Manly Warringah Sea Eagles

Inaugural season: 1947

Home field: Brookvale Oval. Brookvale, Australia

Owner: Penn Family

Team colors: Maroon and white

Overview

The Manly Warringah Sea Eagles is a professional rugby team that plays in Australia’s National Rugby League (NRL). The team is based in the beachside suburbs of Manly and Warringah on Sydney’s affluent northern shore. In the first quarter century after its formation, the team made several grand finals appearances but always fell short of a title. The Sea Eagles lost their reputation as bridesmaids in the 1970s, dominating the decade by winning four premierships. This period of success also bred a deep hatred of the franchise among many working-class rugby fans, who viewed the team as using its financial advantage to “buy” its championships. Since the 1970s, Manly Warringah has captured a championship in every decade and is the oldest current team to have never won the dreaded wooden spoon, an “award” given for finishing last.

History

Rugby developed in the early nineteenth century from English football, a sport known as soccer in North America. Named for its birthplace at the Rugby School in Warwickshire, England, rugby is a more violent form of football/soccer in which players can use their hands to carry the ball and opponents are allowed to tackle the ball carrier. In the mid-nineteenth century, the sport spread across Australia where it was played by numerous amateur clubs. In 1908, a group of players banded together to form the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL), a professional league with teams based in Sydney and its suburbs.

By the 1940s, the NSWRL had become the nation’s premier professional rugby league and was looking to expand. In 1946, the league decided to add two new teams to begin play in the 1947 season. The Parramatta Eels, based in the central suburb of Parramatta, entered the NSWRL along with a team from the Manly Warringah suburbs in the city’s North Shore area. The franchise chose the nickname Sea Eagles after the predatory birds that are native to the coastline near Sydney. Manly Warringah chose the colors maroon and white as a nod to the Freshwater Surf Life Saving Club, a local beach patrol unit that had used those colors since 1908.

The team’s original logo was a simple shield design with the letters “M” and “W” emblazoned on it. The team adopted a new logo in 1957, but the design—which featured a bird clutching a ball—did not clearly resemble an eagle, causing some to mistake it for a seagull. The logo was revamped in 1960 with a clear outline of an eagle, and since then has been updated and modernized several times. Since 2003, the logo has featured a fierce-looking eagle, claws extended, set against a circular background.

When the Sea Eagles were founded, about half the roster of the more established North Sydney Bears jumped ship and signed on with the new franchise. Manly Warringah made its first finals series appearance in 1951 and advanced all the way to the grand final before losing to South Sydney. The finals series is the league’s playoff tournament, while the grand final is its championship game. From 1951 to 1971, the Sea Eagles made five grand finals appearances, losing handily each time. In 1972, the team finally broke through, defeating the Sydney Roosters, 19–14, for its first premiership. The Sea Eagles didn’t wait long for title number two, winning the 1973 grand final as well, 10–7 over the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks. Manly Warringah also won the championship in 1976 and 1978, the latter in a grand final replay against Cronulla after the teams fought to a draw in the first game.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Manly Warringah earned a reputation for offering lucrative contracts to other teams’ best players to entice them to sign with the Sea Eagles. The North Shore’s reputation as a trendy, upscale beach area also helped attract talent to the region. When the coach of the Western Suburbs Magpies derisively referred to the Sea Eagles as the “Silvertails,” it ignited a rivalry between the league’s perceived “haves” and “have nots.” Fans of the other NSWRL teams almost universally began to develop a hatred of Manly Warringah, viewing them as an arrogant franchise willing to raid poorer teams for a chance to steal a title. For their part, fans of the Sea Eagles reveled in the attention, often holding up signs at home games that read “Manly Hates You, Too.”

Manly Warringah developed a rivalry against Parramatta in the 1980s, with the Eels defeating the Sea Eagles in back-to-back grand finals in 1982 and 1983. Manly returned to the championship game in 1987, winning its fifth premiership with an 18–8 victory over the Canberra Raiders. The Sea Eagles went to three consecutive grand finals from 1995 to 1997, winning a championship in 1996 with a 20–8 victory over the St. George Dragons.

