Manly Sea Eagles coach Anthony Seibold believes the commentary around star five-eighth Josh Schuster has become a “pile on” and “paints him in a bad light.”
Schuster was made unavailable for selection a couple of weeks ago “to allow him to do more reconditioning work on a recent quad injury.”
It means in the first 10 rounds the 21-year-old will have only played three games. Although it’s important to note Manly had a bye in Round 2.
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Schuster missed the first game of the season due to a calf injury. He returned for Manly’s next game — Round 3 — but was then ruled out of Round 5 with a quad injury.
He played Round 8 but has since been sidelined indefinitely.
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In the meantime, it’s been reported that Schuster is earning around the $800,000 mark this season — which has raised even more concerns about his fitness. He was also a part of a spat with a teammate at training.
Seibold told reporters on Thursday that the decision to make Schuster unavailable was “collaborative” and he’s been “checking in” on him because of the media coverage.
He also indicated that Schuster would be back on deck in a matter of weeks.
“It’s a little bit like there’s been a pile on Josh for one way or another,” he said.
“We made a collaborative decision to put him in a reconditioning block and that’s my decision as head coach but with input from Josh and input from our head of performance and input from our head physio.
“We’ll always do the thing that we think is right for the player and I feel as though this opportunity for Josh to physically recondition himself and get his quad right and that’s the right way to go about it.
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“As a coach I have been checking in on him because I feel as though there’s a lot of commentary around him at the moment which paints him in a negative light — and that’s not the case internally.
“He’s a 21-year-old guy, who’s a very talented kid, who’s right at the very start of his career so our job is to try and mentor him.
“We’ve got some great mentors in Daly Cherry-Evans, Tom Trbojevic and Jake Trbojevic at our club… and Josh Aloiai as well — he spends a lot of time with him.
“We feel as though we’ve got some good people around him.
“I wouldn’t call it disrespectful — that’s that the commentary, that’s just the nature of our game — it’s a 24/7 news cycle.
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“But we feel as though Josh will be right to come back and play some really good football in a couple of weeks time.”
Seibold also addressed the rumours that out-of-favour Bulldogs playmaker Kyle Flanagan was set to sign with Manly.
It was reported last week that Flanagan was on the verge of getting a release to join his father — Manly’s assistant coach — Shane.
Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo denied it in his press conference last Sunday, while football boss Phil Gould has also denied the move several times on Twitter.
Seibold admitted that the club was considering signing a half but instead will “sit tight” with the personnel already on the Sea Eagles’ roster.
But that makes Schuster’s “reconditioning block” all the more crucial given halfback and skipper Daly Cherry-Evans is all but confirmed for State of Origin duties in a few weeks time.
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“One of the reasons I’ve taken Josh Schuster out and does this reconditioning block is that we want to get him up and running,” Seibold said.
“Cooper has been really sound to start the year, he’s played more first grade to start a season than any in his career and we feel like he’s shown improvement so we’ll get Josh right.
“Chez will go to Origin — if all going well — in a couple of weeks time so if we can have Josh and Cooper throughout that Origin period in the halves then we feel as though we’ve got a really strong halves combination there.
“But we were looking around — we had some outside backs injured — and then we were looking around (thinking) ‘do we need to add a half?’ But at the moment we’ll sit tight and back those two guys.”
