Manly will be sweating on the extent of another hamstring injury to star fullback Tom Trbojevic after a 38-6 thrashing of woeful North Queensland.<\/p>\n
The Sea Eagles captain went down clutching his left hamstring in the 13th minute of the Thursday night clash with the Cowboys in Townsville.<\/p>\n
His history of similar injuries is long and the devastation on his face was palpable.<\/p>\n
Former North Queensland star Brent Tate, on the sideline in commentary for Fox League, said it was “really disappointing to see”.<\/p>\n
Tom Trbojevic of the Sea Eagles comes from the field with an apparent hamstring injury.\u00a0Ian Hitchcock\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Respected physiotherapist Brien Seeney, known on social media as “NRL Physio”, said on X that it was Trbojevic’s eighth hamstring injury in the past eight seasons, with four on each leg.<\/p>\n
Manly’s win was the third in a row for interim coach Kieran Foran, who continued his unbeaten run since taking over from sacked former head mentor Anthony Seibold.<\/p>\n
Foran became the first coach to take over mid-season and win their opening three games since Brad Fittler when he took over at the Roosters in 2007.<\/p>\n
Manly are now in fourth position and Foran gets his first match as coach at home against struggling Parramatta next week.<\/p>\n
The Cowboys, who had won their previous four matches, made numerous errors and were a shadow of the side that had such a stellar previous month.<\/p>\n
The Sea Eagles, great starters this season, opened the scoring through a try to winger Lehi Hopoate after slick work from five-eighth Luke Brooks.<\/p>\n
Trbojevic exited the arena and Hopoate had his second in the 17th minute.<\/p>\n
The Cowboys hit back through prop Coen Hess, but Manly half Jamal Fogarty then kicked for Ben Trbojevic to chase through and score.<\/p>\n
Cowboys fullback Scott Drinkwater, in his 150th NRL match, spilled a kick. Hopoate swooped and could have scored himself but handed it off to hooker Brandon Wakeham for a 22-6 lead on the cusp of halftime.<\/p>\n
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Manly got some good injury news just before the break, with lock Jake Trbojevic passing a category-two HIA.<\/p>\n
The Sea Eagles moved Tolutau Koula to fullback when Tom Trbojevic went off and brought Clayton Faulalo on at centre.<\/p>\n
In the second half Koula, who did a great job in his new position, made a fantastic try-saving tackle on winger Brandon Burns, who for some reason was lethargic when he appeared certain to score.<\/p>\n
Minutes later prop Taniela Paseka stormed over to seal the win.<\/p>\n
Brooks was outstanding and was rewarded with a late try when he followed half Jamal Fogarty, who strolled through feeble Cowboys defence.<\/p>\n
On-fire Manly prop Kobe Hetherington stood up in the absence of his skipper in a carve-up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manly will be sweating on the extent of another hamstring injury to star fullback Tom Trbojevic after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-610750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}