Manly Warringah’s success in the 1990s came amidst a period of great change in Australian rugby. To increase the popularity of the sport across the nation, a rival professional league formed to challenge the dominance of the NSWRL. The NSWRL reorganized to become the Australian Rugby League (ARL) in 1995, while the corporate-backed Super League began play in 1997. While many long-standing teams jumped ship to the Super League, the Sea Eagles remained in the AFL. The two-league experiment lasted just one year, with the AFL and Super League merging in 1998 to form the National Rugby League.

In 2000, Manly Warringah merged with the North Sydney Bears to form a new team called the Northern Eagles. This union lasted only three seasons before the Sea Eagles franchise returned to the NRL and the Bears ceased to exist. Manly Warringah made it back to the grand final in 2007 but lost to the Melbourne Storm. The two teams faced off in a rematch in 2008, with the Sea Eagles winning 40–0, the largest margin of victory in grand finals history. Manly Warringah won its eighth premiership in 2011, defeating the New Zealand Warriors.

Manly made it to the finals in 2019 but were defeated by South Sydney 34-26 in the elimination final. The team finished thirteenth in 2020, largely because Tom Trbojevic, their star player, suffered a serious injury. Manly finished in fourth place in 2021. The team competed in the finals but lost to Melbourne in the opening week. The 2022 season was largely a disappointment, with the team finising eleventh and Trbojevic suffering another injury. Despite having a new head coach, Anthony Seibold, in 2023, the club finished in twelfth place.

Since entering the league in 1947, Manly Warringah has never finished at the bottom of the standings, a position that earns a team the wooden spoon award. The team plays at the Brookvale Oval.

Notable players

Bob Fulton spent a decade with Manly Warringah from 1966–1976, winning three premierships with the Sea Eagles. In the hard-fought 1973 grand final against Cronulla, Fulton scored the Sea Eagles’ only two tries of the game to power their 10–7 win. A try is scored when a player touches the ball down on the ground in an opponent’s goal area. Fulton recorded 129 tries with the Sea Eagles, third most in franchise history. He was named to the NRL team of the decade for both the 1960s and the 1970s and was inducted into the Australian Rugby League Hall of Fame in 1981 as an Immortal—one of only thirteen players to achieve that honor.

Graham Eadie is the all-time points leader for Manly Warringah, scoring 1,917 points from 1971–1983. His total includes 847 goal kicks and 71 tries. A goal kick occurs when a player kicks the ball through the goal posts and over the crossbar. Eadie was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2008. From 1986–1999, Cliff Lyons played 309 games for the Sea Eagles, most in franchise history. He was awarded the Clive Churchill Medal in the 1987 grand final as the game’s most outstanding player and won the 1900 and 1994 Dally M Player of the Year, an honor given to the most outstanding player in the regular season. As of 2020, his 80 career tries rank eighth on the team’s all-time list. He was named to the Hall of Fame in 2018.

Technically, Brett Stewart holds the franchise record for most career tries with 163, a figure that also ranks him seventh all-time in NRL history. Stewart played with the Sea Eagles from 2003–2016 and is seventh in points scored in the franchise record books. However, a case can be made that Steve Menzies actually holds the team records for both tries and games played. Menzies played with Manly Warringah from 1993–1999 and again from 2003–2008, but he also played for the team when it merged with North Sydney and was known as the Northern Eagles. The NRL considers that team to be a separate franchise with its own records. With Manly Warringah, Menzies played in 280 games and scored 151 tries. Adding in the 69 games he played with the Northern Eagles, Menzies would have 349 games played and 183 tries, both franchise marks. As of 2020, he ranked third on the all-time NRL list in tries scored. He was named to the hall of fame in 2018.

Ken Irvine, who holds the NRL record for most tries with 212, played most of his career with North Sydney, but spent the last three seasons of his career with Manly Warringah from 1971–1973. Jamie Lyon, who earned the nickname “Killer,” played with the team from 2007–2016. As of 2020, he ranks second on the franchise list for points scored with 1,410 and is second in goals scored with 533.

Bibliography

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