It started, as so many things start, with a bit of pick up.
Having spent the better part of a decade in the UK, Diana Worman and David O’Brien returned to Sydney’s so called “insular peninsula” in 2016 looking to fill their Wednesday nights with some social Frisbee. The local Manly league they found had no juniors, limited female participation, and an overall standard of Ultimate that was lagging behind the rest of New South Wales.
Today, Manly Ultimate Club has the best juniors pathway program in Australia. They have four competitive nationals teams and a thriving weekly league. It seems well within the realm of possibility that, soon, the lion’s share of athletes selected on aged-based representative teams will have started their playing careers, or at least honed their craft, on the Northern Beaches.
This 2023 Nationals season, Manly’s seven-year program is beginning to bear some big, athletic, frighteningly skilled fruit and, well, not to give anyone the heebie jeebies or anything, but this is really only the first wave of their new Empire.
The youth program
It was a real slog at first. Numbers were low and hard to come by. Manly did their best to promote the youth league through Facebook ads, word of mouth, and getting the zealots to drag their friends along. In the first couple of years, sometimes barely anyone would turn up.
Dave and Di—both real legends of the game, by the way, with a whole heap of Dingoes, Firetails, and Crocs experience (and medals)—actually started Manly League all the way back in 2002. Local teacher Kath Adlard helped funnel students towards the program and helped get the ball rolling in 2016, after having taught frisbee for years at a school in the area. In recognition of the passion, energy, and thousands of hours of volunteered time they put into the program, Dave and Kath were joint winners of the Rob Hancock award in 2018 (the testimonials on this page are worth a read). With the support of NSW Ultimate, they had coaches running programs in many of the local schools, and once a few players in the system made it onto Australian teams, they had enough star power and numbers to reach a critical mass.
For the last few years, they’ve had at least 50 registrants across primary and secondary age groups—though it was up around 80 pre-COVID. This is the seventh summer of Manly’s youth program. It’s a happening thing. And as it expands, the club has been able to pay the older and more experienced juniors to help out as coaches. Very slick.
Manly’s youth program is deliberately run just like any other sport. Organisers and coaches engage seriously with parents, and there are lined fields, frisbee giveaways, and end of year trophies. Since the youth stuff happens right before Manly League, the older kids are able to stick around and be a part of the broader community.
The result of all of this is:
In 2022, there were 29 Manly players across NSW’s U18s and U22 teams. 18 of those came through the juniors program.
There are ten Manly players on the Australian U20 squads, all of whom came through the juniors program.
There are nine Manly players in the current Australian U24s teams and another eight in the AOUGC squad. Half of these athletes came through the juniors program.
The program has been growing in size and complexity for seven consecutive years, and we’re starting to see their young players play big roles on Manly’s Division 1 teams. This is just the first of many waves. There are fifteen-year-olds currently enrolled in the youth program who have been throwing forehands for half a decade. There are ten-year-olds who already “get it.” With such a profound head start, can you imagine how good these kids are going to be by the time they reach their athletic peak?
Converting potential into results
Improving the standard of Manly League has been part of the plan from the very beginning. They now have four divisions—Div 2 and Div 3 in the first time slot, and then an elite Div 1 hat and beginner-friendly Div 4 in the second. Other leagues in Australia probably have a set up like this, but the thing that sets Manly apart is the high volume of young players flowing through the structure. There are around 200 registrants in Manly League and at least 50 of them have come through the youth program. On any given Wednesday, experienced players can find a balance between giving back to the club and pushing themselves forward, and the juniors or newcomers get to both stretch to their limits and consolidate their learning.
All of this is starting to pay dividends for their Nationals teams.
Women's Division
Manly’s top-tier women’s team, the Mavericks, are experiencing a generational shift. A slight changing of the guard and a huge injection of up-and-coming U24s talent from around Sydney have given Manly a new look for 2023.
In the wake of Ellipsis’ domestic dominance, women’s Ultimate in Sydney has gone through a few years of adjustment and regeneration. GWS, Manly, and Rogue are now pushing each other to improve and evolve each season, and will be presenting a formidable challenge to the rest of the country in Ballarat. As Ellipsis (theoretically) go through their own period of regeneration with their two-team split, there’s a sense that the women’s division is an exciting space to be in 2023.
