The history of the Manly Warringah Sea Eagles dates back to 1932 when the Manly-Warringah Junior Rugby Football League was founded. In 1947 the New South Wales Rugby Football League included two additional teams: Manly-Warringah DRLFC and Parramatta DRLFC. The new club adopted the nickname "Sea Eagles" and went on to compete in every season of top-level rugby league until merging with the nearby North Sydney Bears to form the Northern Eagles club at the end of 1999. After three years the joint-venture team was disbanded with the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles returning as a sole entity once more to the National Rugby League.
Background
In Australia, before 1908, most football clubs in Sydney played by the rules of the Rugby Football Union and had done so since the first R.F.U. rules were written in 1871. As the professional game came to Sydney, the bigger inner city districts left their affiliation with the Rugby Football Union and created a new top flight football competition in 1908.
Two factors prevented the initial inclusion of a Manly team into the competition. Firstly, with the Manly Rugby Union Club only recently gaining acceptance into the Sydney competition, many involved were not prepared to take a chance on the new code, which had yet to prove itself as a sustainable entity. Add to this a population base barely in the thousands, and well spread out among the many farms in the region, and sustainable support would have been difficult to envisage.
With a strong growth in local population through the 1920s, the Manly-Warringah Junior Rugby Football League was founded 11 February 1932 with six clubs established for the local competition. The formation of this League entitled Manly's inclusion into the President's Cup, a junior district competition run by the NSWRL. The headquarters of the Juniors had since at least 1939 been Brookvale Oval.
After unsuccessful attempts in 1937 and 1944, early in 1946 the Manly-Warringah Junior Rugby Football League again applied to the NSWRL for the club's 1947 admission to the district first grade (now NRL).
During 1946, two meetings involving the North Sydney club which would seal Manly's future. Their first encounter was played out on 17 June 1946 when the two districts met in the final of the President's Cup; played in front of 64,527 spectators as the curtain raiser for the First Test against the touring British Lions. Manly maintained an early lead to claim the match, 12–8.
The second meeting was between the senior NSWRL clubs on 4 November 1946, in which the North Sydney club supported the inclusion of Manly into the senior competition, despite knowing that many of its Manly players would no longer be eligible to play for North Sydney due to the district residential rule of the time.
With the Manly club being successful this time, a public meeting on 20 November 1946 saw the formation of the Manly-Warringah District Rugby League Football Club. The club took on the colours of maroon and white. These were adopted from the colours of the President's Cup side which appears to have utilised the colours of the local Freshwater Surf Lifesaving Club, established in 1908, and of which Ken Arthurson and other players were members. Brookvale Oval was established as the team's home ground.
1947–1949 12 April 1947 saw the Manly club taking on the Western Suburbs club in its first official game in the NSWRFL senior competition, but despite scoring three tries (the first of which came from Keith "Meggsy" Kirkwood) to Wests' one, the Manly side went down 15–13. The lineup for that match was: A 'Bert' Collins, Jim Walsh, C 'Kelly' McMahon, Mackie Campbell, Johnny Bliss, Merv Gillmer, Gary Maddrell, James Hall, Keith Kirkwood, Max Whitehead (c), Pat Hines, Ern Cannon, Harry Grew. The coach was Harold Johnson.
The club's first win in the top league was a 15–7 victory against fellow newcomers Parramatta, at Brookvale Oval, 31 May 1947. By season's end, Manly had racked up just four victories from 18 rounds, which was enough to avoid the wooden spoon, with Parramatta winning one less game for the season.
The 1948–1950 period saw the club languish at the bottom of the table, coming ninth, eighth and eighth out of ten. However, the club did have local junior Roy Bull selected for an Australian Test team which played against New Zealand in October 1949, thus becoming Manly-Warringah's first home-grown International.
1950s
The Manly-Warringah club originally had played in a maroon jersey with a large white 'V' on the front. The club was one of the first to feature a crest or emblem, with an MW on a crest appearing in the early 1950s. Far from the flashy emblems worn today, the Manly 'Sea Eagle' which appeared in the mid-1950s was often confused for a seagull by many, including the media. As there were no official nicknames for clubs at the time, more an adopted 'mascot', it was not considered an issue.
On 25 April 1951, a new attendance record at Brookvale was set at 9,447, with spectators overflowing onto the field for a match between Manly and South Sydney. The 1951 team won 11 games, finishing second at the end of the regular season, and were in their first finals campaign. After accounting for both Wests and St George in the semi-finals, Manly were to meet a South Sydney side which were the reigning Premiers and had won the minor premiership by 11 points. The result was a 42–14 loss for Manly.
In 1952, Roy Bull became the club's first ever Kangaroo Tourist when he was selected to go on the 1952–53 Kangaroo tour of Great Britain and France. He would play 17 games on the Kangaroo Tour, four of them test matches for Australia.
1956 saw the first of 11 Premierships for the St George club, resulting in two more runners-up trophies for Manly in both 1957 (31-9) and 1959 (20-0). The 1957 season saw a young Ken Arthurson take the reins as the Manly coach, a position he held until the 1961 season.
1960s From the 1960 to the 1969 seasons, Manly's form ranged from third-place finishes in 1961 and 1966, to an eighth placing in 1964.
