Manly relish support in Auckland - Sports News - Fanatics - the world's biggest events

Manly relish support in Auckland

04/04/2010 05:13:37 PM Comments (0)

Manly second rower Anthony Watmough believes his side's great NRL record in Auckland is down to the city being like a home away from home.

The Sea Eagles won 14-6 at Mt Smart Stadium on Sunday to record their seventh win in nine visits to the biggest city on the other side of the Tasman.

Watmough says the Sea Eagles have a huge following in Auckland, aided by the fact they come from a part of Sydney with a large Kiwi expatriate contingent.

"It's a good record over here," Watmough said.

"We've got a lot of good fans over here and it was pretty split between Manly fans and Warriors fans, I think a lot of those Warriors fans supported Manly before they came in (to the NRL).

"And there's thousands of New Zealanders in Manly, normally they turn up for the Warriors game, but it's a bit reversed over here which was good."

After a slow start to the season, the Sea Eagles have hit their straps with wins over Newcastle and the Warriors in the last two rounds.

"We're building slowly," said Watmough.

"The first two weeks we weren't too happy about, but two from two is something we can build on and we'll look forward to the Sharks next week.

"This game was fast and furious, there was a lot of big hits and a lot of errors from both teams, but all in all it was a good game of footy.

"We like to keep it tight and control the game, but they forced a lot of errors out of us and played really well."

As for Ben Farrar's sinbinning in the game for a professional foul on Bill Tupou, Watmough believed it was a tough call, but was proud of how his side kept the Warriors out when they were down to 12 men.

"I didn't like it at the time because we were a man down, but that's footy," he said.

They (the referees) thought it was obviously a professional foul and they got put into a position to act.

"That's out of our hands and it was unlucky for us.

"We defended our butts off when we were down to 12. One of the things we've talked about is having pride in our line.

"We didn't do that in the first two weeks but in the last two we've really looked after each other."

Brought to you by AAP AAP © 2024 AAP

0 Comments about this article

Post a comment about this article

Please sign in to leave a comment.
Becoming a member is free and easy, sign up here.

« All sports news