Manly Sea Eagles captain Daly Cherry-Evans has reportedly admitted to being so addicted to NRL Supercoach that it was affecting his in-game play.
The Queenslander made his admission to The Daily Telegraph's Supercoach expert Tom Sangster, who revealed the story to Matty Johns on SEN 1170 Morning Glory.
“DCE (Daly Cherry-Evans) is on record saying he had to quit Supercoach,” Sangster said.
“He had to delete the app because it was affecting his play. It was in his head that much at the time.”
Andrew Webster doesn’t believe Cherry-Evans is alone in letting fantasy scores affect his play, telling Johns that a raft of other NRL players are in the same boat.
“I know there are players that play for Manly that aren’t DCE that play the game for their Supercoach numbers,” Webster said.
“Off-loads, metres made, that kind of thing, they check their numbers at halftime. There are players that do that.”
Johns also confirmed similar rumours, saying that another club’s forwards would try and get their hands on the ball early to purely increase their metres gained stat.
“I’ve heard rumours from another club that middle forwards argue about taking the ball at kick off," Johns said.
“That used to be the worst thing for a forward, but not anymore because they get 20 metres out of that.”
Sangster even ousted another Maroon for playing the fantasy game and even naming himself as captain.
“It’s impossible to know a percentage of players that do it, I don’t think many players admit to it, but I know some play,” Sangster said.
“Corey Parker used to play and have himself as captain every week.”
Webster believes the obsession with statistics and fantasy numbers is a direct influence from American sports.
“So many players in the NRL follow the NFL, and so many players in the NFL are stats obsessed,” Webster said.
“NFL players are completely stats obsessed, not so much for fantasy but for contracts and the like.”
“It’s really amazing.”
Manly will be hoping Cherry-Evans and his teammates are fully focused on their actual performance this weekend as they take on the Sydney Roosters tomorrow evening.
