Manly coach Anthony Seibold admitted he took a calculated risk in bringing Haumole Olakau’atu back from a shoulder injury after he re-injured it in the loss to the Bulldogs.
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Manly were soundly beaten 42-4, but compounding the loss was a dislocated shoulder to their best forward that will rule him out for the season.
“I don’t think so,” Seibold said when asked if he would play again in 2025.
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“As a medical staff said to Haumole and myself that there’s a risk when you dislocate your shoulder the first time, I think there’s about a 90 per cent risk that you do it again.
“So we wanted to take that risk. He had six weeks of reconditioning there and trained fully for the last two weeks.
“So we just got his shoulder in an awkward position there, so I would expect that he’d have an operation when appropriate, so we won’t see him again this year.”
Seibold stood by the call to let Olakau’atu return to the field, but conceded the gamble didn’t pay off.
“It was always a calculated risk the medical staff said and obviously with a player of his quality and standing in our team, we wanted to pursue that risk,” Seibold said.
“We didn’t want to worry about next year, we wanted to worry about what’s in front of their face there and he had two really good weeks of training.
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“For the Storm game he probably could have played that game, but we wanted to give him another week, so it’s disappointing to see that I think that’ll be him down for the season, I would have thought.”
Despite the heavy defeat, Seibold was impressed with his side’s first half, but conceded they were given a lesson in the second half.
“I think there was a fair bit of fatigue that second half, but I think they went 21 from 21 to start the game,” Seibold said.
“And where they handed over the footy to us it was always in deep yardage, so we were always under the pump a little bit.
“But I was really happy at half-time with regards to the scoreboard. We were close enough, if we were good enough, but obviously we fell away in the second half, so that was disappointing.
“If you look at the scoreboard it was disappointing, but there was moments in the game that I was proud of. There was no lack of fight.
“We just got a really big lesson in playing finals footy to be fair. That was like a finals game come early and they gave us a big lesson there.”
Manly skipper Daly Cherry-Evans wasn’t sugar-coating the loss, but believes his team has been on an upward swing before the setback against the Bulldogs.
“To be fair, the last months feel like a huge progression for us as a side,” Cherry-Evans said.
“We beat a few teams that are a bit below us and then we beat the Storm last week, who are obviously one of the benchmarks.
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“We came up against another benchmark side today and they showed us exactly why they are where they are and where they’ve been the last few years.
“As Siebs mentioned, I thought they taught us a lesson tonight, but the progress we’ve made, we’ll walk away and look at those lessons that need to be learned from today, no doubt about it. But overall, we have been moving in the right direction.”
