Sea Eagles have over $3 million in talent injured on the sidelines

SEA Eagles coach Trent Barrett has revealed his side heads into today’s clash against the Storm with more than $3 million worth of talent sitting on the sidelines.

Dylan Walker is one of the Sea Eagles stars on the sideline. Picture Gregg Porteous.

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SEA Eagles coach Trent Barrett has revealed his side heads into today’s clash against the Melbourne Storm with more than $3 million worth of talent sitting on the sidelines.

And such is the club’s current injury crisis, Barrett only had 18 fit NRL players for the game at Brookvale, a situation that he has never experienced previously.

The current casualty list is headed by big name stars Brett Stewart, Steve Matai, Dylan Walker and Brenton Lawrence.

“We’ve had a lot players injured- I think we are down to about 18 this week so we have just scraped in,” Barrett said.

“We are certainly missing a lot of players. I think upwards of $3 million worth of players have been out for probably six weeks now.

Manly centre Steve Matai is out injured., Picture: Braden Fastier.

“When you look at that, I am really proud of how we have performed.

“Again we will learn from it and be better for it.”

Fullback Tom Trbojevic and Jorge Taufua have kept playing with injuries which will require off-season surgery to help their teammates.

“I certainly wouldn’t risk them if it was going to affect them long term, particularly with Tom being so young but we have an opinion from the doctor and the surgeon you can’t make it any worse,” Barrett said.

“If they don’t play we are going to be calling on under 20 players and that is not the right thing to do.”

While the team is now officially out of the finals race, Barrett said it was important for the team to go out on a high.

Star fullback Brett Stewart is currently a spectator. Picture: Mark Evans

“It is something we have spoken about, we just don’t want to throw away the last three games,” Barrett said.

“We certainly want to finish the year on a good note and leave for our off-season and into our pre-season knowing we did finis the back end of the year really well.

“The players have a lot of pride in their performance every week, no matter where you are sitting on the table and that doesn’t change.”

Barrett said they still have a lot of people to play for with winger Jorge Taufua’s 100th game today and skipper Jamie Lyon set for his final game at Brookvale next week,.

“And all our fans deserve a good couple of wins,” he said.