Shows how little you know, the team was poorly received by both sides and during a NS meeting the idea of trying to steal the license was floated and approved so Manly cut the cancerous bears out
Crowds were an absolute joke and the team itself was awful, coached by Sharp and fielding such players as Craig Field and Jye Mullane
Furthermore we met the criterion so we didn't need to try to merge, we tried to save North Sydney as they fell and they attempted to bite our hands that fed them off
Actually Manly themselves were about to go into receivership if it wasn't for the their 11th hour rescue at the hands of Max Delmege and at look how Manly looked after him.
The Law firm I was working for at the time Freehills, Hollingdale and Page based in the MLC Centre, Martin Place were handling the merger and every so often I would have a sneak peek at what was happening.
Manly tried to save Norths only to save themselves, that is the bitter fact.
Norths in the 90's were a very successful team, they made the semi finals every season bar their final season 1999 and actually had very strong crowd support.
The Northern Eagles also had very healthy crowds at Bluetongue Stadium in 2000 until Manly took control of the merger in 2001.
The Northern Eagles could've been handled so much better and had so much potential, honestly I don't know who to blame, I've heard the North Sydney side and the Manly Warringah side, maybe the NRL should've taken over.
Look at the clubs involved in the then merger now, yes Manly have been successful in the NRL hell nobody is as consistant as they are in making recent NRL Grand Finals but they still have next to no money, their board is a complete mockery, they perform woefully in the NSW Cup, S.G.Ball and Harold Matthews competitions and their junior league is dying a slow death.
North Sydney is in even worse shape, they have to rely mostly on South Sydneys left overs for their NSW Cup squad and their junior representative sides are mainly made up of players rejected from other clubs, while their junior league has had to combine with Manlys due to both areas poor club numbers.
In saying that North Sydney do have more marketable colours red and black, look at the Western Sydney Wanderers who recently drew 17,000 against the Central Coast Mariners at Bluetongue Stadium.
Talking about Bluetongue Stadiums average attendance for league matches in 2013, league fans have backed off, I've been to every single game since 2008 but I didn't attend one NRL match in 2013. The NRL told Central Coast fans to vote with their feet back in 2009, they did there were sellouts of over 20,000 at Manly v Wests Tigers matches in 2010 and 2011 not to mention big crowds at other games involving South Sydney but still they have kept moving the posts on the CCBears again and again.
I just hope that they make a decision on the Central Coast soon, either let the CCBears in, let Manly or the Roosters take over "BUT" look after the area, share home games 50/50, provide an elite pathway into the NRL but none of this play one game and then take off rubbish.
