Des-olation row

In sport, success is the great soother. In the wake of a premiership victory, all differences are forgotten.

Usually.

Not so at Manly. It is less than six weeks since the Sea-Eagles snared the 2011 pennant and coach Des Hasler was showered with accolades. Now Hasler has been sacked and the club is in disarray. The rosy glow of victory has been replaced by the harsh glare of unwanted publicity. Manly appears to be a club riven with disunity.

On the day before Hasler was sacked, former club great Max Krilich provided this devastating character assessment: "Everybody knows Des. Des only worries about Des. He is a very mercenary person. He doesn't care about Manly; he only worries about himself."

The patriarch of Manly, Ken Arthurson, was more measured but no less damning, suggesting Hasler had gone back on a promise not to lure key club personnel to his new home, Canterbury-Bankstown: "He's broken his word. Because of that I am really, really disappointed. He's entitled to leave. To do what he has done is beyond the pale."

Hasler, a devout Catholic who presents himself as an adherent to old-fashioned values, will be deeply hurt by these public statements from men he has known for decades.

One irony is that he was criticised this year for staying loyal to certain players and staff members, albeit at the expense of his relationship to club management; he may argue that loyalty is in the eye of the beholder. He accommodated the brattish sulking of Brett Stewart all season – remember Hasler's weird quote that "His soul hasn't been cleansed because the game hasn't apologised to him"? – rather than pointing out that the initial sanctions for his drunken behaviour came from Manly, not the League, and telling his fullback to stop sooking.

He stayed firm in his public support of Anthony Watmough. He defended his players after their pack-dog attack on Adam Blair during the so-called Battle of Brookvale. At the very end of the season he stuck tight with media minder Peter 'Zorba' Peters when he was stood down by the club executive for his sneering sexism towards a female journalist. When the Grand Final winners took to the podium after the Grand Final, Zorba was among them – a very public slapdown to Manly management.

Of course, the key factor in this imbroglio is money. Manly's financial position is not robust. The club tried to be cute by seeding stories that coach Hasler would stay with the Sea-Eagles because of his love for the jumper he wore in 255 games. The Bulldogs swooped and offered him enough money to shift his allegiance to Belmore.

The kicker was that they also snaffled Manly recruitment guru Noel Cleal. Hasler and Cleal had a lot of input into player contracts while they were at Manly. Some of those contracts included get-out clauses should Hasler not be coach. Rightly or wrongly, many people are predicting an exodus of Manly players to the Bulldogs. Kieran Foran has denied that he is going, but that situation could still change.

The finger-pointing will go on for some time. Hasler will be the baddy in the eyes of some. Others will suggest the board took one of the club's favourite sons for granted and was foolish not to sign him to a new contract earlier in the season – or, at the very least, part amicably with him once it was clear he was Bulldogs-bound in 2013. There will be a lot of angst, a lot of agitation, and it will be increasingly hard to remember that this was the Sea-Eagles' year.

Crusher Cleal sums it up this way: "Did Des want to stay? Of course he did. But not signing Des is where this all started and f--k knows where it's going to end. You think, we won the grand final five weeks ago and it feels like five years. And that's the sad part."

The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of BigPond Sport.

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