Anthony Watmough knew Manly no longer felt like home when his own club turned on him and portrayed him as "Hitler".
While there were a range of reasons for his departure from the northern beaches, Watmough said the in-fighting and the beating his reputation took as a result made it impossible to continue at Manly, forcing him to sign with Parramatta.
"A lot of stuff was getting tossed around and there was a lot of negativity," Watmough said at his first day at the Eels.
"That was affecting me because I didn't want that out there. But as you could see with a fractured board, nothing was kept in-house. Anything you said, you couldn't sneeze without it getting put out there. When all the negativity started and I started to look like Hitler out there I knew it was time for me. I knew that too much happened during the year that was said and done so I knew that was time for me then."
His relationship with coach Geoff Toovey was being reported as rocky and his relationship with halfback Daly Cherry-Evans was apparently beyond repair. It was also said he was disgruntled with the club over the treatment of Glenn Stewart, but Watmough insists that wasn't the reason he left.
"There were a lot of things – people say it was Glenn Stewart, but it had nothing to do with Glenn Stewart," Watmough said.
"It's been a battle for probably three years and there's been battle after battle after battle. It just changed. The place changed. I've been there since I was 13. A part of me felt that I owned the club and that was probably why it was good for me to get out when I did because I'd been there for so long and seen the changes. When you've been there for so long to some degree you think you have a say in the club, but you don't. You realise that things change, people change for whatever reason and for me it was time to move on."
While Watmough is adamant he didn't believe he ran the club, he knows the important role he played in rebuilding the club, albeit admitting the Sea Eagles now needed to go in a different direction.
"We helped rebuild that club from the rabble it was," Watmough said.
"Back in those days we weren't sure if we were going to get paid month-to-month, but we helped rebuild it along with Dessie [Hasler] and all the other great players that have been there, we helped rebuild that culture and that club to where it is. No one can ever take that away from us. We're not saying we built that club by any means, we're just saying we helped rebuild what was already there ... I felt it was going in a different direction to the path we were on for so many years and it probably needed to go in a different direction and try something new because we were winning but it just wasn't the same."
While Watmough said he will remain friends with Toovey despite a rocky relationship, he described Eels coach Brad Arthur as the next big thing.
"Brad is the best coach I've ever played under at any level," Watmough said.
"When he was at Manly, I was surprised how he got the best out of people ... I joked with him and said 'if you ever get another gig somewhere, I'd love to play under you'."
