The Sea Eagles are “slowly shifting” away from Des Hasler, according to Paul Kent who also revealed the coach locked Manly owner Scott Penn out of the dressing rooms on Friday night.
Manly lost their final seven games of the season which culminated in a 21-20 defeat against the Bulldogs over the wekeend and it has put Hasler under pressure to keep his job.
Kent believes the chatter that Hasler is fighting with the Fulton at Manly family is wide of the mark, but he warned there are officials at the club looking to unseat him.
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“It’s a really festering situation at Manly at the moment and there’s all sorts of allegations going around and the big one at the moment is there’s a war between Des Hasler the coach and the Fulton family,” Kent said on NRL 360.
“(Children of Bob Fulton) Scott and Christie Fulton are both involved with the club and Brett is running the pathways. He spoke to Des yesterday when this story started to break and he said Des we’re not part of this, we’ve got no issue with you as the coach.
“That said I believe there is a move at the club, and I don’t believe it’s the Fultons, I believe it’s others using Fulton’s to put in front of everybody as the a decoy to get rid of Des Hasler, I’ve got no doubt the club is slowly shifting on him.
“The game the other night, Des locked (Penn) out of the dressing room. That’s pretty standard for Des, Des likes a pretty tight dressing room… but Scott Penn is the owner of the club.”
Kent said Hasler has plenty of form in this area and pointed to his time coaching Canterbury between 2012 and 2017.
“He’s done this before, he did it at Canterbury and it began the rot at Canterbury,” Kent said.
“It began the snowball of club officials slowly turning on Des, this type of attitude. I think it’s begun at Manly, I think Des is going to be fighting to save his job into next season.”
Penn declared Hasler had a job “as long as he wanted” in the wake of the pride jersey saga earlier this season.
But that stance appears to have changes and Phil Rothfield revealed the parties will meet for a “crisis meeting” on Thursday.
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“It’s Tony Mestrov their new CEO, Scott Penn their owner and chairman and Des Hasler and his manager George Mimis,” Rothfield said.
“They’ll get in a room and try and thrash this out. What they will tell Des is you are no longer managing director, chief executive, head of this football club. We want to give control to Tony Mestrov the new CEO for him to run it.
“So Des has to change his ways, he has to take their suggestions on board, change his high-performance staff.”
The panel agreed that Hasler would reluctantly agree to those terms because he has just one year left on his $800,000 per year deal and has to make finals next season to trigger his 2024 option.
The panel also revealed that Manly have asked players to fill out an anonymous survey showing whether they support coach Des Hasler.
Players were asked to respond as part of the end-of-season reviews, but Rothfield believes the survey was likely Hasler’s idea.
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