DCE confirms career call for 2026

[Barron's Dream]

DCE is average and old.

[MKCS]

Scoring more points isn't the issue though, it's very evident that we have enough points in us to win games. It's an organising halfback who can get us into more adventurous field position that we need.

DCE offers that along with a nice try assist tally and good defence, great for us.

In the last 10 seasons, with DCE running the team, Manly have made the top 4 once.

Did you know in the last 10 years Jonathan Thurston was at the Cowboys the team only made the top 4 twice, does he suck as well? DCE has played for a smaller less attractive team where the only other star player has had a horror run with injuries, of course they've struggled to finish top 4.

Of course you conveniently ignore that DCE was the starting halfback in seasons 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 which were all seasons where Manly had a stronger team and finished top 4 each year, just a coincidence though I'm sure.

[Inflictor]

DCE offers that along with a nice try assist tally and good defence, great for us.




Did you know in the last 10 years Jonathan Thurston was at the Cowboys the team only made the top 4 twice, does he suck as well? DCE has played for a smaller less attractive team where the only other star player has had a horror run with injuries, of course they've struggled to finish top 4.

Of course you conveniently ignore that DCE was the starting halfback in seasons 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 which were all seasons where Manly had a stronger team and finished top 4 each year, just a coincidence though I'm sure.

If DCE was the age he was in 2014 today I would take him for one year in a heartbeat.

Thurston was smart enough to call time at 35.

And "Thurston" and "smart" in the same sentence said nobody ever.

[The Lip]

The thing about stats is that it doesn't show where you fcuk up.
Bad decisions passing, tackling, you should have gone left instead of right, you took the line on yourself instead of seeing an overlap. All the brain farts that cost you wins against the last placed team.
It happens to all of us as we get older.
In the end it's getting your team home is all that matters.
Let's hope it's not too late.

FFS

EDIT: I'm sure Hugo would have closed out that game just with his kicking game.

Mate to be fair and I’ll put it on record I think Hugo is a big part of our future - love his kicking game like you - but how many games this year have we led into the final 20 and failed to close it out. Maybe all our losses bar 1 so that’s six games failed to close out. I know Hugo didn’t ply all of those. I dont expect Hugo 6 games into his career to be the closer btw. I am also now against DCE signing he’s been poor this year and only older next on the wrong side of the peak.

[Inflictor]

Mate to be fair and I’ll put it on record I think Hugo is a big part of our future - love his kicking game like you - but how many games this year have we led into the final 20 and failed to close it out. Maybe all our losses bar 1 so that’s six games failed to close out. I know Hugo didn’t ply all of those. I dont expect Hugo 6 games into his career to be the closer btw. I am also now against DCE signing he’s been poor this year and only older next on the wrong side of the peak.

I think it is a bit misleading mate. The losses we had with Hugo at halfback were against Penrith, Dogs and Raiders. The big loss we had was to Penrith. There was no excuse for anyone that game.

The other losses were against the Top 2 teams and I think everyone agrees that we lost those games through too many dropped balls. Do you honestly blame Hugo for not being able to close down those games? Personally I can't blame him for the 15 dropped balls against the Dogs and 16 against the Raiders. Very hard to close down those types of games with those team errors. Even Cronk would have struggled. Considering we lost by 4 and 2 points with that many errors I feel our halves did an amazing job to keep us in the games.

[The Lip]

I think it is a bit misleading mate. The losses we had with Hugo at halfback were against Penrith, Dogs and Raiders. The big loss we had was to Penrith. There was no excuse for anyone that game.

The other losses were against the Top 2 teams and I think everyone agrees that we lost those games through too many dropped balls. Do you honestly blame Hugo for not being able to close down those games? Personally I can't blame him for the 15 dropped balls against the Dogs and 16 against the Raiders. Very hard to close down those types of games with those team errors. Even Cronk would have struggled. Considering we lost by 4 and 2 points with that many errors I feel our halves did an amazing job to keep us in the games.

No not in the slightest do I blame Hugo.

[The Lip]

If DCE was the age he was in 2014 today I would take him for one year in a heartbeat.

Thurston was smart enough to call time at 35.

And "Thurston" and "smart" in the same sentence said nobody ever.

Thurston and smart enough in the same sentence - I’m surprised auto correct let that slip through.

[bondi.boy]

JT was a smart footballer.
Brilliant goal kicker/field goal kicker.
*
DCE kicked out on the full last night...but overall played well. His passes could be a bit hard for our dropsy players to catch though.
Honestly, our players need to be better trained in passing and catching, and in how to move the ball from one side of the field to the other without dropping it.

Our players run out of steam in the second half of matches because all they do in the first half is tackle, thanks to referees blowing truckloads of set restarts against them, and their own bad passes, forward passes, and bad handling in tackles, play the balls, and bombs.

Oh, and because our wingers leave their wings in defence and let tries in down the sidelines, we get run over late in games by fast opposition.
The team that lost last night did so because their right winger had left his wing and fast opposition raced down the blank space to score.

Y'all say wingers must leave their wings in defence and jam the centres or something.
I say that's madness and only loses games.

[roostermcgregor]

Hold on a minute, this was you just a few pages back saying you only care about the try assists:



Now because DCE is doing quite well with try assists over his last 2 games you're walking it back? I thought the only stat you cared about was try assists but now they don't matter? If you watched the game (Something you claim you do before you make opinions) you would've seen that DCE put Olakau'atu into the hole, yes he did a great job to beat the three players but surely some credit is due for putting him in that position in the first place, if it was Hugo or Sandon you'd be saying they're ready for an Origin debut.

