Manly Sea Eagles head coach Anthony Seibold has shut down any talk that his side have been distracted by the contract situation of veteran halfback Daly Cherry-Evans.
The halfback last week confirmed he would leave the club at the end of the season, with the situation playing out badly in the media for all parties involved.
The situation isn't about to go anywhere either, with Cherry-Evans confirming last week after a win over the Parramatta Eels that he wasn't going to rush into a decision over retirement or a new club.
Despite the win last weekend, Manly were comprehensively beaten by the Melbourne Storm on Sunday afternoon at Brookvale, narrowly avoiding conceding the dreaded 50 points.
Coach Anthony Seibold though suggested Cherry-Evans' situation had nothing to do with the loss.
โI'll answer that," Seibold said during his post-match press conference when asked.
"We have had two really good preparations. I thought we played really well against Parramatta last week. You saw what they did to the Dragons yesterday who beat the Storm the week before,โ Seibold said on whether there were distractions.
โIt's a really tough competition, but I felt as though we had a really good preparation, trained really well on Thursday but sometimes you are outplayed, sometimes teams are better on the day than you are and that's what I felt like tonight.โ
Cherry-Evans, who is the club captain, had no issue agreeing with his coaches assessment.
โI think Seibs summed it up pretty well mate. There is a lot to our game that we have to go and own and review, and ultimately when you don't execute, you don't win the physical battle, and play a benchmark side, you get 40 points put on you," the Queensland State of Origin veteran said.
โReally disappointing day overall, especially where we played today. I'd like to have a bit more pride in our performance, but we were off, they were on, and that's footy. We don't get the result.โ
In a game where Manly struggled to shut down the Storm once they got on a roll, Seibold said he believed the game was lost in two separate blocks.
โI think the game was won probably in two blocks. I think they scored three tries in consecutive sets in the first half and the three tries in consecutive sets in the second half,โ Seibold said.
โInside of those six sets we either gave them field position through a penalty or fundamentals and they are a very good side and made us pay.
โIt's disappointing because I have higher expectations than what we showed today.
โAgain, if you give them field position, they are going to ask you a heap of questions. They were really good at converting that into points.
โI thought we kept fighting. It could have got really ugly there at one stage. Strangely, it was nine line breaks each. They were able to convert theirs a bit better than us.
โUltimately, we lost the physical battle there so they won the middle of the field and that's why they beat us.โ
Manly now have a six-day turnaround before a game against the Cronulla Sharks in Perth, with the side set to fly out of Sydney on Monday for the trek across the country.
