Manly's Josh Schuster will miss the round-five clash against Newcastle with a quad injury in another early setback to his tenure as five-eighth.
Schuster, 21, suffered the injury in the first half of last weekend's loss to South Sydney but was initially named to face the Knights for Saturday's game in Mudgee.
He was ruled out after the team travelled to NSW's Central West and will be replaced by Cooper Johns in the starting side.
A Manly representative told AAP Schuster's return-to-play timeline had yet to be decided but that the club would know more in the coming days.
The injury comes after Schuster missed the first week of the season with a calf complaint.
Johns, son of Knights great Matthew, will play his second game of the season after filling in for Schuster during the round-one defeat of Canterbury.
Schuster has switched from the second row to the halves this year after training at five-eighth in the pre-season and losing close to 15kg.
In his first game of the campaign he came up with three try assists in a defeat of 2022 runners-up Parramatta, while he had a solid outing in the tight loss to the Rabbitohs last week.