As for your silly comment, I never said DCE is having a better year than Tedesco I said that DCE has 1 more try assist than him which is factually true. Remember, you're the one that blatantly said above that try assists are the only things that matter to you so you should be very excited about DCE coming in 2026.

Here's a fun stat for you

DCE Try Assists 2025 Season: 10

Chad Townsend, Hugo Savala and Sandon Smith Try Assists 2025 (Combined): 9

I never ever stated that I was a fan of the statistic for “try assists”
You have completely misquoted me here.
I said DCE has created no tries at the last two SOO outings.
Creating tries is digging into the line and becoming a running threat to the defenders, drawing in your opponents and passing to support players who are in a hole.
Sort of what Hugo did to put Teddy over, in the Raiders game.
Or creating tries might mean throwing a cutout ball, which confuses the defence and allows your support player a free run to the line.

90% of DCE ‘s try assists come from grubber kicks , bombs, or cross field kicks to his wingers, so no , I never take his “try assists “ statistics seriously.

If you do , that’s your prerogative.

But I’ll stick to my prerogative to say that paying a million dollars for a player with little athletic ability, huge defensive issues, little creative skills, and can only muster up the kicking of a ball when he has a rare “on day”, is completely ridiculous.

[Inflictor]

Speaking of try assists. I have been following Luai pretty closely this year. Personally I think DCE is worth $1M more than Cleary's old handbag. So there you go MK. If I was a Tigers supporter I'd welcome DCE with open arms.

Pretty sure it was against the Knights. A bomb went up, the Knights fullback dropped it. Luai picked it up and passed it and the player strolled over for the try and it was Luai's try assist. One of his grand total of four for the year. Not one line break assist so the other three must have come off bombs or grubbers. Goes to show what try assists really mean. But hey someone has to make the rules for Supercoach.

FFS

[King Salvo]

A try assist is the final pass or action i.e kick ( grubber/bomb) by a player that directly leads to a try by a team mate.

[Inflictor]

A try assist is the final pass or action i.e kick ( grubber/bomb) by a player that directly leads to a try by a team mate.

That's the point King. if a player beats 4 players and runs 80M then passes it and that players passes it on for a try the player who did all the work is not credited with setting up the try. Just a skewed stat.

In last week's game that Toups try assist should have gone to Klein for telling him to put the fkn ball down twice.

FFS

[King Salvo]

That's the point King. if a player beats 4 players and runs 80M then passes it and that players passes it on for a try the player who did all the work is not credited with setting up the try. Just a skewed stat.

In last week's game that Toups try assist should have gone to Klein for telling him to put the fkn ball down twice.

FFS

No different to the interpretation of a line break assist - An action by attacking player that has led to or created the chance of a Line Break for his team mate

Here's a another scenarios

A team mate/team mates run decoy runner/block plays that "legally" take out defenders enabling the ball runner to break the oppositions defensive line after receiving a pass from another team mate.

The decoy runner (s)/block play player(s) are not credited with the line break assist even though their actions contributed to the line break (i.e taking out defenders) - the player that passed the final pass is only credited with the line break assist.

They never will but those decoy runners and block plays should be ruled for what they are obstruction.

The ball carrier often passes the ball behind these decoys /blockers to get the ball to another team mate and then you have the rubbish inside/outside shoulder nonsense and defender error/ run through the line /stay in line /minimal contact and flops by defenders.

Penalise players passing the ball behind defenders in those scenarios is the solution.

Coaches whinged to Harrigan the Director or Referees at the time that it was too hard to score tries so he allowed it.

A bad decision as Coaches should be more creative in finding ways of beating the defensive line.

[MKCS]

I never ever stated that I was a fan of the statistic for “try assists”
You have completely misquoted me here.
I said DCE has created no tries at the last two SOO outings.
Creating tries is digging into the line and becoming a running threat to the defenders, drawing in your opponents and passing to support players who are in a hole.
Sort of what Hugo did to put Teddy over, in the Raiders game.
Or creating tries might mean throwing a cutout ball, which confuses the defence and allows your support player a free run to the line.

90% of DCE ‘s try assists come from grubber kicks , bombs, or cross field kicks to his wingers, so no , I never take his “try assists “ statistics seriously.

If you do , that’s your prerogative.

But I’ll stick to my prerogative to say that paying a million dollars for a player with little athletic ability, huge defensive issues, little creative skills, and can only muster up the kicking of a ball when he has a rare “on day”, is completely ridiculous.

Ah, the goalposts move again. So now a try assist determined by the governing body of the game isn't enough it instead has to be a try assist in which DCE digs into the line and becomes a running threat to defenders, draw in an opponent and pass to support players who are in a hole.

Mate, it might be easier just to say that you're biased and don't want him here for your own personal reasons. The goalpost moving is absolutely embarrassing in this post.

[Rooster_6]

It doesn't help when we drop 16 balls, none of our forwards run 100M because most are making between 45-60 tackles and are rooted and only we have 10 plays in the red zone in 80 minutes.
But hopefully Sammy will help with what you are saying.

You are right though. Like last year we don't have issues scoring tries from anywhere on the field.

No side is overcoming a ton of fundamental errors like no pressure drops in yardage.

But a good organising half can also help stem the flow or errors. I think some of the main errors we can reduce in attack is how up tempo we constantly play and how we try to spread after periods of long defence or before we've won the ruck.

There was a play in the first half last week where we'd been doing some heavy defence for 5 minutes, just got through our 5 plays and we had a play the ball centre-filed around 45m out from our own line and instead of just kicking long and waiting a set or two to recover Savala tried to run a play where he feigned to kick and instead threw and inside ball to Teddy which he dropped.