Straight from Monaghan himself. Monaghan vows to stay with Sea Eagles
August 5, 2005 - 6:19PM
Manly captain Michael Monaghan is adamant he will remain with the Sea Eagles for the next three seasons despite reports the NRL club attempted to offload him to South Sydney.
Despite recently signing a three-year contract with Manly, there was renewed speculation over his future after the Sea Eagles signed Melbourne No.7 Matt Orford and Souths claimed an approach had been made about buying out Monaghan's $240,000-a-year contract.
While he was loath to comment on Manly's negotiations with Souths, Monaghan confirmed he would see out his contract with the Brookvale club.
"Mate, I don't really want to comment on that stuff, the less said about it the better," Monaghan said.
"I've got a three-year contract with Manly so I don't even want to discuss what may or may not have happened.
"I'll definitely be here for three years, the contracts are all sorted and they've said they're keen to have me here and I'm keen to be here.
"I think far too much has been spoken about it to be honest."
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AdvertisementMonaghan refused to blame off-field distractions - including speculation over his future - for Manly's poor recent form.
"There has been a lot of stuff said about the club recently," Monaghan said.
"People say it coincides with where we sit on the table but at the end of the day we've had our eyes on the park and just haven't performed.
"All of that other stuff is fairly irrelevant when you get on the park and we just need to be responsible for our own form and accountable for what we are doing in games.
"We need to turn it around this weekend or we will find ourselves out of the eight."
Monaghan said a win on Sunday against Brisbane - who started Manly's slide with a 38-12 flogging at Suncorp Stadium - was crucial to re-build confidence and snap a five-match losing streak.
"It was at that stage when we were running second in the competition and people were starting to talk about us as being genuine (contenders)," Monaghan said of the round eight encounter against the Broncos.
"It's a much different situation this week compared to then and now we are really under pressure and need to turn things around.
"It's not the best team to do that against, but at the end of the day if you want to make it to the finals you have to play all these teams anyway.
"If we can come up with a win against the Broncos it will give us plenty of confidence going into the last four weeks and hopefully the semis.
"We've tried to pick up the intensity at training and just making sure we do everything at 100 per cent. It is an area we did fall away when we started this losing run.
"We are not playing our best footy and confidence is low as well.
"This week we are up against the team leading the comp and we need to go in confident, this is two points we really need to get."
So Souths, and any other team don't come after our Monas.
