Manly coach Geoff Toovey remains hopeful Daly Cherry-Evans will stay at the NRL club despite the offer of a new contract being withdrawn by chief executive Joe Kelly on Wednesday night.

Kelly took the deal off the table after Cherry-Evans and his management failed to give the Sea Eagles an answer on what their plans for the future were by the Monday’s midday deadline he had set them, but Toovey believes talks can be resurrected.

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“As far as I am aware it is still bubbling away, it’s been taken away so that we can focus on football,” Toovey said.

“I am not involved in detailed negotiations, my job is to focus on the football.”

“The last thing we want is for Chez (Cherry-Evans) to leave we want him to be here in the future. His best football has been played here and I think there is better football to come.”

Five-eighth Kieran Foran is also off-contract but a deadline hasn’t been set for him to sign and Toovey admitted he didn’t know the club had issued a specific timeframe for Cherry-Evans to re-sign.

However, he said he can understand why Kelly made his decision to withdraw the offer as the focus of the playing squad had to stay on Friday’s round one opener against Parramatta.

“Each negotiation is different, so you’ll have to ask management what went on there,” he said.

“There’s always concerns about lots of things when it comes to players and their management.

“But if the players are happy, which they are, and we’re winning football games that’s all we can do.

“We’d like to bring things to a head. We have two quality players and we want to keep them for our long-term future and it’s really important that we do that.”

– AAP