Shocked Sea Eagles players slam ‘s**thouse’ Rd 1 disaster... but say leave Des alone
Manly players have leapt to the defence of coach Des Hasler while shouldering all the blame for a “s**thouse” 46-4 drubbing at the hands of the Roosters on Saturday.
The Sea Eagles missed a whopping 40 tackles and ran for 600 metres less than the rampant Chooks who put on a clinic at the SCG to start the season.
Bizarrely the Roosters made more errors, their completion rate was poorer, and they were awarded three less penalties than the opposition. But that only highlights how poor the Manly defence was.
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They were missing star fullback Tom Trbojevic and didn’t have a recognised hooker, but it was simple effort lapses from the players that allowed the Roosters to run in nine tries.
Fill-in fullback Dylan Walker did no mince words when he fronted the media on Monday about the performance.
“It’s hard to take, to be honest. It’s s**thouse,” Walker said.
“It’s not up to our standard. If I had to put it down to anything it was just an attitude thing.
“We didn’t rock up. We did for the first 10 or 15 minutes but then we let the game get away from us and Roosters put us to the sword.
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“It’s very disappointing. When you’re sitting there at half-time with a scoreline like that, you try to go out there and put effort in. It’s not fair on our coaching staff, our fans and our members.
“It’s hard, we take full responsibility for that as players. I put my hand up, there was some errors in my game that definitely weren’t up to my standard.
“We have to lick our wounds and cop what we have to because we put up a s**t performance.
“I’ve got 100 per cent belief it can be fixed and turned around in a matter of days, or a week. We can use that as a burning desire for us to move forward and be a better team.
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“Only us players can fix it. The coaching staff can show us all the video they want, but if you’re not going to show up on game and show that bit of oomph, it’s not going to change.”
Already in the wake of the Round 1 disaster, coach Hasler is in the spotlight.
The Sea Eagles finished last season in disastrous fashion and they battled to win a game when Tom Trbojevic wasn’t playing.
The Daily Telegraph reported on Monday Manly is stalling on a new contract for Hasler, with the club wishing to install clauses allowing it to sack the coach at any stage of the deal.
The Sea Eagles also reportedly only want to commit to Hasler year-by-year, while he himself wants a three-year commitment.
On Monday, club captain Jake Trbojevic was staunch in his defence of the coach.
“I don’t think you can put the way we played on Des. You can’t put it on Des,” Trbojevic said.
“He prepares us really well, so thoroughly. He works so hard, I’ve never seen anything like it, and his record speaks for itself.
“I love being coached by him, he’s a great leader. He really suits this club.
“A performance like that can’t be put on him. I hope he’s here for a long time.”
Trbojevic agreed with Walker that it was the players, not the coaching staff, who must take full responsibility for Saturday’s disaster.
“It was very tough. You train really hard and you don’t expect to go out and lose like that in the first game,” Trbojevic said.
“It’s really disappointing. We got taught a lesson. They are a quality side and they really showed us up on the weekend.
“I think it’s just mentally staying in it. You can’t just perform well for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes it was 4-all, you’ve got to take confidence from that, and then you have mental lapses that let soft tries in which is really disappointing. It’s hard to take, especially being Round 1.
“I don’t have an answer for you. I don’t know why. You work really hard in the off-season, everyone has great expectations, to do that is really tough.”
The Sea Eagles next host South Sydney at Lottoland on Saturday.