We take a look at the key stats to see how the Sea Eagles players performed in the 30-6 win over the Newcastle Knights and where they stand on the NRL leaderboards after five rounds of the Telstra Premiership.
Tries
The Sea Eagles ran in five tries (their best of the season to date) with the highlight being the first NRL try to second-rower Andrew Davey after running off a great short pass from Dylan Walker.
Morgan Harper, Karl Lawton, Haumole Olakau’atu and Taniela Paseka also crossed the line in the five tries to one romp.
Possession and Completion
On a rainy night in Newcastle, both sides struggled with their ball handlin, leading to relatively low completion rates.
The Sea Eagles completed 32/42 sets at 76% compared to Newcastle’s 29/42 sets at 69%.
Both sides were fairly even in possession with Manly pipping the Knights by 2% (51-49).
Goals Converted and Points Scored
Reuben Garrick was in fine form with the boot, converting four of the five tries as well as landing a penalty goal. He is now kicking at an impressive 88%.
Garrick sits in fifth position in the league in two categories: goals converted (14 goals) and points scored (36 points).
Most Run Metres
Garrick also managed to lead the match for metres made, running 154 metres from 20 runs at full-back.
Prop Josh Aloiai (152 metres from 19 runs) and the returning Brad Parker (138 metres off 14 runs) were also impressive.
Between them, all three ran for more metres than the Knights top performing metre-maker (135 metres). Four other Sea Eagles players ran for 100+ metres in the match.
Line Breaks and Tackle Breaks
Manly defeated the Knights in both categories, recording nearly double the tackle breaks (30 to 16) and two more line breaks than the home side (3 to 1).
Winger Christian Tuipulotu led the side for tackle breaks with six, followed closely by Garrick four, and Parker, Olakau’atu and Lawton (3).
Kicking
Daly Cherry-Evans kicking game was on song once again. The halfback kicked for 644 metres from 22 kicks and forced two drop-outs in the match.
‘DCE’ sits in first place for kick metres in the league with a whopping 2482 metres (over 350 metres ahead of second place).
He sits equal second place for 40/20s made and outright first for field-goals with two.
Defence
The Knights finished the match with 44 more tackles than the Sea Eagles. Manly finished with a better effective tackle percentage (91.19% compared to 90.51%) and also missed less tackles throughout, finishing 16 to 30.
For the second week in a row, hooker Lachlan Croker recorded the most tackles with 49 tackles ahead of Olakau’atu and Jake Trbojevic (33 and 34 tackles respectively).
Croker sits in equal third place with 212 tackles made after five rounds. Jake Trbojevic is close behind, with only seven tackles separating them (205 tackles.)
Attack
All Runs: Manly 174, Newcastle 165
All Run Metres: Manly 1493, Newcastle 1318
Post Contact Metres: Manly 672, Newcastle 575
Kick Return Metres: Manly 130, Newcastle 127
Negative Play
Errors: Manly 11, Newcastle 13
Penalties Conceded: Manly 8, Newcastle 7
Ruck Infringements: Manly 5, Newcastle 2
