By his own admission Glenn Stewart see’s the writing on the wall. After trying to negotiate a new contract with the Manly Sea Eagles for months, Stewart finds himself no closer to re-signing for the club he has helped lead to premiership glory over the course of his career.
Simply put, the Sea Eagles don’t want to re-sign Glenn Stewart, they just don’t want to come out and say it.
The Manly club are well within their rights to decide against re-signing Glenn Stewart. The debate around his contract negotiations isn’t about forcing the club to re-sign him. It is more about having the common decency to tell one of your best players of the last decade the truth. Its about allowing Stewart himself to move on and put all of his effort into finding a new club rather than leaving him hanging onto the false hope that he can remain a one club player for his career.
Surely Glenn Stewart deserves that. He deserves the Manly Sea Eagles to be straight with him.
Stewart is still a very good player. The only knock on him is that injuries are starting to take their toll on his career. Clubs will pay a premium for players that are not injury prone, and unfortunately for Stewart, a player of his ability really hurts a club when he is in and out of the lineup so often.
Stewart has stated that he wants to stay at the club and that he has taken less money in the past to try and help keep a winning side together. So this in my opinion comes back to the question of loyalty.
Every time a player decides to leave his current club for a better offer elsewhere, people ask where is the loyalty in the game. In Glenn Stewart’s case, the club are showing no loyalty at all and not too many people are saying anything about it.
Loyalty is a two way street, however t is something that only lasts as long as both sides are happy. In this case the Sea Eagles are no longer happy with having Glenn Stewart eating up part of the clubs salary cap space.
I like to see players like Stewart play out their entire career at one club. Unfortunately that doesn’t look like it is going to happen in this case.
As supporters, we need to remember moments like this when clubs turn their back on players just as much as we remember the moments when players take better offers elsewhere.
