Daly Cherry-Evans has put the onus on himself to take more control late in sets as Manly aim to fix their slow starts before next weekend’s NRL clash with Canberra.
The Sea Eagles were on Friday sweating on scans for centre Moses Suli, who suffered a potential broken finger in their come-from-behind 20-18 win over Brisbane.
Forward Martin Taupau is also expected to miss a fortnight with a similar injury, after going off early in the piece on Thursday night.
But of equal interest to the Sea Eagles has been their first-half issues in recent weeks.
Manly completed at just 68 per cent in the first half on Thursday night as they fell behind 18-0 after 30 minutes, a week after suffering a similar early deficit to Parramatta.
They were at times clunky on the Broncos’ line, and on separate occasions in the win had forwards Jake Trbojevic and Addin Fonua-Blake end up with the ball on the last.
“That was a real scrappy part of our game again in the first half,” Cherry-Evans said.
“I definitely need to take responsibility for that.
“As the halfback, I’ll make sure I try and get my hands on the ball a bit more on last tackle knowing that play.
“I feel like that’s an easy part of our game to fix up.
“But certainly something to work on. It’s one of a couple of things we need to work on for our first half starts.”
Next Sunday’s clash with Canberra at Campbelltown now shapes as an early contender for the game of round six between the two high-flying teams.
Manly have now showed their character two weeks in a row, particularly given few teams have been able to mount fightbacks under fatigue with the new rules.
But Sea Eagles players are well aware they can’t make a habit of it, needing only look at how a forward pass call put a stop to their comeback last week against Parramatta.
“That’s obviously the big lesson we need to start learning with how we’re playing the first half of footy,” Cherry-Evans said.
“It’s chalk and cheese compared to the second half two weeks in a row.
“We need to be better at starting games of footy.
“I’m sure we’ll have some things to address at training but having a 10-day turnaround is a really good time to address a few things.
“Because it’s not good enough at the moment.”
