Manly players believe the quality of football they showed during last Friday's second-half demolition of Brisbane needs to be the benchmark for the remainder of their NRL season.

The Sea Eagles emerged as a genuine challenger to stop St George Illawarra's bid to win back-to-back premierships after a slick, attacking display where they piled on 30 unanswered second-half points.

Co-captain Jamie Lyon, who broke his try-scoring drought against the Broncos, believes that standard is what the Sea Eagles must strive towards for the rest of 2011.

"It's the standard we want as well," Lyon said on Tuesday.

"We haven't been at our best lately with our second halves so it's good to get a solid 40 in there at the end of the game."

Manly coach Des Hasler said the second-half display was as well as the Sea Eagles had played all season, but suggested there's still plenty to work on.

"It's probably close to as good an 80 minutes we've played this year," Hasler said.

"We're only halfway through the season, we're still working on areas but certainly, to be able to score some points was good for them.

"It will just give them confidence going forward (but) let's not get carried away, both sides had players missing."

Five-eighth Kieran Foran said it was a positive result, but admitted Manly were still yet to put together a complete performance in 2011.

"We'd love to play every game like that ... in saying that we haven't played a good full 80 minutes yet this season," Foran said.

"We've been good in patches and bad in others, so that second 40 was probably where we want to set the standard from now on."

One particularly pleasing aspect of the Sea Eagles' promising rise up the ladder has been the improving partnership between young halves Daly Cherry-Evans and Foran.

And New Zealand international Foran reckons the pair are only going to get better as the season progresses.

"There's plenty of room for improvement there ... We're getting to know each other's games better and better," he said.

"Dessie wasn't afraid to hand us the reins and let us run the show out there and I think it's probably put confidence in both of us and that's all we're trying to do at the moment."

Meanwhile, Manly will need to overcome the Bulldogs this weekend without injured prop Brent Kite who will miss the match with a rib injury.

Fellow props Jason King (ankle) and George Rose (calf) are both in doubt and will need to pass fitness tests this week to take their places at ANZ Stadium.

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