Anthony Seibold reveals thoughts on 'Fozball', Manly sacking

Anthony Seibold has revealed he has met with Kieran Foran since his departure as Manly coach as the Sea Eagles continue to rise the ladder.

Former Manly coach Seibold was a shock sacking only four rounds into the 2026 season, replaced by Foran, who is now acting as interim coach at the Sea Eagles.

The Sea Eagles began the season 0-3 at home under Seibold, before Foran’s style of play, dubbed ‘Fozball’ saw Manly win five of their next six, surging up the ladder to sit in fifth ahead of Round 11.

Seibold brought Foran on as an assistant before the season following his retirement at the end of 2025.

With Foran all but set to be made the full-time coach in the coming weeks, Seibold revealed he had caught up with his likely successor since his departure from the club.

“I think he’s (Foran) an impressive guy," Seibold said on Channel 7’s The Agenda Setters: Rugby League.

“One of the things that impressed me and why I wanted to bring him into the club was he had that Manly DNA, and not only the DNA, but he was a winner there.

“He won a premiership, played in the grand final, and everyone spoke highly of him.

“And two without knowing him, just his resilience and his perseverance, he’s had to go through a lot of stuff personally.

“To see people go through challenging times and keep marching forward, I think that says a lot about their character and them as a person.

“So I had a holiday up on the Gold Coast in October, I caught up with Foz a couple of times and asked him to come on board.

“I’ve caught up with him since. I caught up with him for a coffee about two weeks ago now. I’m really happy for him that it’s going well.

“I’m happy for the club.

“Obviously, my ego takes a little bit of a hit when we play three games and they’re doing so well now, but that’s just the ego talk and I want the group to do really well.

“Foz has got some really good people around him like Peter Gentle, Aaron Greaves, Jimmy Dymock, John Clark, ‘Noddy’ Kimmorley, those types of guys are really quality human beings and they would be putting a lot of support around Kieran.

“The challenge for Foz will be when you lose a couple of games, when you’ve got to drop a player, when you’ve got to tell a senior player, ’hey, look, we can’t sign you anymore’. They’re all the challenges, but he’s obviously made a great start of it."

Since Foran took over, Manly’s only loss has been to the ladder-leading Panthers by two points.

Players, including Jake Trbojevic and Haumole Olakau’atu, have enjoyed a form resurgence under Foran, with the team speaking after victories of how they don’t want to let their new interim coach down.

It could be a bitter pill for Seibold, however, the former coach holds no ill feelings towards the Sea Eagles. Instead, he isn’t surprised by the turn in form, always suspecting the team was building towards being a premiership threat.

“I think out of those first three games, I felt as though the first game against the Raiders, we jumped out of the blocks really well,” Seibold said.

“But we were really poor against Newcastle, and what you spoke about, the effort side of things, that was something that was really disappointing in that Newcastle game.

“But I thought we fought really hard against the Roosters. (They) played almost the perfect game that night… I thought we were pretty brave.

“And the next day or after the game, I thought that we'd turn the corner a little bit.

“It's not surprising. We knew that we'd put together a good team there and I think there's sort of proof in the list that we've put together.

“It can win games, and I'm really confident it can be a top four side.

“Regrettably, I won't be part of that but, as I said, I'm really close to a lot of those guys there. I want to say that the club do well.

“I enjoyed the bulk of my time there, but it's not my opportunity to be head coach anymore there, but I wish Kieran and the rest of the staff really well.”

Looking back on his time at the Sea Eagles, Seibold admitted he didn’t see his sudden exit coming, but could feel something was amiss after the Round 4 clash with the Roosters, his last match in charge.

“The end of my time, obviously that’s always very difficult and can be quite emotional,’’ Seibold said.

“Look, to be fair, I didn’t think I’d be sacked after round three, but the actual response after the Roosters game, my gut feel sort of said that something was going to happen.

“I spoke to Jason King (Manly CEO) after the game and I just said, look, I feel like there’s a lot of commentary and a lot of noise around my role, the club and I felt as though either the club needed to come out and back me and support me or the club needed to make a decision to move me on.

“And, you know, that’s the decision the club made.

“I said to Kingy, you know, I’m a man, I’ll handle it well.

“And yeah, as I said, my gut sort of told me after the game that potentially they might go that way.

“I felt as though working with Jason, I think he was keen to put his stamp on the club.

“And I do have to say this, rather than a long, slow death, I actually respect that it was a quick kill in many respects.

“It’s really difficult for you to be in the gun for so long.

“So, I’ll always remember my time fondly at Manly, although, you know, you never want to go through what I had to do at the end."