Their coach Des Hasler is renowned for giving little away to anyone and cautious Manly players were doing their best to follow his lead with the media before the team's training session at its Narrabeen headquarters on Tuesday.
On the back of their worst run of form for the season with four losses from their last five starts, the Sea Eagles are no longer certainties to qualify for the finals for what would be the sixth season in a row.
The 2008 premiers have dropped out of the top eight for the first time since Round 5 which has led to heavy criticism about their attitude and accusations the forward pack is too soft.
It was left to hooker Matt Ballin and co-captain Jamie Lyon to be grilled about just what has been going wrong of late.
Surely the tough criticism levelled at the team will act as strong motivation to turn things around against the struggling Sharks on Saturday night?
"Nah not really ... we hear (those criticisms) all the time as players, it's just what you have to deal with," Ballin, doing his best Hasler impersonation, said.
"Someone's always going to have an opinion but it's on field where our actions speak."
"If you let those outside distractions worry you, you can get carried away because there's so many things people say. I'm sure (the forwards) will come out and play well."
"We just have to pull together. We've all been playing well it's just a few lapses in our game, especially in defence."
"It's easy to play good when everything's going with you but when your team's down that's when everyone has to pull together and show strength as a team."
Lyon was equally as straight-laced, eager to point out the mood in the camp was high and they still had belief they could play a big part in the competition.
"Everyone's pretty confident we can turn it around and we know we're capable of doing that," Lyon said.
"We know we're a good team we've just got to put the hard work in now."
"We know we're up there with the best teams, we're just not showing that at the moment."
"We're not playing our best footy but we're confident we'll turn it around."
As for the coach, he wasn't interested in talking about another game that got away in Saturday night's two-point loss to the Raiders, but more interested in the weeks ahead which will decide his team's fate.
"There's a million cliches out there, we've had this game, we controlled that game but at the end of the day we haven't come up with the points," Hasler said.
"But we're at that stage now where it's coming down to the wire and we need to put a couple of wins together."
Knocking off the Sharks at Toyota Park on Saturday night would be the perfect start.