Under interim coach Kieran Foran, the Sea Eagles have gone from wooden spoon favourites to the NRL’s best defensive outfit, and Luke Brooks is right at the centre of it. Manly is now eyeing a seventh win in eight games and looking more than ready to push deeper into the finals race.
Brooks, who spent 10 years at the Wests Tigers and carried the unwanted label of the $1M man through much of that spell, has become a key part of the turnaround alongside new halves partner Jamal Fogarty. The former Dally M Rookie of the Year in 2014 and Dally M Halfback of the Year in 2018 has been playing arguably career-best footy, steering a side that was under fire at the start of the year into one of the competition’s hardest teams to score against.
That shift has given Foran a case for a longer look in the job, even if his status remains interim. Manly’s surge has made him one of the more closely watched figures at the club, and Brooks’ form is one reason the conversation has moved from survival to what comes next. The Sea Eagles are no longer just trying to steady themselves after a rough opening; they are starting to shape a season with real stakes attached.
Brooks said the last few years have taught him how quickly expectations can turn. “It’s been a rollercoaster. Coming in as a young bloke there was a fair bit of media attention around me before I’d even played a first grade game,” he said. He added that it was “probably tough to deal with” from the start, given all the talk before he had played a senior match. He also said he does not look back on his Tigers years with regret, but wishes he had achieved success there.
That history matters because Brooks knows what it is like to carry pressure when results do not follow. He spent a decade at the Tigers without helping them reach the finals, and he said the scrutiny only grows when a high-profile player is not delivering wins. “When you’re one of the higher paid players and you’re not winning games and probably not performing as good as you want to be, that’s when you start copping it,” he said. “I think you have to have resilience to have a long career in the NRL.”
For Brooks, the difference now is the environment. He has a new club, new teammates and a new halves partner in Fogarty, and he said the criticism around Manly’s slow start did not rattle him. “At the start of this year when we were copping it from the media and from a lot of people about our start, it wasn’t anything new to me,” he said. What comes next is simple enough: if Manly keeps defending like this, the finals will stop looking like a target and start looking like the minimum.
