Anthony Seibold knows that love is a battlefield with rugby league

Roy Masters interviews the NRL coaches, discovering out what drives them and how they approach the modern game.See all 2 stories.

If a documentary is ever made of the football career of Manly coach Anthony Seibold, Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run should be the background soundtrack to accompany the vision.

Seibold has played rugby league professionally for the Brisbane Broncos, French club Saint-Esteve, Canberra Raiders, London Broncos, Ipswich Jets, Hull Kingston Rovers, Toowoomba Clydesdales and represented Germany in one Test against Estonia, qualifying via his grandfather who came to Australia after World War II to work on the Snowy Mountains project.

Anthony Seibold during his playing career with the Raiders.Credit: NRL Imagery

He has been assistant or head coach at Celtic Crusaders, South Wales Scorpions, Melbourne Storm, South Sydney, Brisbane Broncos, England’s national rugby team and Manly.

After such a “have boots, will travel” nomadic existence, it must be comforting to sit in a planning meeting at the Sea Eagles surrounded by four fellow ex-London Broncos players: chief executive Tony Mestrov, assistant coach Jim Dymock, Head of Performance Jon Clarke and media manager, Chris Warren.

“I wouldn’t call it comforting,” says Seibold, while not quite rejecting the word in the sense of it meaning settled. “I only played with one of them (Clarke) at London Broncos. The others played either side of me. It’s more a bizarre, random thing.”

“Bizarre” is a word Seibold often uses, reflecting the weird, unusual world of professional sport. Benny Elias, the man whose field goal attempt hit the cross bar in a grand final, says something similar with his, “Rugby league is a funny game.” And Benny means odd, not humorous.

Seibold described the Sea Eagles loss to the Warriors in round 2 as “bizarre”, in the sense: “We spent 38 seconds inside their 20-metre zone, meaning “lack of field position killed us.”

“What could go wrong, did go wrong.”

Still, Manly’s opening game against the Cowboys was impressive, led by their ageless half, Daly Cherry-Evans and the deep threat of fullback Tom Trbojevic.

And in their round 3 match against the previously in-form Raiders, the Sea Eagles destroyed the men in green 40-12 after running up a 30-0 halftime lead.

However, Seibold’s world resumed being bizarre just 24 hours after the big win when Cherry-Evans shocked the NRL, announcing on Monday that he would not play on with the club after 2025, despite being offered a two-year $1.4million deal.

Anthony Seibold with Daly Cherry-Evans.Credit: NRL Imagery

“Rugby league is a crazy place to be in sometimes,” Seibold said of Cherry-Evans’ announcement.

“Out of respect for ‘Chez’ I don’t have anything further to add other than he is as committed as he has ever been to our team this season and that shows in his early season form.”

Seibold has a strong nucleus of “young veterans”, players aged 24 to 27 who have played 100 to 150 NRL games.

“In my best 22 players, I’ve probably got 13 or 14 in that category,” he said. “Once you get to play over 100 games, you know the experience of getting well beaten, playing in the rain, long travel....”

Seibold, 50, coached the Rabbitohs for a single season (2018), reaching the preliminary final and won the Coach of the Year award. “It is a very different group at Manly compared to South Sydney which was a very experienced squad,” he says.

“It’s very different again to the Broncos where I gave 12 players their debuts.”

In Brisbane, Seibold also had a couple of senior players (and their wives) who were very loyal to the previous coach, Wayne Bennett, winner on six premierships at the Broncos.

It can be the worst of combinations for a coach: a couple of influential leaders nearing retirement dominating an impressionable, gullible squad.

The atmosphere was intimidating before he arrived in Brisbane from Souths, eventually swapping roles with Bennett who cleverly positioned himself as coaching king and Seibold as drama queen.

But it quickly became toxic, with a social media storm of vile, unfounded rumours. The Monday morning quarterbacks – as the American describe those who always know what to do after a match – began questioning Seibold on Fridays.

He delivered the Broncos their first wooden spoon and resigned midway through the second year of a rich, five-year contract.

At the end, as he fled to Sydney to be with an ailing daughter, he looked as if he had stepped into a grave.

Anthony Seibold leaves after confirming he had stepped down as Broncos coach.Credit: Getty

“I found the Brisbane experience really challenging,” he told me, his raspy voice becoming even thicker, as if words are caught in his throat. “I fell out of love with coaching from that experience.”

Part of the problem was the “school teacher” label. Rugby league is still an anti-intellectual game. If a former teacher is in charge of a team, or club, and things go bad, it is because he allegedly treats the players or staff as if they are in a classroom.

As losses piled on losses, the language of Seibold, a former high school teacher and lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland, was perceived to be too technical for a young group.

“I didn’t cop the school teacher tag at Souths, mainly because I was successful,” he said. “But in the early part of my time in Brisbane, a lot was made of me being a university lecturer. It was frustrating. I actually think being a school teacher is one of my strengths. Teaching is the ability to simplify things from the complex. It helped my coaching, not hindered it. It helped with feedback, performance reviews, planning.”

But none of his education had taught him rugby league’s core lesson: as much as you love the game, it often doesn’t love you back. After the precocious success at Souths, came the premature responsibility of the Brisbane juggernaut.

“It was tough going,” the Rockhampton-born Seibold said of a dream that did not come true. “The opportunity to go back home to Queensland and coach the club where I had played four years in the lower grades and a great money deal was too much, despite the fact I was enjoying South Sydney.” As Oscar Wilde said, “When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”

So, Seibold had to live his life backward, go back to the bush after the big time. Rather than move to, say, the Clydesdales, “I changed codes,” he said. “It was the best thing I ever did. I became Eddie Jones assistant with the England rugby team. I got away from the spotlight. Eddie was the first to give me an opportunity and I coached 15 Tests with him, including against the Springboks. It re-ignited my passion for coaching.”

Anthony SeiboldCredit: Louie Douvis

He is now back at the club where he was an assistant in 2016. Only three players remain at Manly from that time but they are the most influential: Jake and Tom Trbojevic and Cherry-Evans. Asked if they lobbied for his appointment as head coach, Seibold says, “I don’t know.”

But he acknowledges club owner Scott Penn and Broncos chair, Karl Morris, have a high opinion of him. “I’ve got a strong staff around me,” revealing that the “school teacher” criticism in Brisbane did not intimidate him with future appointments.

“There are four of us on staff. My two assistants and the reserve grade coach are former teachers. I enjoy working with all of them. It gets me out of bed in the morning and I work into the night. And I’ve got a football team that wants to get better.”

He lives with his wife and three daughters in the same northern beaches home they purchased back in 2015. “It’s the longest my daughters have lived anywhere,” he said. “It’s home for us. We’ve been in the community since 2015.”

‘I’ve had a deep love of the game since I was a kid and the love is back’

Anthony Seibold

In a second interview, he again rebuffs the word “comforting” as describing the Manly environment, even in the context of the Brisbane experience.

He is clearly sensitive to any suggestion he is secure in a coaching sinecure, even though he is contracted to the end of the 2027 season. There is still the hint in his words of the survivor’s pain, akin to a radio signal from a distant place, wavering in intensity from the ache of Brisbane to the redemptive seven day working week at Manly.

He recognises the job comes with built-in criticism. “There are some good people who have helped me on my way. There is more to love about the game than the reverse. I’ve had a deep love of the game since I was a kid and the love is back.”

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