Manly Warringah Sea Eagles

The Manly–Warringah Sea Eagles are an Australian professional rugby league club based on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. They compete in the National Rugby League's (NRL's) Telstra Premiership, the premier rugby league competition of Australia. The club first appeared in the 1947 New South Wales Rugby Football League season and currently plays home matches out of its ground Brookvale Oval whilst being based at the New South Wales Academy of Sport in Narrabeen.

Manly-Warringah competed in the NSWRL, ARL and NRL every season until 1999. At the end of 1999, the club entered into a joint venture with the North Sydney Bears to form the Northern Eagles, which Rugby League statisticians regard as a different club. The Northern Eagles competed in 2000 and 2001, before the joint venture collapsed, allowing Manly-Warringah to return to the NRL as a stand-alone club in 2002. They abandoned the Northern Eagles brand at the start of the 2003 season.

Since winning their first premiership in 1972, the club has won a total of eight First Grade titles, with their most recent premiership being the 2011 Grand Final. The club's eight titles span five consecutive decades. Since their first Grand Final appearance in 1951, the club has appeared in 18 Grand Finals in seven consecutive decades. The club has never won the wooden spoon in its 63 seasons, the longest period of any current club.

Eagle

Eagle is a common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae; it belongs to several groups of genera that are not necessarily closely related to each other.

Most of the 60 species of eagles are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just 14 species can be found – two in North America, nine in Central and South America, and three in Australia.

Description

Eagles are large, powerfully built birds of prey, with a heavy head and beak. Even the smallest eagles, like the booted eagle (Aquila pennata) (which is comparable in size to a common buzzard (Buteo buteo) or red-tailed hawk (B. jamaicensis)), have relatively longer and more evenly broad wings, and more direct, faster flight – despite the reduced size of aerodynamic feathers. Most eagles are larger than any other raptors apart from some vultures. The smallest species of eagle is the South Nicobar serpent eagle (Spilornis klossi), at 450 g (0.99 lb) and 40 cm (16 in). The largest species are discussed below. Like all birds of prey, eagles have very large hooked beaks for tearing flesh from their prey, strong muscular legs, and powerful talons. The beak is typically heavier than that of most other birds of prey. Eagles' eyes are extremely powerful, having up to 3.6 times human acuity for the martial eagle, which enables them to spot potential prey from a very long distance. This keen eyesight is primarily attributed to their extremely large pupils which ensure minimal diffraction (scattering) of the incoming light. The female of all known species of eagles is larger than the male.