Get off the boos, Manly fans – or better still, boo your own awful team

March 28, 2026 — 5:00am

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Are the Manly Sea Eagles fans the Lang Park crowd of this generation?

“This mob would boo Santa Claus,” Jack Gibson once famously said of the Queenslanders during home State of Origin matches.

For you did what, you Manly fans?

You booed Daly Cherry-Evans? You seriously booed the bloke who played 352 games in your colours, more than any other Manly player ever, captained the Sea Eagles to a premiership, and was the most influential player of his generation, with only Tommy Turbo to argue the toss?

Because he had the temerity to go to the Roosters for the final year/s of his career? This is worth booing when he runs out for the first time at Brookie? And then every time he touches the ball thereafter?

I said, for WHAT exactly?

Look, the greatest tradition of rugby league – the founding principle, if you will – is to take the money and run. But DCE didn’t even do that. The reckoning is, he took a pay-cut to play for the Roosters, simply because he felt, as he said, that “by cutting ties with Manly this year, I felt like that was the best chance for me to have freedom throughout the year.”

Got it? After 15 years of loyal service, he felt like a change would help him stay a little fresher in the twilight years of his career. No more than that. Good luck to him!

A night on the Brookvale Oval hill for the return of Daly Cherry-Evans

He didn’t diss the club on the way out. He didn’t utter a single disloyal word. He just wanted a change. I’d reckon after his length and level of service, he’d earned the right.

Beyond all that, isn’t booing, as a principle, adolescent twaddle? Who, seriously, boos, throughout an entire game?

Grow up. Give yourselves an uppercut. And if you really want to boo, start with your own team which has now lost three straight, has sacked the coach and is about to have a season where they can do a victory lap if they win so much as the toss.

You heard it here first

As to the NRL season playing out before our eyes, allow me to give you the result right now, before anyone. Remember, you heard it here first.

The Panthers beat the Warriors in the grand final by 10 points. Nathan Cleary was the star, and Brian To’o put the icing on the cake with two superb tries in the corner. The Kiwi crowd was down about 20 per cent on expectation, but that was only because the cost of aviation fuel had seen the price of air tickets double.

President Trump had promised that the Iran War would be over soon, but it hadn’t come in time. Nevertheless, Peter V’landys said he was a great man and couldn’t say too much, but he was confident he would turn up in Las Vegas next year. In post-season news, yet another three former NRL stars in their middle years were arrested for uncharacteristically erratic and even violent behaviour, but the league and its........

© The Sydney Morning Herald