Manly Sea Eagles coach Anthony Seibold remains confident in his side's ability to turn around a rough start to their 2026 campaign.

After a strong display against the reigning minor premiers in the Canberra Raiders last week, narrowly missing out in extra time, the Sea Eagles dished out a poor performance in front of a boisterous Brookvale crowd on Sunday afternoon.

It should have been a game they were up for; however, they failed to make a mark on a Newcastle Knights outfit that was without Kalyn Ponga and Dylan Brown for most of the match.

The Sea Eagles looked disinterested in attack and defensively inept as Newcastle made easy work of them, with millions of dollars of their salary cap sidelined.

Despite this, Siebold has remained confident in being able to turn it all around in the long-term aspirations of the Sea Eagles' season.

“One thing we won't do is panic or change our schedule. We're very well prepared and well planned. I've been 0-2 before and been the top-four side as a coach,” Seibold said in his post-match press conference.

“Look, the really good teams in the competition win at 60%, the good teams win at 50%, and so there's another 22 games to go.

“We need to show far more improvement than what we showed today but I've got a lot of faith in the group.

“That hasn't changed, but we were well-beaten, so you've got to know that and work out why, but we'll do that tomorrow.

“Then we'll give the players the RLPA days off for three days, and then we'll come back in and get to work.”

Despite the positive outlook to a disjointed start, he has admitted the side was outclassed across the paddock.

The Sea Eagles outfit will no doubt need to use next week's bye to reassess how the side improves moving forward.

“There's not a lot of small wins today, I've got to say. We were well beaten, and we were well below par."

“We were well beaten, well below par, so we're disappointed with that because I thought we were really good for periods last week.

“We didn't handle some of the areas we made today and just couldn't show enough resolve. We had a fair bit of footy inside our 20, but we couldn't get it into field position.

“Two times we did in the first half, we actually scored. I thought I was reasonably confident at half-time. I thought we could chase that down, and we started really well there.

With patches of momentum in their favour, Manly's second half was littered with unforced errors and lapses in defensive concentration, allowing the Knights to run away with the victory.

The Sea Eagles will need to go back to the drawing board to review their tactical decisions within games, with Luke Brooks (13) having more runs than Haumole Olakau'atu (seven) and Taniela Paseka (nine).

The Northern Beaches-based club were given a comfortable draw to start their season, with not having to leave Brookvale in the first four weeks of the competition.

They face an uphill challenge when they host the Sydney Roosters in their next contest in Round 4, where they may potentially be winless after a month of the competition. 

It will be the first time long-term star, Daly Cherry-Evans, will call Brookvale enemy territory when he runs out in Roosters colours on March 26.