Anthony Seibold was defiant amid growing pressure on his job from jeering fans after his side lost its third straight home game to start the season, while Daly Cherry-Evans was booed in his homecoming.

The Roosters fought back from 10-8 down at half-time to win 33-16, with Cherry-Evans getting bragging rights in his first return to Brookvale since leaving the club.

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The loss heaped more pressure on Seibold, who is one of a handful of coaches feeling the heat after a winless start to the 2026 season. Fans were heard chanting “Seibold Out” with about five minutes remaining at Brookvale.

However, Seibold is adamant he is the right man for the job and if the people in charge of those decisions don’t agree then they will tell him.

“I can’t control that decision, I mean, only Scott and the ownership group can control that, so there’s no point in wasting any energy or time on that,” Seibold said.

“I think I’ve invested a lot of time in the club over the last three or four years and made a lot of sacrifice with my time, but if I’m not the right person, I’m sure Scott will tell me.

“I still believe that we can do something together as a group, so I haven’t really put any thought into it.

“I’m three games into a two-year extension, so it hasn’t been a focus for me.”

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Anthony Seibold and Tom Trbojevic.Source: FOX SPORTS

Seibold was clearly frustrated to be asking questions on his future three games into a two-year extension, but was stoic in face of the speculation over his position.

“Well, it’s a great question for Gotcha For Life Round isn’t it?” Seibold said.

“I didn’t hear the fans, but what do you do? What do you want me to do? I turn up, work hard for the group.

“I feel like we’ve got a group there that can win games of footy and they fight hard. Look, if we didn’t have any fight in us, we would have got towelled up by 60 points with those stats.

“Not getting a penalty. I actually haven’t seen a team have 53 sets of footy in a game that I’ve coached in anyway.

“We can’t control that narrative, so no point in wasting my time on it mate.”

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DCE booed by home fans in Brookie return | 06:30

Manly skipper Tom Trbojevic admitted he was surprised Sea Eagles fans booed former skipper Cherry-Evans, but defended their right to do so.

“It’s obviously different but we’re just playing footy,” Trbojevic said.

“We’ve moved on as the club and he has as well, so it’s always going to be the narrative, but that didn’t really impact us at all.

“You understand it. He’s gone to a different club and you’re entitled to do what they want. I’m a little surprised, but if they want to boo him they can boo him.”

Despite the loss Seibold is confident his side is improving, especially when they didn’t get much territory or possession, particularly in the second half.

“Probably didn’t have too much more possession in the second half and we fought really hard, but we hardly had any field position and any possession,” Seibold said.

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“And we had to defend 53 sets of six, which is pretty remarkable. I thought we showed a lot more resolve.

“If we compare that to our game against the Knights it’s chalk and cheese, we showed a ton of effort, but ultimately the scoreboard is what we’ll be judged on. We lost, so everyone will make comment around that.”

However, to lead the Roosters at half-time showed Seibold his side has plenty of fight in them.

“I think we showed we led 10-8 at half-time against the team that many had predicted to be one of the two or three teams that are premiership favourites,” Seibold said.

“Leading 10-8 with only 40 per cent of the footy, fought hard. Second half, penalty try against us, sin bin against us, so there’s sort of 12 points there.

“As Tom said we weren’t great on last tackle tonight, but there’s so many positive things tonight.

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“One thing I know, you’ve got to keep cohesion in your group. It was good to see Simmy get on the field, which was great. He’s got a great future, but we’ve got to build up his minutes.”

Ethan Bullemor suffered an Achilles injury while warming up to go on and Seibold admitted it isn’t ideal, although ruled out the worst case scenario.

“He was warming up and he was about to go on and he hurt his Achilles,” Seibold said.

“So that sort of messed around a little bit with our interchange plan.

“It’s definitely not a rupture, but there’s a fair bit of pain there, so he wasn’t able to go on and play, so that doesn’t sound great.

“But there’s a ton of things that went against us. We kept in the fight. We didn’t get the result, so that’s what we were judged on.

“I thought we handled a lot of things pretty well, but ultimately they were too good for us.”