Following a shocking final season under besieged head coach Trent Barrett in which the Sea Eagles finished 15th, the return of favourite son Des Hasler has seen an upturn in performance and form.
After a season in which Manly was dogged by injury, speculation around the future of their coach, questions about their business administration, and just to top it off their worst season of average crowds at Brookvale in more than 50 years, the only conceivable way was up for Des Hasler following his return to the peninsula.
While there were not any great expectations in regard to a top-eight finish for the silvertails heading into 2019, Des has got his boys off to a solid start. The Sea Eagles are sitting at four wins from seven matches, with one of those losses being by a measly two points against the in-form Dragons. Keeping in mind they have done all of this without the services of one of, if not their best player Tom Trbojevic, for the vast majority of those games.
In terms of attacking output in 2018, Manly was in the middle of the bell curve, finishing the season ninth in the NRL for points scored (with 500) at an average of 20.8 per game. For context, last year’s premiers the Roosters averaged 22.1. Impressively, Des has got the Sea Eagles averaging 23.8 points scored per game in the first six rounds of 2019, all without their best-attacking player in Trbojevic.
While their attack was respectable in 2018, their defence was a downright shambles. In 2018, Manly conceded more points than any other side, with their 622 points leaked being the worst the Sea Eagles have leaked since 2005 (633).
While the numbers paint an ugly picture, Sea Eagles assistant coach John Cartwright was well aware of their shortcomings in defence, telling NRL.com that "In our own [post-season] briefings and stats we worked out pretty quickly we've got to be better defensively."
"If we're stopping sides from scoring tries on top of what we can score ourselves then we're going to be better.
"Des [Hasler] has his own ideas on that, so we pretty much start again as he will have his own styles and systems. Even the way he uses the interchange will be different.”
And boy, Des’ ideas have paid off so far, having brought in a renewed defensive focus for the 2018 pre-season, Manly are conceding on average of 10 points less per game over the opening six rounds of the season.
To date, Hasler’s men have conceded 98 points in the opening six rounds, only Melbourne, Canberra, South Sydney, and Parramatta have conceded fewer than the Sea Eagles.
It makes it all the more impressive that Hasler has pulled off this trick without arguably his best player in Trbojevic, along with a set of outside backs that on paper is sub-par at best.
While manly claimed that Des was done, and had lost his aura as a coach following his messy exit from the Bulldogs, he has shown in the opening quarter of the season that he’s still up there tactically with the best the NRL has to offer.
Even though I am not a Sea Eagles fan, in fact, I’ve got an active dislike for the club, I’m excited to see what Hasler can do with a fully fit squad that already possesses some brilliant representative talent, some new signings and another pre-season under his belt.