It’s still only round 17 but the Shute Shield finals have come early for both Gordon and Eastern Suburbs. 

Sitting in fifth and seventh respectively, the two sides are in a three way battle with Manly for the final two playoff spots.

If Manly beat West Harbour this weekend ahead of a bye in round 18, the winner of Saturday’s clash will give their playoff hopes a huge boost. 

It’s essentially a finals match come two weeks early and both side’s head into the blockbuster clash at Chatswood Oval coming off big local derby wins. 

“Last week’s win over Norths was huge for the loyal Gordon supporters and players,” Stags coach Darren Coleman said. 

“They’ve copped some terrible and fairly regular floggings at North Sydney Oval so I could see some real joy in the Highlander faithful and the team took a lot out of being able to deliver that.”

Coleman, a former Easts coach, has taken Gordon a long way in 2019 after finishing last season with the wooden spoon. 

But the Chatswood faithful would have been feeling a lot more confident heading into round 17, had Gordon not lost a string of tight matches earlier in the season. 

“If I knew the exact difference between winning close games wins and losing close games, I’d be a pretty rich man,” Coleman joked. 

“Belief, confidence and limiting our errors are probably the three areas that we’ve improved in that regard since the start of the year. 

“People say defence wins finals but our defence has been a strong point for us all year. I think the key for us against Easts this week is to not go into our shell in attack.

“We need to be brave, push that pass and hope we’re skilful enough to pull it off.”

Easts were also impressive in a hard fought 33-24 win over Randwick last week but coach Pauli Taumoepeau said the pressure of must win games was nothing new for his side this year. 

“We’ve been in finals mode for a while now and it was nice to get a win like that under pressure,” he said. 

“In saying that though, this week is a similar challenge with similar consequences so we need to turn up again.”

Having spent years coaching together at Easts, Taumoepeau and Coleman know each other better than any other two coaches in the Shute Shield and the Easts coach admitted that that made it somewhat difficult to build a game plan to face one another. 

“Defensively we need to handle their attacking threats,” he said. 

“We noticed last week that they’re able to get in behind defensive lines through offloads so we need to stay engaged around the tackle to limit that.”

Coleman agreed, but said with Wallabies fullback Jack Maddocks set to start for Easts, it was fairly clear where the Beasties will look to attack. 

“He’s a gun and he loves playing for Easts so he’ll be up for it,” Coleman said. 

“We’ve just got to try and limit the opportunities he gets and when he does have the ball, we need to tackle him well.”

The Shute Shield’s first unofficial final of 2019 kicks off at Chatswood Oval at 3pm on Saturday.