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It’s almost 10 years to the day.
Kieran Foran and his Parramatta teammates were holding an hour-long press conference where all members of the NRL squad were available for interviews.
The sessions are compulsory for all clubs and take place in pre-season, mid-season and on the eve of the final.
It is an opportunity for television, newspaper and radio journalists to conduct face-to-face interviews. They are a form of organized chaos.
At the Eels’ temporary training center on the site of Parramatta’s former cattle sale yards in July 2016, Foran was a hot asset. He had left Manly, where he played in the 2011 premiership win, to join the Eels as captain.
It’s a big job at a big club. Sitting with my colleague Danny Weidler from Nine News while the cameraman set up the lights, the three of us made small talk and cracked a few jokes.
Foran was there, but he wasn’t. He was polite, he smiled and tried to engage with what was happening, but he seemed to be in pain. He was nervous, couldn’t concentrate and looked like he wanted to pass out.
Later, I said to Danny: “Is Foran okay?” He said he wasn’t, and he had a lot going on in his personal life.
Days later, Foran withdrew from rugby league and went into rehab. His life was full. There were marital breakdowns, as well as gambling and drug abuse, including overdoses.
He was young, only 25.
That he was able to work through his demons, fit himself to play nine more NRL seasons and finish his career in a New Zealand test jersey last November shows what kind of character Manly has installed as its interim coach.
From where he was in life, it was not easy to adjust.
On top of his off-field issues, he dealt with a never-ending list of injuries but struggled time and time again in a way that is harder to do.
Now it is impossible to find anyone in the NRL community who will take him.
His greatest strength was to put aside all outside noise and focus on the task at hand. The first of these was to organize myself. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to play rugby league again, let alone be a father and role model to his children.
He also had to restore his relationship with the people in the game.
He looks you in the eye, shakes your hand and knows your name. It might not be PC to say this these days, but he’s old-fashioned in a lot of ways.
Those forces will defeat him 2026 season as Manly’s NRL coach.
Any way you look at it, Manly is broke. The reasons are many.
First of all, they do not have a roster capable of participating in finals football. Foran will teach a philosophy of being proud of the jersey, but that only gets you so far.
Clan wars and an unusual ownership structure only add to the problem.
Like many clubs, Manly have been blessed and cursed with golden ages. Lucky because they won premierships in the Bob Fulton era of the 1970s and again in Des Hasler’s golden years which produced titles in 2008 and 2011.
But such eras enable a playing group that has a strong voice on any issue at their former club.
Think the Broncos of the 1990s, Parramatta of the 1980s, the Wests Tigers of 2005, and Newcastle from around the turn of the century.
In times of crisis, clubs turn to those eras to get them out. So Manly have gone to Foran and have another favorite son, Jason King, also a member of the premiership of the Hasler era, as CEO.
They have done it before. Many times.
The club was ruled by Fulton and his family for decades in a regime that served it well and badly, depending on who you listen to.
And, despite Hasler leaving the club shortly after winning the 2011 premiership following secret talks with Canterbury, the club returned the flag to him in 2019 after the Trent Barrett disaster, where he left due to a lack of investment in top performance.
After buying furniture himself to help with meetings, Barrett took legal action, a path Hasler also took when he was removed from Anthony Seibold in late 2022.
You get the picture. There is always something happening in Manly because nothing good is happening in Manly.
Maybe something will happen now. Despite one offseason and three games as an assistant, Foran takes the top job, without serving any coaching training.
Even Wayne Bennett served one under Don Furner at the Raiders in 1987, despite winning a premiership in the Brisbane competition.
It may be in a temporary position, but the work is great. They have started by losing three consecutive home games, the worst of which was in the second round against Newcastle, while on a sunny Sunday afternoon they were so bad you had to wonder what they did all off-season.
Foran will be given nothing but respect from the Manly faithful and the wider NRL community.
The same cannot be said for the owners, the Penn family. Once and for all, they owe it to everyone to show what they stand for.
Neil Breen is a national sports editor and a Walkley Award-winning journalist.Connect through X.
