KIERSTEN DUKE: Daly Cherry-Evans leaving Manly Sea Eagles for NRL club unknown is a bizarre story

There’s never a dull moment in rugby league and this week is proving no different. Sometimes you get a gut feeling drama is brewing.

This, however, caught me totally off guard. Daly Cherry-Evans doing a live tell all interview on TV announcing his departure from Manly was not on my bingo card this early in the year.

A notoriously private person, it was the last way I expected the news to be aired. Credit where credit is due though, the 36-year-old oozed maturity and class in what could have had the potential to be a very trashy interview.

I was in shell shock when the news broke late on Monday that Manly’s most experienced and consistent player was leaving them. Surely not. But what has made his even more odd is it is truly unclear why he is so deadest on going, after Manly scrambled to make him a two-year offer, and what had really been going on behind the scenes at Brookvale.

The Sea Eagles gambled they could convince Cherry-Evans to sign a one-year deal at a much lower salary than his current $1.2 million a year sometime this season.

He had other ideas and in what is almost a carbon copy repat of the 2015 Titans deal disaster it looks like Manly’s only current player to have won a premiership is leaving to play for a Queensland team, most likely the Dolphins.

How on earth did Manly let it get to this point where they are now heading towards a 2026 season without a marquee half-back. Sure they can move some chess pieces around and shift Luke Brooks to No.7 and Tom Trbojevic to No.6 as they await the next gen in the form of teenager Joey Walsh to mature.

That plan has a lot of moving parts, any of which could break down such as the injury prone Trbojevic.

Half-back is one of the trickiest positions in footy. Teams can spend what feels like a lifetime in the trenches trying to find a playmaker and even when they do, it rarely lasts.

Souths learnt that the hardway when they tried to lowball Adam Reynolds only to see him go to Brisbane in 2022, play in a premiership a year later and turn out again this year for the Broncos.

The Rabbits are only now settling on their Reynolds replacement and even that as become a drama of its own with high-profile English recruit Lewis Dodd being benched in favour of former Sea Eagle young gun Jamie Humphreys.

With that kind of chaos the stability and consistency DCE brings is invaluable. It’s been cherished for the past 15 years and I’m in utter disbelief Manly have screwed this up so badly.

I think, among other things, that’s what makes Chez so valuable. In a game with an ever-changing landscape, he always remains so poised and precise. The man never wavers.

The bloke doesn’t seem to age, barely misses games and jokes about playing forever, which, maybe naively of me, I believed.

He will the oldest player in the league this year but is far from stagnant. He’ll remain an automatic selection for the Queensland Origin side and he will become the oldest player in Origin history.

By the end of this season Cherry-Evans will have started more games in the half-back position than any other player in the history of the NRL.

His legacy to the sport is undeniable and it’s the same for his club - he’s Manly’s most capped player.

Manly’s pledge to do anything they can to keep DCE appears a case of too little too late. If the club had not sent signals it was going to make him a lowball offer why wouldn’t he immediately accept this new deal to stay with his beloved club?

Cherry-Evans is at pains to say there is no bad blood with the club and he made this bombshell revelation to quell speculation over his future.

But I am not sure how the situation is now any clearer or will temper speculation until he signs with a new club or announces he is retiring - both of which he apparently won’t do until later this year.

Cherry-Evans backflipped before and Manly fans will be hoping he does so again.