Manly aren’t just bad: they’re boring. Has Anthony Seibold been found out?

It was Bela Guttmann, one of the greatest soccer coaches of all time, who opined that the third year for a coach was fatal.

His theory was that, by then, either your dressing room had become sick of your voice or your opponents had worked you out – or both.

From Craig Bellamy to Alex Ferguson, there are countless examples of coaches who last a hell of a lot longer than three years, but crucially, they almost always engage in serious rearrangement around that time, shifting their message to keep things fresh.

It’s why you can watch 20 years of Bellamyball and not find a consistent style of play, because it always changed, a line that could also be used about Wayne Bennett, Ricky Stuart or, indeed, Fergie.

For coaches that are highly systematic, they change the personnel instead.

It’s why Ivan Cleary has an almost completely different roster to the one he did at the start of the Panthers run. Just 7 of the 17 2021 Premiers remain – even fewer than the 9 of the 17 Storm players from 2017 who remained to win again in 2020.

It’s why Trent Robinson so regularly chops and changes backroom staff. He has just one, Matt King, left from 2022’s cohort.

Those examples are also the successful guys, the ones who made it to three years. They’re the exception to the rule in that they won enough games to get a chance at changing things on their own terms.

In the NRL, the average coaching lifespan since 1998 is, you guessed it, two and a half to three years. After that, you either regenerate or leave.

This is all germane to Anthony Seibold at the Manly Sea Eagles. He’s deep in the third year blues and, if you listen to wise sources, has two games to save his job.

His side have lost to the worst two teams in the NRL, Newcastle and the Gold Coast, back to back, and are drifting listlessly with a 6-8 record through 14 games.

Given the talent available and the expectations, which are never far off sky high on the Northern Beaches, it’s a major underperformance.

With their draw and the challenges elsewhere in the league at different clubs, the top four was a minimum for 2025. Now, they’d be lucky just to make the finals at all.

Coaches survive for two reasons: they’re either winning, or they’re giving the impression that what they are doing will lead to wins at some point.

The second part usually falls into two camps: roster and style. Losing is bad, but you can lose with kids if supporters think that it’s the way to win in the future.

Similarly, if the playing group is so bad that nobody can win with them, then supporters see that it’s not the coaches’ fault and, indeed, they might be getting the most out of a poor bunch.

The aesthetic element is a little more woolly, but it does exist.

Lose a lot of games 34-30 and fans will at least get a heap of tries to cheer, even if they ultimately don’t get the choccies. It’s easier for them to imagine that they might win games like this going forward, even if they aren’t now.

That aspect might be best thought about the other way around – how long are fans willing to tolerate boring footy if the side aren’t getting results through it? Not long.

Seibold’s problem is that he’s currently doing neither.

When he came in for the 2023 season, Manly suddenly started doing a lot of things that nobody else did, attacking from deep, early in sets and with lots of off-ball movement.

Even by the backend, when half the team was injured and they had nothing to play for, they kept doing it. This was, to reference the dynamic above, when fans could see that something was happening.

It looked silly when Reuben Garrick tried to start a kicking duel with Penrith, but Seibold said openly in the press conference that he was trying to do something different.

In 2024, they were the most interesting side to watch in the NRL – indeed, we covered it extensively around this time last year, calling them ‘rugby league’s weirdos’. It didn’t always work, but when it did, it was great.

Manly piled on points in bursts, overwhelming teams with attack. Sure, they often had the same happen to them, but beat the Panthers, Storm and Roosters early on. There was method to the madness.

Here’s a table from back then to show how weird this was: of every pro RL club in the world, they took the most one-man hit ups and made almost the most shift plays. Get in, get down, get wide.

Their Off-Ball Volume (OBV), which tracks push supports and decoys, was the highest in the world. So was their pass-per-run ratio (PPR). All it took was the sniff of a quick play the ball and it was on.

The big issue in 2025, beside the results, is that this is absolutely not the case anymore.

There are still bits that are working: Manly have the among most line breaks, and of them, have the highest line break assist percentage, meaning they’re creating their chances from hand.

They have the most runs over 8m, which is a good proxy for how they are pushing defences back through wide play and remain the team making the most passes in the comp. Their OBV is also still one of the best.

So what happened?

Well, they’re on 78 line breaks but only 55 tries.

Melbourne, for example, have 69 from 69 – that doesn’t make them 100%, as not all tries are line breaks (such as those from kicks, for example), but it does show a ruthlessness. Ditto the Dolphins, on 68 from 68.

In fact, it’s normal for teams to be equal, so a 70% conversion like Manly have is bad. In fact, they’re so awful that only the Knights, Eels and Dragons are behind them – aka three of the worst four in terms of tries scored.

Tactically, there’s probably two explanations for this.

First, they’re making line breaks from further out – naturally, that gives you more scope not to score versus a line break from close in – which does speak to the way that Manly play.

Watching tape, this is pretty obvious, as they’re still trying to do things the same way but turning less of those opportunities into points than perhaps they once did. Not that surprising given the huge drop-off in Tom Trbojevic and Jason Saab’s form, either.

