and Schuster could be parked on an edge. The roster favours that kind of play.

That style was clearly not valued under Hasler: Manly were low for push supports (Cronulla, understandably, were the best) and middling for decoys. Back in 2018, Seibold’s Souths were second and top on those metrics, but in 2019 and 2020, they were dead last, so your guess is as good as mine.

On the signings front, Schuster matters because the potential to play with a pack that forwards agility and fitness at the expense of size and power might live or die on him. If Schuster is the 6, then it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that the size is spread across the team and Manly are a high energy machine.

If he isn’t, then he could still move to 13 and allow them to spread the ball-playing around, with the potential for new signing Cooper Johns in the halves.

Should Manly need size, then they could look at Luke Thompson – whom I feel like I punt in every one of these columns, but is criminally underappreciated at the Dogs – or Emre Guler, roughly as good as the guys that they have but a different body shape, who is in a contract year.

In truth, the biggest signing at Brookvale is the coach, and he might be the smartest of all. Alternatively, he might be far too smart for his own good.

Watching his Brisbane and identifying who they thought played in which position was often a problem: this was the guy who gave you Corey Oates, backrower, and Darius Boyd, five eighth, after all.

In the latest ‘full disclosure’ notice ever to appear in a column, I am a Manly supporter, and if you read The Roar, you’ll already know that I like data, tactics and analysis in a coach, so perhaps this is just the optimist in me talking.

But this roster looks more like his successful Souths than it does his rubbish Broncos. Hope springs eternal. And it’s the hope that kills you, after all.