Daly Cherry-Evans is a talented and cleanskin NRL player — so why don’t rugby league fans like him?
DALY Cherry-Evans is a talented footballer, he’s intelligent and polite and he hasn’t brought the game into disgrace. So what is it about the Manly captain that rugby league fans don’t like?
Opinion
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WHY don’t rugby league fans like Daly Cherry-Evans?
He hasn’t disgraced rugby league, been charged by police, disrespected fans or said anything controversial. He is talented on the field, always trying to win. Away from football he’s intelligent, friendly, polite and unassuming.
Yet there’s a common theme about being unable to connect with the Manly captain.
As a result, he cops as much anger from fans, sometimes more, than players who have brought the game into disrepute.
When he burst on to the NRL scene as a 22-year-old in 2011, Manly brought him down from their feeder club, Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, he immediately struck up a successful combination with five-eighth Kieran Foran and led Manly to the NRL premiership.
Since then, fans have found cracks in Cherry-Evans’ protective, media-savvy veneer.
Those cracks turned into chasms this week when former Manly forward Anthony Watmough tipped the bucket on his relationship with Cherry-Evans.
It dates back to 2012 when a powerful Sea Eagles team, who pride themselves on succeeding despite board room and off-field issues that would destabilise or ruin most other clubs’ premiership push, were trying to keep a talented playing roster together under an increasingly pressured salary cap.
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SHOW DCE THE MONEY
Watmough this week said Cherry-Evans had turned into a “f … wit” following his debut NRL season in 2011.
He was particularly angry over a back page story in The Daily Telegraph in March 2012 in which the now Manly captain’s manager Gavin Orr revealed he had asked for his client to be released from his contract, arguing “they can’t hold him to ransom on a contract that isn’t acceptable to the level he is now at.”
Never mind they were the ones who had agreed to the “ransom” deal Cherry-Evans signed to keep him at the club for a further two seasons.
Yes, a premiership-winning halfback on $85,000 seems a pittance, but it was his second year in first grade, and his wage would rise to $125,000 in 2013.
What annoyed Watmough was the fact veterans like he, Brett and Glenn Stewart, Jamie Lyon and Steve Matai, had never held a gun to the club’s head over salaries. Instead they had taken “unders”, staying with Manly for less than they could earn at other clubs, in order to achieve success. Success that Cherry-Evans was able to share in and benefit from by using it as a bargaining chip to go from an $85,000-a-year rookie to a $450,000-a-season star.
That’s a big pay bump off the back of the financial sacrifices his teammates had made.
Had they not made them, Cherry-Evans would not have had the calibre of teammates around him in 2011 to win the premiership and increase his own value.
There’s no crime in maximising your earning power during a career that lasts a decade and is extremely taxing on your body.
But, now on $1 million a season, the 29-year-old is seeing first hand what happens when you take the big money over the greater good.
From 2005 to 2014, the Sea Eagles didn’t miss the finals. They made four grand finals, won two of them, and finished outside the top five just twice.
Now they haven’t won a premiership since 2011, haven’t been in the grand final since 2013 and are currently languishing one win above last place.
$10 MILLION BACKFLIP
You know you’re involved in something monumental if it forces a change in the rules.
In 2015, Sea Eagles fans were aghast at the thought they may lose one, or both, of star halves pairing Cherry-Evans and Foran.
DCE was the first to jump, in March signing a lucrative four-year deal to join the Gold Coast.
Under NRL rules at the time, contracts weren’t set in stone until June 30, giving the Sea Eagles three-and-a-half months to trump the deal.
They succeeded. Enticing Cherry-Evans to renege on his Titans deal for a “lifetime” eight-year $10 million contract to stay.
While allowed under the rules, reneging isn’t a trait Australians like, and Cherry-Evans’ public stock dropped further.
Soon after, the NRL announced a 10-day cooling-off period to prevent the Cherry-Evans farce from happening again.
STATE OF ORIGIN
Cherry-Evans was earmarked as an Origin player early in his career.
He played the last of his games in 2015 when, as a starting halfback replacement for the injured Cooper Cronk, was believed to be the target of a pointed post-match assessment from five-eighth Johnathan Thurston.
“Coop is great at a lot of things out there but, playing beside him, one of the things I have grown to appreciate is his ability to not just take charge of a game when he needs to but also the way he knows when to step back and let other guys do their thing,” Thurston said.
“There are a lot of great players in this team and one of the strengths of the Queensland team over the past 10 years has been the way we have been able to work together and get everyone contributing.
“We don’t rely on one bloke to win us the game. We’re at our best when we’re able to get everyone involved in the game — and I think at this level that’s what I have learned is the job of your halves.”
Thurston and Cherry-Evans both deny a rift exists, yet still the Manly skipper is yet to again represent his state.
THE HASTINGS FALLOUT
Manly coach Trent Barrett took the unusual step of publicly declaring he wouldn’t again consider Jackson Hastings for first grade this year, citing his players’ wishes to not play with him.
Then it’s revealed Cherry-Evans and Hastings had off-field altercations, which the Manly skipper batted away as a “lover’s tiff”.
For a mere lover’s tiff, it’s had long-lasting ramifications for Hastings, who is still playing reserve grade for Blacktown in the NSW Intrust Super Premiership.
Again, Cherry-Evans’ public profile took another battering.
THE PUBLIC PERSONA
Cherry-Evans is a polished speaker. He talks well and with thought, but sometimes falls into the trap of being too media savvy. Too many cliches and too clever avoiding contentious topics to avoid causing further controversy.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with it but to the regular NRL fan it comes across as disingenuous.
It’s hardly a rap sheet of your typical unsavoury footballer. But, for some reason, it rubs a lot of fans the wrong way and leaves Cherry-Evans on the losing side of a public relations battle he has seemingly tried extremely hard to win.