This is compounded by ineffectiveness within 20m. Manly remain really good at getting into position, but terrible at turning that into points. They’re close to topping the NRL for metres made – unquestionably a good thing – but the goalline attack is really bad.

Plenty of sides prefer to play from at least 25m out as it provides great potential for depth in attack – the other team, of course, still have to retreat at that point rather than simply going to their line – which creates a speed contest that Manly are well set up to win.

Now, teams are willing to concede metres out wide and reset, knowing that Manly don’t have the killer instinct from close range.

That attack, so built on speed on the edges, is now much slower in the middle and predictable, too.

Watch any game and you’ve seen the best pattern Manly have.

It starts with quick central play the ball that becomes a right shift to Jake Trbojevic, then to Daly Cherry-Evans, who has Haumole Olakau’atu as a crash option or a decoy, Tom Trobjevic out the back and ultimately Reuben Garrick doing his catch-pass to Saab with the speed.

There’s no substitute for speed! 🏎#NRLWarriorsManly pic.twitter.com/rz84LEJmhZ

— NRL (@NRL) March 14, 2025

As plays go, it’s a belter: you can end up with one of the league’s fastest players, but in between, there’s also one of the best strike runners in Haumole or an elite fullback in Turbo. The variations are there.

This year, however, it’s rarely come off.

Manly supporters became very frustrated early on at how often Olakau’atu was overlooked and used as a decoy, only for that to swap almost completely to hitting him too often.

One could then throw in that Turbo is way down on effectiveness at the back, that Jurbo has even less legitimate run threat than he ever did (which was never much) and that DCE is just a touch slower than he once was.

Most of all, however, we can refer to Guttmann again: everyone has just seen it coming.

Manly’s great skill – and why they top the pass per run ratios – is that they regularly attack wider, using either Jurbo or Nathan Brown to get DCE and Brooks closer to the touchline, bringing the pure pace of the edges into play.

Now, teams don’t bite. They know that neither Brown nor Jake are serious, so they hold rather than bite. It goes from in and wide to side to side.

If you’re not getting end product, it quickly goes from wide, which is good, to side-to-side, which isn’t.

It’s all in the video. We’ve seen this movie before, because it is also what happened to Souths, who were once the NRL’s most attacking side, in late period Jason Demetriou.

They had a similar great move predicated on beating the line speed with fast hands, until everyone just stood off for half a beat and left Alex Johnston with nowhere to go but the touchline.

The plan still worked to some extent, in that it was quite an effective way of making metres and scrambling a defence to play back the other way, but it didn’t generate breaks or points like it once did.

The effectiveness of this kind of attack has to be two fold, because if you can move a line sideways there are other options that open elsewhere.

Unfortunately for Manly, the left is nowhere near as strong as the right, with Ben Trbojevic a downgrade on Haumole and Brooks not as effective as DCE.

That set sequence tends to end with another slide – Burbo isn’t effective against the grain like Olakau’atu is – and then the tackles have run out.

That brings about the next bit: Manly’s set ends have fallen off a cliff.

As mentioned above, not all tries are line breaks, so a team that has good short kicking will get a higher percentage as they’re finding tries from other sources.

Luke Brooks has 14 line break assists but just seven try assists, while Daly Cherry-Evans is the only one to outperform his break assists with actual tries. Anyone who saw his kicking against the Titans recently can see how this one works.

The good news on this is that Jamal Fogarty, who will replace DCE next year, is the NRL’s undisputed king of Kick Try Assists, but that might come too late for the coach.

What he could control is the competing on bombs. Everyone has gone off this a lot this year, but Manly were holdouts, using the strengths of Tom T, Saab and Tolu Koula as last tackle weapons.

Now, they’ve regressed to the pack. In the defeat to the Gold Coast, Saab’s catching was horrendous, so was Cherry-Evans kicking and the chase was miles off it.

At one point, Garrick acted like he was going to go for the footy, instead stood off and saw AJ Brimson motor past him for a huge break. The only logical reason is that they’ve been told not to go for it anymore.

This speaks to a wider disillusionment in strategy from Seibold. When Manly were best, it was because they took huge risks and backed their attack to win the day. They were interesting almost to a fault.

Now, through the sidelining of flair, the lack of variety and the eschewing of risk, they find themselves moribund. In five of the 28 halves they’ve played this year, they’ve not scored at all. For a side that is all about their offence, that’s not good enough.

According to reports, Seibold now has two games to save his job. He’s attempted to right some of the attacking issues by moving Turbo to centre, Garrick to wing and Saab out of the side. Lehi Hopoate, who has undeniably been Manly’s best fullback this year, will get that role.

If this frees Tom to play a more up and down game with less top end sprinting, it might work. It might also give a kicking target that has been removed by Olakau’atu’s injury.

It might, however, be far too late.

The Northern Beaches can be a snakepit of politics, but as far as coaches go, they’re actually quite tame. The club has had just four coaches in 20 years.

The Guttmann maxim awaits however. This is either a regeneration, or it’s the end.