Daly Cherry-Evans has re-lived his Queensland Origin axing after the Manly Sea Eagles were humbled on the road by cellar-dwellers Gold Coast.
The Titans clinched only their fourth win of the season with the 28-8 win over the Sea Eagles, who are now stuck in a logjam of teams between 6th and 14th that are separated by only two points.
Despite the plateauing Manly season, post-match chat quickly turned to Cherry-Evans, his Origin omission and his links with the Sydney Roosters.
Cherry-Evans opened up on his Origin dismissal and admitted it was a hard pill to swallow initially before he switched focus to Manly's upcoming match.
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“The start of the week was tough, Sunday got the news, Monday had to go to training and face the boys,” Cherry-Evans said.
“After that it honestly started to feel normal. This is not the first time that I’ve been dropped from the Queensland side.
“So I guess I’ve had experience to take it on board and like I said pre-game, you can’t just worry about the things you can’t control, and the initial news was tough but yeah I moved on and thought we were going to come here tonight and play some really good footy.
“Based on our preparation, it looked like all the signs were there and unfortunately the most important part of the week is showing up on game day and we didn’t do that.”
Cherry-Evans has already committed to leaving Manly at the end of the season after 15 years on the Northern Beaches.
The Roosters and Dolphins are believed to be interested in his services but the Sydney club has reportedly grown cold on Cherry-Evans after his Origin snub.
Cherry-Evans himself played a straight bat at questions about his future but said he didn't 'understand' the chat around his future.
“No, I’m not, I don’t sort of understand that stuff,” Cherry-Evans said.
“Sort of stay out of it. All I can do is control my footy at Manly and speculation will be speculation but yeah, no, just obviously we’ve just lost a couple in the row so it’d be silly for me to be worrying about stuff like that.”