Another Year… Another GRAND FINAL for 2011 Manly Sea Eagles!

Des Hasler has now guided the mighty Manly Sea Eagles to seven consecutive Finals appearances and three Grand Finals in five seasons… what a coach!

The Drum By Dave Keogh

We’re there… again! And without wanting to count chickens before they hatch, I just can’t see Manly losing this Sunday’s decider. There’s something about this team… young inexperienced halves and bench players playing like 200 game veterans! Veterans like Jamie Lyon, Michael Robertson, Shane Rodney and Joe Galuvao playing like youngsters at the peak of their powers. The whole team playing with aggression, purpose and power. What a coach!

The Qualifier - The Broncos

Manly were again terrific against the Broncos on Friday night. On fire from the start, the game was as good as over after 20 minutes. As hard as they tried, Brisbane was never going to recover from a 16-0 deficit in a game of this magnitude, given Manly are playing with so much confidence. 

Yes there was the odd defensive lapse… (we definitely should have shut down Corey Parker before he offloaded for Wallace to score) and the Broncos were very unlucky not to have at least two more tries on the board. (What a tackle by Killer!) But I felt Manly butchered a couple of try scoring opportunities too… and yet we always seemed to have the Broncos’ measure. 

Our Opponents - The Warriors

As for the Warriors… they were simply brilliant against the Storm – particularly in that second half. It was undoubtedly their most disciplined and controlled effort of the season – their best game by far. You kept waiting for Melbourne to ‘storm home’… for one of ‘the Big 3’ to do something extra brilliant to steal victory… but the Warriors’ effort in defence was outstanding.

Strangely enough, I think that could be their undoing this weekend. They just may have played their ‘Grand Final’ a week early. 

The Week Ahead

Having returned home across the Ditch from Melbourne on the weekend, the Warriors have two days of euphoria with the locals and then have to turn around and come back to Oz for all the Grand Final hoopla that occurs in the lead up to the weekend. There’ll be media interviews galore; the Grand Final Breakfast; the Footy Show special on Thursday night; different training grounds; that away from home ‘stranger in a strange place’ kinda feeling to deal with all week. 

In contrast, the Sea Eagles will be training at Narrabeen all week – business as usual. 10 or more pf the squad have the experience of having played in a Grand Final and young Hoppa has already played in the cauldron that is State of Origin this year.

Matai would have been a massive loss in the centres, but with Steve having no charge to answer for that incident with Yow Yeh and T-Rex also able to play and continue his incredible late season form, the Footballing Gods that Gus Gould quotes so regularly seem to be smiling upon us. And while the Warriors have their own brilliant youngsters (notably Locke and Johnson) I’ll back Cherry-Evans and Foran to continue their rare vein of form… and (here’s a tip) I honestly think Jamie Buhrer could prove the match winner for us. (You heard it here first.)








Warriors young guns - Kevin Locke (left) and Shaun Johnson (right)

Another Sea Eagles premiership is just 80 minutes away. How good is it to be a Manly fan at this time of year? 


GO MANLY!!!

The writer of The Drum, Dave Keogh, has been a professional writer for some 30 years, contributing to publications as broad as Modern Fishing and Outdoor, he honed a passion writing a regular column – Talking Tennis – for The Manly Daily. With a varied history including work as a music industry publicist, theatrical agent, band manager, poet, editor and tennis coach, he found his niche in advertising, and with loads of awards under his belt, Dave went into business on his own and now runs several very successful businesses, including an online community connecting sport-loving people – www.doubledrummer.com Most importantly, Dave loves sport, and is an avid supporter of The Manly Sea Eagles…