REPRESENTATIVE bonuses are about to increase the difficulty of keeping Manly's premiership-winning team together.
There are calls for up to nine Sea Eagles players to be included in the Australian World Cup squad to be named today - including unheralded wingers Michael Robertson and David Williams.
With the NRL and Super League grand finals played last weekend, the 10 nations competing in the World Cup are due to finalise their squads this week, and Manly are expecting to have a big contingent of players involved.
But incentive clauses in the contracts of players such as lock Glenn Stewart, which mean they receive extra payments for playing Test or Origin football, are set to reduce Manly's available money under the salary cap by up to $100,000.
After being largely snubbed from representative teams this season - with fullback Brett Stewart the club's sole representative in Origin and only prop Brent Kite in May's Centenary Test against New Zealand - the Sea Eagles are expected to dominate the 24-man Kangaroos squad.
Among those considered certain to be selected are Kite, Stewart, his brother Glenn and fellow back-rower Anthony Watmough, while halfback and captain Matt Orford, prop Josh Perry and five-eighth Jamie Lyon will also come into consideration, along with Williams and Robertson.
"That's what usually happens [the premiers dominate the national squad] and I think we've had guys on the fringe of the Australian team for a while now so it would be great to see a handful of the guys in there," Kite said yesterday. "I thought, not just on last night's performance, Anthony Watmough was just outstanding. Josh Perry, he's got to be, he's the form front-rower. Jamie Lyon and Matt Orford, maybe. [And] Glenn Stewart. I'd like to think there might be a smoky in the outside-backs."
Asked about the prospect of Williams being a shock selection in the squad, Kite - the Clive Churchill Medal winner as man of the match in the grand final - said: "Yeah, and Michael Robertson, too. I thought he was unlucky not to get this [the medal]."
Should he fail to make the Kangaroos squad, Robertson will play for Scotland after World Cup officials last week confirmed his eligibility on heritage grounds along with Warriors hooker Ian Henderson, Canberra prop Scott Logan and Bulldogs front-rower Chris Armit.
"These guys have been ignored all year but I think they've shown that there's some class players among that group so I wouldn't be surprised to see a vast majority of them playing for one country or the other," Manly chief executive Grant Mayer said.
But with players set to reap bonuses of up to $20,000 each for playing in the World Cup, Mayer said it was inevitable that the increased salary-cap pressure would lead to the Sea Eagles losing players.
"The difficult thing to swallow now is that Australian representation is going to force more bonuses and put more pressure on the salary cap," he said. "[But] you can't complain about it because that's the way the system works. There's always a smoky in a Test-match team. If there's a few smokies in there that'll create a few more issues there, but it's a high-class problem. You can't begrudge anybody getting picked."
Manly centre Steve Matai is a certain selection for New Zealand if he gets the all-clear to delay surgery on his troublesome shoulder until after the tournament. He will be included in the Kiwis squad named today but can't confirm his availability until he visits a physiotherapist. He has played most games this year in severe pain because of floating bone fragments.
Most of the other nations are waiting for the Australian and New Zealand squads to be named before finalising their line-ups, with Matai (Samoa), Robertson (Scotland), Storm prop Brett White (Ireland) and Penrith centre Michael Jennings (Tonga) among a group of players under serious consideration for more than one country. Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Ireland and Scotland will all announce their squads tomorrow.
Possible Australia squad: P Civoniceva, R Farah, I Folau, P Gallen, K Gidley, K Hunt, J Hodges, G Inglis, D Johnson, B Kite, A Laffranchi, D Lockyer (c), L O'Donnell, J Perry, S Price, S Prince, C Smith, B Slater, B Stewart, G Stewart, B Tate, J Thurston, A Tupou, A Watmough.
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