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Long is the list of Sea Eagles powerbrokers who have trudged into bad news after being summoned to Scott Penn’s North Sydney offices.
At 5pm on Friday, Anthony Seibold joined it.
That bad news club already contained former chief executives Grant Mayer, Graham Lowe, David Perry, Joe Kelly, Tim Cleary, Lyall Gorman, Stephen Humphreys and Tony Mestrov. Not to mention coaches Geoff Toovey and Trent Barrett. The only coach to deliver NRL premiership success, Des Hasler, was also sacked. Twice.
Seibold, depending on your perspective, was speared either too soon or too late. Three games of the 2026 season was considered a sufficient sample size to determine that things weren’t getting any better under his stewardship. Not since the Tigers sacked Jason Taylor at the corresponding point of the 2017 season has the trigger been pulled so quickly.
At Brookvale Oval on Saturday morning, at the centre of excellence bearing his name, Penn and recently appointed chief executive Jason King officially unveiled Kieran Foran as Seibold’s interim replacement. It came just 139 days after Foran’s last game as a player, in the Pacific Championships final for New Zealand on November 9.
Foran, as he did throughout an illustrious playing career, ran headlong into the challenge.
“Nothing’s been straightforward in my life and my footy career,” he said. “I’ve had to fight and scrap for every, every inch that I’ve got and I certainly haven’t walked away from challenges just because of the fear, fear of what might be out there.
“I’ve always taken it head on and if I failed, I’ve failed so dear and greatly.
“That’s where I sit here today. At the end of the day, I’m four-and-a-half months into a coaching journey, but if the club believes that I’m the right man to step into that role as interim coach right now for this playing group, then I’m going to do it.
“I love this club. I won a premiership here. I bled for the jersey in maroon and white, and at the end of the day, if I can instil a bit of that belief and passion onto this playing group, then hopefully we can see some results.”
This is the good-news story Manly desperately wanted to sell. After the awkward exit of captain Daly Cherry-Evans, Mestrov’s departure and a period of sustained underperformance, here was a Manly man – the only type to have ever succeeded in the role – being presented to long-suffering fans.
It’s a page from the rarely copied playbook of the Wests Tigers, who handed the clipboard to their own club legend, Benji Marshall, at their lowest ebb.
Foran’s apprenticeship has been even shorter than Marshall’s. It was served alongside a head coach under pressure, while juggling television commitments. It is an enormous ask of someone who has given so much of themselves while wearing the maroon and white.
It is one of the game’s great ironies that the mentor he will likely lean on during his transition is the man the club twice hired and fired, Hasler.
But is one of the Sea Eagles’ favourite sons being set up to fail? Will Foran join the lengthening list of Manly coaches churned and burned?
Is majority owner and chairman Scott Penn the problem?
“Look, I mean you can always point fingers and say that, but our focus has always been on the greater good of this club,” Penn said. “The reality is that as owners and stewards of the club, we’re demanding success. If we’re not getting success, then we need to find someone else.
“As a family, we’re entrepreneurs. We back people, we can’t do it all because we’ve got multiple businesses, but we back people, and we trust people.
“We set a plan, and we say this is where we want to go. And we allow them to get on with it. We don’t interfere. We’ve never in 20 years we’ve never told the coach ever to pick anyone.
“It’s up to them, that’s their job. But then they live and die by those results. So if they’re not performing or not, not giving us what we need as a club, then we have to make some tough decisions.”
This latest call on Foran could well define how the Penn family is remembered on the northern beaches.