The combination of the return of Wally O'Connell to the club as coach in 1966, and the development of Ken Arthurson's skill as an administrator professionalized the club. With the groundwork laid and a couple of years of development of the future Immortal Bob Fulton, the 1968 competition saw Manly compete with St George and South Sydney.
At the end of the home and away season, Manly finished second, one point behind reigning Premiers, South Sydney. The Major Semi-Final saw Manly beat Souths, 23–15, but the clubs soon met again in the Grand Final where the Rabbitohs proved too strong and won the decider, 13–9.
1970s The 1970 season ended with Manly losing to the South Sydney Rabbitohs 23–12.
By the end of the regular 1971 season, the club had both the best defence and attack record, lost three games and claimed their maiden Minor Premiership over second placed Rabbitohs. However, they did not made the final due to two successive losses.
The Sea Eagles finished as 1972 Minor Premiers and heading into the finals series with 12 wins and 1 draw from the last 13 rounds.
The Major Semi saw Manly taking on Easts and winning 32–8, before meeting again in the decider two weeks later where Manly-Warringah claimed their maiden Premiership, 19–14 in front of 54,537 fans at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
16 September 1972 Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles: Graham Eadie, Ken Irvine, Ray Branighan, Bob Fulton, Max Brown, Ian Martin, Dennis Ward, Mal Reilly, Terry Randall, Allan Thomson, John O'Neill, Fred Jones (c), Bill Hamilton
Coach: Ron Willey
Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles - 19 (Jones, Branighan tries; Branighan 6 goals; Fulton field goal) defeated Eastern Suburbs Roosters - 14 (Ballesty, Mullins tries; McKean 4 goals)
The 1973 finals were the first to feature five teams, allowing the Minor Premiers a week off during the first round of finals. The 14–4 win by Manly over Cronulla in the first week of the finals saw the club with a week off before again meeting Cronulla in the Grand Final.
The 1973 Grand Final is often quoted as one of the most brutal games in Rugby League history. Led by a ferocious forward pack, the Cronulla side looked to unsettle the reigning Premiers, and the game was riddled with fights, late hits and illegal play from both sides. Key Manly playmaker Malcolm "Mal" Reilly was taken out early when hit late and did not return after halftime. Bob Fulton's superior skills shone through, and the Sharks plan to unsettle the Sea Eagles was foiled. Fulton's two tries saw the Manly side win 10-7 and claim the Premiership for the second time.
15 September 1973 Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles: Graham Eadie, Ken Irvine, Ray Branighan, Bob Fulton, Max Brown, Ian Martin, Johnny Mayes, Mal Reilly, Terry Randall, Peter Peters, John O'Neill, Fred Jones (c), Bill Hamilton
Replacement: John Bucknall for Mal Reilly, injured
Coach: Ron Willey.
Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles - 10 (Fulton 2 tries; Eadie 2 goals) defeated Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks - 7 (Bourke try; Rogers 2 goals)
In the 1974 and 1975 seasons were dominated by an unstoppable Eastern Suburbs club, winning the Minor Premierships by 8 and 10 points. Against this juggernaut, the Manly club finished second on the table for both seasons, losing a total of four out the five finals game and failing to qualify for either Grand Final.
Manly held off the Parramatta to win the Minor Premiership in the 1976 season. During their two meetings during the regular season, the Eels had proved too strong on both occasions and followed that up with another win, this time in the Major Semi Final. Manly went on to beat Canterbury to set up a rematch against Parramatta in the Grand Final, where Manly won their third Premiership in five years.
18 September 1976 Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles: Graham Eadie, Tom Mooney, Russel Gartner, Bob Fulton (c), Rod Jackson, Alan Thompson, Gary Stephens, Ian Martin, Phil Lowe, Steve Norton, Terry Randall, Max Krilich, John Harvey
Replacements: Gary Thoroughgood for Ian Martin; Mark Willoughby for Phil Lowe
Coach: Frank Stanton
Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles - 13 (Lowe try; Eadie 5 goals) defeated Parramatta Eels - 10 (Porter, Gerard tries; Peard 2 goals)
Manly started the 1977 season with three solid wins, despite the loss of Bob Fulton to the Roosters, however, four losses in a row saw the club lose momentum with only a last round victory against the Balmain Tigers at Leichhardt Oval securing fifth spot from a fast-finishing Cronulla side. However, the Tigers reversed the result in the first week of the finals, to knock the Sea Eagles out of title contention. After the 1977 NSWRFL season Roy Bull was elected the Manly-Warringah club's president, succeeding Bill Cameron who had held the position for the previous 19 years.
Success for the club during the 1970s culminated with the club scoring a fourth Premiership in another Grand Final against the Cronulla Sharks during the 1978 season. Unlike the three previous titles, the club did not win the Minor Premiership. It also was unique insofar as Manly were required to replay two drawn matches through the finals campaign. Week one of the finals saw Manly beaten by Cronulla 17–12; the boot of Steve Rogers proving the difference with both teams scoring three tries each. The Minor Semi Final against Parramatta ended in a draw: the teams met again three days later where Manly scored a 17–11 victory.