Seibold rolls dice at Manly and comes up with sixes
With their career on the line, how many coaches would be prepared to roll the dice with the most out-of-the-box approach to football of any team in the NRL?
One thing is apparent: Anthony Seibold would.
Four years after the world caved in on him at Brisbane, Seibold will lead Manly into their semi-final against the Sydney Roosters at Allianz Stadium on Saturday night.
A win would perhaps represent one of the great coaching turnarounds, given he was written off by an all and sundry when he exited Brisbane in 2020.
“I have a lot of respect for the way he has rebounded,” Manly captain Daly Cherry-Evans told AAP.
“He has dusted himself off, he has gone away and he has worked on himself more so, because of what happened, and come back.
“He should be really proud of that.
“The way he has come in, he has played to his strengths, which has also encouraged us to play to our strengths.
“That has then created somewhat of an identity for us as a team.”
In Sebold’s second season at Brookvale, Manly are the clear statistical outlier in the NRL.
The man himself has often referred to wanting to build an up-tempo team that plays to its strengths, with genuine speedsters out wide and Tom Trbojevic at the back.
They pass more often than any other side, and shift the ball to the left and the right more often than any other team.
Nathan Brown passes more frequently than other prop in the NRL, while Jake Trbojevic’s pass-to-touch ratio is second only to Kurt Mann for all non-spine players.
The Sea Eagles even lead the league for intercepts, while scoring the second most tries from inside their own half.
It’s part of the reason why Manly have beaten both Melbourne and Penrith this year with a 7-3 record against top-eight teams, while still having multiple collapses against sides outside the finals.
“A lot of coaches come in and see what the top teams are doing, and they want to emulate that and copy that,” five-eighth Luke Brooks said.
“But it doesn’t work out because they don’t have the players.
“You have to work with what you’ve got. And if your strengths are a certain way, then you play to that.
“That shows that Seibs is open to playing that way, and it works for us. It shows he thinks about his footy and works with what he’s got.”
There is no sugar coating Seibold’s 21 months in Brisbane
He arrived at there as Dally M coach of the year after his rookie season at South Sydney, but immediately felt the wrath of the club’s history.
Seibold was an outsider attempting to replace Wayne Bennett, when it was clear the club’s old boys wanted Kevin Walters to fill the role.
And by the time of his exit in August 2020, Seibold was the first to admit results in the post-COVID shutdown had been his downfall with three years left on his contract.
But he also hit out at the agendas at play from Brisbane’s old boys, noting that no other club had ex-players as vocal in their criticisms.
“If you look at the personnel we had in that Broncos squad, everyone was in their first few seasons of NRL,” said Manly forward Ethan Bullemor, who debuted under Seibold at Brisbane.
“We didn’t have a dominant half who played all year. That was probably the missing piece of the puzzle.
“He was probably the victim of some pretty unfortunate circumstance, and a lot of that was played out in the media.
“But there was no doubt in my mind he was a first grade coach, and I had no doubt he would bounce back.”
The other part of Seibold’s exit was a public smear campaign, headlined by social media rumour mongering about his family that prompted the coach to seek legal advice.
“I was definitely concerned for him,” said Tom Trbojevic, who also had Seibold as an assistant at Manly in 2016.
“I felt for him. Some of the shit he had to go through, regardless of what job you’re in, no one should have to go through it.
“You obviously feel for someone who when he was here before, I really liked him. The way he has come through it is a credit to him.”
Bullemor is one of the few men to have seen Seibold at both Brisbane and Manly, and says there are only minor changes to his approaches to coaching.
“It’s all in the minutiae,” Bullemor said.
“Little differences in the methodology. Different defence coaches, different attack coaches.
“It’s just constant evolution. What worked, what didn’t work.
“I am sure he is always reflecting on that himself. He is someone who is very into personal development, I know he invests a lot of time into that.”
Seibold is off contract at the end of next year, and while his tenure at Manly will be extended, the length of that next deal must still be locked in over the summer.
But one thing is clear: Seibold’s gamble at Manly means he is no longer a coach on his last roll of the dice.
“What he went through would have been so tough, and I can’t imagine it,” said Brooks, who knows a thing or two about fan and media spotlight.
“But it shows how much resilience he has to come back.
“He has put that behind him and still be able to do his job. A lot of people would have been scarred by that, and not wanted to keep coming.
“But at the end of the day he probably learned a lot about himself and how to deal with it. It’s probably made him a better coach.”
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