Manly skipper Daly Cherry-Evans insists he still has the support of his teammates amid speculation over a move to oust him as captain of the Sea Eagles.
The Queensland Origin skipper has told the Herald that he has personally reached out to several of his teammates, including brothers Tom and Jake Trbojevic, to gauge his standing among the group.
Tom Trbojevic joined Cherry-Evans for an interview at the club’s Narrabeen training base on Monday afternoon as a show of support for the embattled halfback, who admitted he would have no hesitation stepping away from the leadership role if it was deemed he was no longer the right man for the job.
“This situation is obviously something I wanted to address to make sure there were no ill feelings or a player push for that to change,” Cherry-Evans said of the captaincy at Manly.
“As far as I am aware, there is no push for that to change. And you know what, if the club decides that’s what is best for this team, I will never stand in the way of this club moving forward. But for right now, as far as I’m aware, that hasn’t been brought to my attention.
“I reckon I learnt a lot from those years gone by when there was player unrest here at the club. I always try and do my best to keep the group united. I actually pride myself in creating an environment where everyone can come and be themselves but also uphold a good standard of football.”
Tom Trbojevic joined Daly Cherry-Evans for an interview in Narrabeen on Monday as a show of support for the embattled halfback.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone
“We haven’t done that part well the last six weeks but I think you’ll find for the most part people do enjoy coming to training at this club and it is a good place to be.”
The Sea Eagles are once again on the brink of a civil war with factions at loggerheads over the club’s direction. At the heart of the issue is the debate over whether Des Hasler has earned the right to continue as head coach.
Hasler still has one more year to run on his deal with the Sea Eagles, but the club will hold a series of meetings over the coming days to determine whether that remains the best course of action for the club.
It has been reported that recruitment manager Scott Fulton, the son of the legendary late Manly figure Bob Fulton, doesn’t see eye to eye with Hasler.
Trbojevic on Sunday told the Herald that he believed Hasler was the man to lead the club out of its predicament, with Cherry-Evans echoing that sentiment on Monday.
“I’ve been made aware through the media that there is a push for certain things to be changed at our club,” Cherry-Evans said.
“I’m almost certain through the conversations that I’ve had that the playing group likes Des and want him to be our coach. It’s hard to determine where all this noise is coming from but from the chats I’ve had, Des is our guy.
“I’d be surprised if the club thought that he wasn’t the best man for the job. I reckon history suggests that Des is a great coach. We love our coach and we know that we have the playing group to get out of it next year.
“I’ve been here for a long time. We just seem to be a club that brings unnecessary attention to ourselves. The senior players taught me when I was young coming through, now it’s my turn to teach the boys that we can’t get caught up in that side of the club. It’s just not for us to worry about, especially with the way we’ve played this year. Our priority needs to be fixing the football.”
Cherry-Evans wasn’t avoiding the elephant in the room - an overwhelming dissatisfaction with the team’s capitulation over the final seven weeks of the season following the Pride jersey fiasco.
While he admitted that there were players unhappy within the squad, the captain is adamant it is in relation to the team under-achieving and not a split within the group.
“Once it was official with three or four weeks to go that we weren’t making finals, you could tell there was a real sense of disappointment,” Cherry-Evans said.
“Six weeks ago we weren’t just pushing for a spot in the eight, we were pushing for top four. When you think about how quickly that changed, you could understand how it made people feel. Everyone was flat by the end of it.
“The level of disappointment probably overwhelmed the squad. Naturally there’s a lot of players unhappy with the way things finished, but there’s no ill-will towards anyone as a person. It’s just the disappointment of where the season ended.”
Trbojevic said that he and brother Jake cleared the air with Cherry-Evans during the team’s end-of-season get-together over the weekend.
“I feel for him that he’s had to hear all of this stuff. If it was the other way around it wouldn’t be ideal,” Trbojevic said.
“We just wanted to reassure him there’s no personal issue here. We all want to play better footy. Where we finished up is far from ideal but there’s definitely no personal issue. We need to get better as a footy team and we’ll work out how we can contribute to that more because we don’t want to be in a similar situation next year.”
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