By Jon Geddes

EASTWOOD captain Tane Edmed has revealed his team pulled off their gutsy 27-24 win over Manly in a drama-charged clash at Manly Oval for their badly injured teammate Joe Pincus.

The Woodies’ fullback sustained a fractured and a gruesome dislocated right ankle in the first half of Saturday’s game.

Play was halted for over 56 minutes as Pincus was attended to by medical staff on the field and then treated by paramedics before being transported to hospital in an intensive care ambulance which entered the ground.

The expert care that the Aussie Sevens representative received while at Manly Oval was a credit to everyone involved and he was in good spirits as he prepared to undergo surgery on Sunday. 

As tough as it was to see a teammate so seriously hurt, the Eastwood players rallied around each other with Pincus’s welfare in the forefront of their minds.

“It was terrible what happened to Joe, it was a really ugly one,” Edmed said of the injury.

“But we said ‘let’s do our best to stay in it, keep the momentum up and let’s do it for Joe, let’s send him home a winner’.

“He only came in four of five weeks ago and has been such an integral part (of the team) and he is such a nice person and a kind soul.”

Edmed said the team will play the rest of the year for Pincus, as well as their departing coaches Ben Batger and Jed Gillespie.

Batger said because there was such a long break in play on Saturday the coaching staff wanted to keep the players  relaxed.

“We tried to get them switched on and do a second warm-up,” he said.

And after the long delay halftime was cut to two minutes.              

TACKLING ADVERSITY      

WHEN Pincus sustained his injury Eastwood were up 20-0 in and in control of proceedings.

Then came a big shift as the Marlins scored 24 unanswered points to take a 24-20 lead midway through  the second half.

Adding to Eastwood’s challenge, they were down to 14 men for 20 minutes after the break with two forwards yellow-carded and lost their star No.8 Michael Icely after he took a heavy knock.

Eastwood went in front again with a try to hard running No.6 Nick Russell in the 62^nd minute.

“It was an unbelievable effort from our boys,” Edmed said.

What was particularly pleasing for Eastwood was their goal line defence when down to 14 men.

“We have started to show some really good heart the last three weeks and it is something we have really been working on,” Edmed said.

“It comes with being a new group as well, there are a lot of new boys who have come in and we are starting to gel at the right time of the season.

“We’ve been saying we have been good and we want to progress to being great.

“Our attitude has been really good, we just need to work on our execution.

“It’s a good base to go into the finals.”

RUGBY CHARACTER  

Coach Batger described the game as a really gutsy win.

“You want your side to have heart, and I think we showed a lot of heart today which is really important,” he said.

“Skill might have been a little bit down, but heart is more important than skill at this time of year.

“I think it should be a good confidence boost for us – and to lose a couple of players in key positions that shows some pretty good character. We’ll take  the positives out of that.”   

The two teams will slog it out again in the first week of the finals when the meet at TG Millner Field on Sunday.

“That will be interesting tactically, so I guess it will be a fairly quick review and preview and you’ve got to get back to work,” Batger said.