Toovey sacking should make Manly fans wary

Geoff Toovey. Photo / Getty Images

I feel sorry for Geoff Toovey, who is paying the price for being at a dysfunctional club.

It was announced last week Toovey will be replaced as Manly coach by Trent Barrett at the end of the season.

It's a disappointing decision and Toovey deserved more time to turn things around after what he has achieved since taking over in 2012 and given the fact the club are going through a rebuilding phase.

But the real motivation behind the decision seems to be the desire of the Penn family to establish a dictatorship at the Sea Eagles, after gaining control of the club last year.

People who had originally been strong Toovey advocates, such as Bob Fulton and Peter Peters, appear to have been turned against him and it was only a matter of time before Toovey was ousted.

The Penn family, led by patriarch Rick, will now take total control of the club with Toovey out of the way, and Manly fans should be wary of what this means.

Dictatorships can work, but only if they have the right intentions.

The Roosters have a dictator in Nick Politis, who has overseen every major decision since he was made chairman in 1993, but he does it not for business reasons but for the good of the club. He is a wealthy man doing it for love, not money.

In contrast, the Eels had a dictatorship under Denis Fitzgerald and it was a mess. There was a lot of dissent and power plays going on in the background and we all know how well Parramatta have done on the park in the past decade.

Fitzgerald was removed as chief executive in 2009, then the longest serving CEO in the competition's history, but he's now trying to stir things up in the background again.

The most stable clubs enjoy the most on-field success.

I worry about how the Sea Eagles will fare. They need to go through a rebuilding phase but they've replaced Toovey with a guy who has no first-grade experience. Toovey needed time to clear the decks.

The situation started to unravel with the departure of former club stalwart Glenn Stewart, who has joined the Rabbitohs. The club didn't offer him a contract, saying they couldn't afford to keep him and Anthony Watmough and then it transpired Watmough had signed with the Eels but not told anyone.

People have used that as a reason to get rid of Toovey, which is unfair.

Toovey now joins the big coaching merry-go-round, but it's crowded and moving slowly at the moment. Others on it include Nathan Brown, Mick Potter, John Cartwright and even Tim Sheens.

NRL vacancies don't come along that often but Toovey has a few things going for him. He's tough and uncompromising but can relate to modern players. He could be a good fit for Newcastle, who are looking for a new coach - and a better option than Wayne Bennett, who had moderate success in his three seasons at the Knights.