Manly Sea Eagles part ways with NRL head coach Des Hasler

Manly have sacked NRL head coach Des Hasler after weeks of speculation about his future in the job, and are set to announce Anthony Seibold as his replacement for 2023.

The Sea Eagles lost their last seven games of the 2022 season as the fallout from the Everyone In League jersey saga divided a playing group that had made the top four the campaign before.

Hasler had a year to run on his contract but his position first came under scrutiny when Manly missed the finals series, meaning the coach failed to satisfy a clause in his contract that would have triggered an automatic extension for 2024.

The situation reached critical mass this week when chairman Scott Penn told the Nine Network that the Sea Eagles needed a football department fit for its “premiership-winning team”.

In plotting a succession plan, Penn had favoured ex-South Sydney and Brisbane coach Seibold, who was previously an assistant on the Manly coaching staff.

As recently as Wednesday night, Hasler was reported to have told the Sea Eagles he would have been open to having Seibold as an assistant in 2023 with the view to vacating the head coaching role at the end of that season.

But after meeting on Thursday, the board determined the regeneration would be fast-tracked, as the embattled club hope to once-and-for-all mend the divides that cruelled their latest campaign.

Hasler is the most recent coach to take Manly to the premiership, doing so in 2008 and 2011, before leaving the club for a stint at Canterbury.

After two grand final losses with the Bulldogs, Hasler returned to Brookvale in 2019 to become the second-most capped coach in the club’s history behind Bob Fulton.