Manly captain Daly Cherry-Evans insists 11 days spent in Sin City can give his team an edge for their NRL first-round clash with South Sydney in Las Vegas.
The season-opening double-header at Allegiant Stadium on Saturday (Sunday AEDT) loom as the most-hyped regular season games in years, with players comparing the build up to grand final week.
More than 40,000 tickets have been sold for the event, with the NRL hopeful up to 50,000 could attend if locals pile in late.
The Sea Eagles have taken the most direct route to the match.
They flew straight into Las Vegas on Wednesday last week and have trained solely in the city, making use of a secondary field and using the UFC headquarters for gym work.
In comparison, the Sydney Roosters and Brisbane prepared in Los Angeles and flew in on Wednesday and Thursday this week respectively, while Manly’s opponents Souths were in San Diego until Wednesday.
Despite fears from other clubs of a long stint in Vegas becoming both distracting and stale, Cherry-Evans believes it will play in his team’s favour.
“I feel like with our preparation being so long, we’ll adjust nicely and be ready to play on Saturday,” Cherry-Evans said.
“That was the strategy, to coming here and not be overawed by all of this stuff going on.
“We’ve been here for a little while, we’ve seen the bright lights. We’re really focused on the game.”
Manly coach Anthony Seibold is also hopeful the move had helped his team get used to conditions, with the bright lights of Vegas now a normality rather than a distraction.
“We’ve acclimatised really well from a jet-lag performance perspective,” Seibold said.
“So there’s no excuses for us not to go and execute our plan. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Seibold had previously been critical of the Rabbitohs decision not to prepare with them in Vegas, accusing Souths of not promoting the game in the city.
He and Rabbitohs coach Jason Demetriou do have history, dating back to 2019 when the pair publicly clashed over the former’s finals record.
Demetriou on Friday opted against firing any sledge at Manly, adamant he only had respect for the club.
But he said it was too soon to know whether training in Las Vegas or 500 kilometres away in San Diego was the better option.
“It’s really hard to say because we’re all flying blind at the moment,” Demetriou said.
“We’re just doing what we think’s best.
“When we get through the game and how we perform, then see how we transition into round two (we’ll know more).
“We’ll look at things we got right, and there’s some things we probably need to look at as well. It’s hard to say until we get into the season a bit more.”
