DCE has no regrets on exit call ahead of 350th game
Jasper Bruce |
Daly Cherry-Evans insists he has no regrets over his decision to leave Manly, even as the captain pinches himself to be playing a fairytale 350th game for the NRL club.
Against the Dolphins on Saturday, halfback Cherry-Evans will follow Cameron Smith, Cooper Cronk, Darren Lockyer and Terry Lamb and become just the fifth man in premiership history to reach the coveted milestone.
Cherry-Evans will be only the third to play 350 games for the one club, having become synonymous with Manly since his premiership-winning 2011 rookie season.
“Along the way I reckon I dreamt to play as many games as Cliff Lyons and Steve Menzies, the legends of this club,” Cherry-Evans said.
“Now that I’m here myself, it is a little bit of a ‘pinch-myself’ moment.”
But the milestone match looks set to be his third-last in Sea Eagles colours, with an ongoing four-game losing streak appearing to have thwarted Manly’s top-eight tilt – and Cherry-Evans’ hopes of a fairytale finish.
The 10th-placed Sea Eagles remain a mathematical chance of a finals berth, but winning their last three games is non-negotiable, and a handful of other results would need to fall their way.
“There’s still hope so I haven’t completely written off this season, but it is going to be extremely difficult,” Cherry-Evans said.
As it stands, the 2025 campaign looms as a disappointing end to a storied Manly career for Cherry-Evans, who shocked the NRL world in March by announcing he would leave the club at season’s end.
On Wednesday, Cherry-Evans politely requested reporters refrain from peppering him with questions about his playing future, which has been subject to intrigue all season.
The 36-year-old has been linked with a move to the Sydney Roosters, but insists he still does not really know when he will make the final call on 2026.
“I just know now is not the right time,” he said.
Uncertainty has grown over a Roosters move, given the red-hot chemistry between Easts halves Hugo Savala and Sam Walker, and Cherry-Evans’ own decline in form.
But even though plenty has changed since Cherry-Evans made his announcement in March, the veteran is bullish he’s made the right call in choosing to leave.
He intimated that he found it harder to make the notorious call to backflip on a move to Gold Coast in 2015, than to decide he’d leave Manly at the end of 2025.
“Like any big life decision, you are always going to wonder if that’s the right call, but I didn’t just make that decision (to leave Manly) overnight,” Cherry-Evans said.
“I think I’ve been through bigger decisions than this one. I thought the one earlier in my career was a bigger one and I’ve got no regrets for that one, so I reckon I’ll have no regrets for this one.”
Cherry-Evans was intent on not treating this weekend’s milestone as a farewell to the Manly faithful.
“I feel like there’s an opportunity for that in the next couple of weeks, but not this weekend,” he said.
“We can all laugh and cry on the hill together maybe on the last round of the year.”
But the milestone man did reveal his simple hope for how he’d like to be remembered by the Sea Eagles.
“All you want to be known for is (being) a reliable teammate who could do his job and be counted on,” he said.
“But the thing I’m going to take away is the connections, the friendships, the relationships.”
AAP
