Struggling Manly cannot afford to ignore Geoff Toovey’s interest in taking over from Trent Barrett
MANLY bosses should ignore Geoff Toovey’s offer to return to the Sea Eagles at their peril. Few experienced coaches would be able to offer the same commitment under a structure that believes in doing everything on the cheap, writes PAUL KENT.
Sea Eagles
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GEOFF Toovey’s timing was always perfect, like every hero.
He came to Manly at a time when the Sea Eagles were turning over a generation and, for more than a decade, he would shape the Sea Eagles' identity.
They were tough and relentless and always at you. It delivered three grand finals, a premiership and a trip to the finals almost every season.
Manly bosses should ignore Toovey’s offer to rescue the club at their peril.
They would not be employing a football coach.
Manly owner Scott Penn needs to consider Toovey not for his potential to resurrect the football program, but to save the club itself.
Toovey was restless this past winter.
Through the week he induced himself into small coma, pouring over numbers in his job as a chartered accountant. For a man who remains one of the game’s greatest competitors this was akin to putting a lion in a circus cage.
Given his private hell, though, it’s tough to say his weekends were worse.
Without the emotional high of wins and losses in his life, the nervous flutters in the dressing room before games, the energy in the coach’s box during games, the pay-off after it was all over, Toovey found his weekends flat and excruciating.
Towards the end of the season he was talking to Des Hasler, another former coach counting minutes on the clock, and he fired up about their lack of weekend activity, the boredom they shared, and he convinced Hasler they should take Hasler’s boat and go out on the water for some fishing and fun.
Hasler had given the boat so little use he had to go to his storage shed to get the outboard motor.
He pulled it out for what would be its second run in nine years.
They went out on the water to do a little fishing and quickly found neither had the patience for it. Sea Eagles yes, sea legs no.
The motor went back into storage.
Hasler has come in for a lot of criticism since he became an unemployed coach but nobody can deny what he was able to at Manly on, what we are now discovering, was limited chance.
This largesse of private ownership was a mirage. The Sea Eagles’ first priority seems, according to owners, to do it cheaper than everybody else.
To where it has made the club vulnerable.
Toovey came in after Hasler and also had success.
In his four seasons at Manly Toovey made a preliminary final, a grand final and a semi-final before finishing a win out of the top eight in his final season.
Most clubs would kill for a coach to sack after stint like that.
What failed to get acknowledged was the duress the success came under.
Toovey operated on the same limited budget outgoing coach Trent Barrett found unacceptable. That Michael Maguire walked away from after being offered the job.
The little known end for Toovey began Parramatta, using illegal money because they were cheating the cap, lured Anthony Watmough away mid-season and the house of cards came down.
Toovey got sacked and the club went into a rebuild that has come in for misplaced criticism. The Sea Eagles have three Kangaroos and a Kiwi playing in Saturday’s Test. Only the Roosters have more Kangaroos.
The NRL, as the licence owner, need to give Scott Penn a kick in the pants and tell him to get his club in shape or the licence is going to someone else.
Penn is on record saying the club has cost him between $1 million and $1.5 million a year since he bought it in 2009.
He is still in front, though.
When Penn bought the Sea Eagles for $7.5 million in 2009 he not only got the football team but got the Manly Leagues Club as well, where the true rivers of gold ran.
When the vote went to members former first grader and Manly developer Phil Franks, who had recent close links to the club, aggressively opposed the sale. Club chairman Bob Reilly had to interrupt Franks’ spiel to get on with the vote.
The hands went up and Manly members voted overwhelmingly in favour.
Sold.
As the hands were still being counted, a landslide, Franks stood and stopped at the door on the way out.
“Rest in peace,” he yelled.
Who ever knew he was a prophet.
Penn sold the leagues club land and its car park to Chinese investors in 2015 for a deal believed to be worth $35 million.
The Leagues Club lease runs out in May next year, which almost certainly spells the end for the failing Leagues Club.
It all masks something more, though, which is that the club has lost its soul.
The only roots tying the Sea Eagles to the northern peninsula after the club goes will be faded memories and a council-owned football ground.
And it seems not even they are enough.
Those faded memories were there a week before the grand final when Manly’s 1978 premiership team had their 40-year reunion at Manly Leagues Club.
These men were behind one of the greatest performances in rugby league history.
Busted and beaten, they played five games in 22 days, including two midweek replays, to claim the premiership.
Not one current Manly official bothered to wake from their sleepwalk and turn up.
The apathy up top runs through the club. Penn doesn’t strike anyone as a football guy, and the lack of care filters through to fans who have stopped attending.
There was a time when Manly fans, almost proudly, refused to travel over the Spit Bridge. Now they struggle to get as far as Brookvale. Four out of every 10 fans at the game five years ago now no longer go.
Wherever they look the Sea Eagles are on a slow death march.
Since Toovey left Manly has suffered the worst fate of all for a professional sporting team. They have become boring.
“Guess What? Manly hates you too!” the sign on the Brookie hill says.
Well, nobody really cares anymore.
The Sea Eagles, the team all opposition fans loved to hate, now suffer the worst fate of all from rival fans: indifference.
Toovey said this week he fears that the club could die or be forced to relocate to stay alive. Those fears are valid.
Every word he said in The Daily Telegraph was a gold brick. People make a club … there is a disconnect with the juniors … a disconnect with fans …
The club has no coach for when training resumes on November 5 and no high performance coach to structure the players’ training until that coach arrives. They are still interviewing, last we heard, for a recruitment manager.
The club is operating $330,000 under the salary cap after it got busted cheating the cap.
Toovey would change the apathy.
He brings passion.
He is combative and pugnacious and forces you to care, one way or another.
If you don’t like him well, guess what, he doesn’t like you too.
That is what Manly needs more than anything.
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