The doublespeak and spin surrounding Daly Cherry-Evans’ relationship with Manly requires a team of investigators to sift through and understand. But the bad blood between the Sea Eagles and their skipper can be traced back to two separate incidents where the Manly great was sledged behind his back at public events.

Cherry-Evans revealed on Monday he would not be at the Sea Eagles beyond the end of this season.

At Magic Round last year a senior Manly figure with significant sway at the club was highly critical of Cherry-Evans, suggesting he had too much power at the club. The comments were made within earshot of select people, including rival NRL club officials. That led other clubs to believe Cherry-Evans was on his way out of Manly and that he could be a good buy when his contract expired at the end of 2025.

Some clubs even discussed the potential of signing Cherry-Evans as a result of the disparaging remarks, which were made in a public forum by a person who would have a better than reasonable idea about what was going on at the Sea Eagles. The same person then made similarly unfavourable comments at the end of the year on a football club cruise.

We have chosen not to name the person to protect the identity of our sources, who did not want to be identified, because there were a limited number of people who heard it.

The disparaging comments reached DCE’s camp. That’s when Manly started telling media privately of the plan to return Luke Brooks to halfback and move Tom Trbojevic to No.6.

Rival clubs were certainly aware of the divide at the Sea Eagles, and again the idea of signing DCE was raised by many of them.

Daly Cherry-Evans at Manly training on Thursday.Credit: Rhett Wyman

It makes the spin, from both sides – that there are no issues between club and player – difficult to swallow.

But the spin is understandable given Manly’s desperation to avoid having their season totally derailed by their captain’s looming exit.

This column was hearing whispers of a potentially significant development last week, but no one from either camp would provide information. That’s why I led last week’s column with a piece indicating Manly believed DCE was going to retire at the end of the season, but that they had learnt how little........

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