Manly Sea Eagles coach Des Hasler has apologised for his club's handling of the rollout of a one-off pride jersey.
In a press conference on Tuesday, Hasler made a prepared statement alongside club captain Daly Cherry-Evans.
“We are here today to apologise for a significant mistake made by the football club,” Hasler said.
“As you are aware the club, yesterday, launched a jersey for a round. We applied rainbow colours to the jersey to replace all of the white spaces [and] the white lines.
“The intent of the rainbow colour application of our jersey was to represent diversity and inclusion for all, utilising the symbolic colours of pride to embrace all groups who feel marginalised and faced discrimination and have a suppressed share of voice.
“The jersey's intent was to support the advocacy and human rights pertaining to gender, race culture, ability and LGBTQ rights.
“Sadly, the execution of what was intended to be an extremely important initiative was poor.
“There was little consultation or collaboration with key stakeholders - both inside and outside the club.
"Sadly, this poor management and project management has caused significant confusion, discomfort and pain for many people.
“In particular, those groups whose human rights we were, in fact, attempting to support.
"We have even adversely affected our player group, a wonderful group of people comprising of many different racial and cultural backgrounds.”
Monday's jersey launch has resulted in seven Manly players opting to sit out of this week's match against the Sydney Roosters, rather than wear the pride jersey.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, players cited cultural and religious grounds as their justification for not wanting to wear the jersey.
Hasler confirmed that all of those seven players will miss Thursday's match - a game likely to have finals implications.
The Manly coach also stated that the pride jersey will be worn despite some of the internal and external backlash.
"[Not wearing the jersey] was a discussion that we had with the NRL. But the fact is that we had that initiative [already]," he said.
"And as I said, the jerseys are about inclusiveness and diversity."
MORE: Why are some Manly players refusing to wear the pride jersey?
When asked if he has had any communication with his teammates since the jersey launch, club captain Cherry-Evans stated that he will be available if any issues arise.
"Because it's so recent, no one's raised any specific concerns," Cherry-Evans said.
"But there's a reason why everyone's here today. It's because it's big news and we have to make sure that we look after our teammates.
"It's going to be a period that they haven't experienced before as professional athletes."