But Holly Reeve insists that Manly won’t be defining their season’s success by a final placing. She told us that Manly’s women’s team is laser focused on medium-term development, skill acquisition, and nailing systems and structures for the years to come. The Mavericks are using this season to lay a strong foundation for future campaigns, with one eye on WUCC in 2026. More on that in a moment.
Open’s Division
Unlike the women’s team, Manly’s top-tier men’s team would not exist without its youth program. The Manly Mullets have been slowly building their current roster over seven years, and with a better league, stronger youth program, and plenty of representative experience, the 2023 team is very, very competitive. They’re athletic. They have a shockingly high skill base for a young side. Most of all, they have a level of noise and energy that can be really hard (and annoying) to have to try to beat—already this season they’ve won against Fyswick and I-Beam, and have given Sunder a serious scare.
They’re still building. Dave O’Brien made a deliberate effort not to go from 0 to 100 this year, increasing their team training from once to twice a week for the first time, and providing a strength and conditioning program without being super strict about it. A huge factor of their program's success is that Manly’s core group is full of friends—like minded, presumably beachy young men who like playing the sport and spending time together. This season is about nudging the club into a more elite Ultimate mindset and training regime.
Between the two Sunders, I-Beam, Fyshwick, Krank, and Manly, there are only five AUC Nationals spots up for grabs through the Eastern region. Nationals qualification is going to be a tight race, and there’s no guarantees when it comes to the enigmatic decision making processes behind the Wildcard Spot.
Nothing would be sweeter for this Manly side than qualifying for Division 1 this coming weekend, and they have every chance to do it.
Follow IOU on Facebook or Instagram and subscribe to this blog to make sure you don’t miss our Regionals Round Up of both divisions in the coming weeks.
The future of the future
Although it’s a lot to ask of our already stretched-thin volunteers and burnout top players and coaches, if we’re serious about Australian Ultimate being competitive with the U.S. in the next decade, more programs like Manly’s will be the key. The decisions we make right now, and the youth programs we begin building today, will drive the success of our nationals teams in 2030.
When the Mullets scored their second consecutive break against Sunder Slice at the Curl Curl Classic, Manly players were all around the ground, watching and yelling and heckling their friends. Their all-in club training on a Thursday night sees four full teams train side by side and socialise after. There are regular inter-team pods and there’s a real, loud sense of community, the likes of which we don’t often see in NSW Ultimate, or Australian Ultimate for that matter. Probably only Heads of State can compare to the size and vibe and energy that Manly are brewing on the Beaches, but no club has ever had this level of focus on youth development. Their community will continue to grow. Their Nationals success will come.
There are now Manly players in all NSW universities, pulling more and more players from further and further away into the club. The Insular Peninsula is becoming a kind of catchment zone for huge swathes of Sydney, essentially from the harbour to Hornsby, all the way to the Central Coast. For the Mullets in particular, players who didn't make Sunder are seeing Manly, quite rightly, as the next best option for their development and nationals chances, and protecting this player pipeline from big, successful clubs is a growing concern.
From the very start of the youth program, Dave O'Brien and the Manly leadership have been hyperconscious that their player base, particularly its top-end, is their key to long-term success. Retaining young players presents an existential threat. The club ideally, in the long-term, wants to be able to provide a pathway from juniors to open-age Australian teams, and Nationals success in 2023 would go a long way to making Manly an ongoing good option for their best young players. We’ll be keeping a close eye on their journey this year.
And not just this year, but for the years to come, because Manly’s leaders have started to talk about WUCC 2026. They’d like to send teams in all three divisions, and this is not such a crazy idea. If you’ve looked at their trajectory over the last five years, or if you’ve seen them train in a big group on a Thursday night, or if you’ve seen the loud, energetic, inter-team community they’ve created, or if you think about the wave after wave of strong junior players they have coming through on the Beaches, there is no limit to how big and mighty the Manly Empire might become in three years time, let alone in ten.