During the 1988 season, Manly played the Great Britain Lions under lights at Brookvale Oval as part of the 1988 Great Britain Lions tour. Missing six regular first grade players (Vautin, Shearer, O'Connor, Daley, Ronson and Cochrane), the makeshift Sea Eagles put the Mal Reilly coached Lions to the sword with a 30–0 win in front of 21,131 fans, the largest non-test attendance of the Lions tour. Teenage halfback Geoff Toovey, playing only his third game of top grade football, scored one of Manly's 5 tries for the game and was awarded the Man of the Match. Among the beaten Lions that night were test players the caliber of Martin Offiah, Karl Fairbank, Phil Ford, Carl Gibson, Andy Platt and Lee Crooks.