Angry Manly second-rower Anthony Watmough has issued star five-eighth Kieran Foran a clear ultimatum: Choose between your mates or coach Des Hasler.
Foran has a get-out clause in his contract allowing him to depart Brookvale for Canterbury should premiership-winning coach Des Hasler receive the bullet at Manly.
That appears a certainty after the Sea Eagles board issued Hasler with a breach notice for allegedly poaching key staff and enticing players to join him at the Bulldogs in 2013.
Coach-in-waiting Geoff Toovey will take helm upon Hasler's departure.
The straight-shooting Watmough challenged Foran to reject Hasler and Canterbury and stick solid with the players he won a competition with just six weeks ago.
"At the end of the day it comes down to (Foran) playing with his mates," Watmough told NRL.com from the Australian team hotel in Manchester overnight.
"It comes down to the blokes he wants to have a beer and a feed with - he wouldn't leave his mates for Dessie Hasler or anyone else."
"Dessie can point us in the right direction but it's the boys that have that bond."
"And they'd have to look at their mate in the eye and then say to them they're going to leave for a member of the coaching staff."
Watmough believes the writing was on the wall for Hasler the moment he signed with Canterbury.
He is not surprised the board has moved to oust the dual premiership-winning coach a year ahead of schedule.
Watmough said: "It's never really worked having a coach leading one club when he is going to another."
"The timing and everything about it, it is not all Dessie's fault, it should have been handled a lot better than it has."
"I can't bag Dessie out, he's a good bloke and a good mentor to myself, and a big help in my footy life."
"There's probably a thousand people you can blame."
But Watmough is confident the Sea Eagles can mount a serious title defence next year despite the current turmoil.
"The great man Dessie is, he didn't make our club everything it is," Watmough said.
"It was a great club before him and we'll still have that great culture that's been built up over the years when he's gone."