By MARK CASHMAN

West Harbour coach Mark Gudmunson knew that a performance like the one that the Pirates put on against Manly in their 33-32 break through victory at Manly Oval was not far away.

He’d seen glimpses in the past three games against the Hunter Wildfires, Warringah and Northern Suburbs but it all came together against the Marlins – it was far from pretty but it has buoyed the boys from Concord considerably.

They went into to the season on the back of the single full scale trial and then had first Randwick and then Sydney Uni and it showed amongst the larger brigade in their forward pack.

But they have worked diligently since and are now presenting a clear and present danger to anyone that thinks they can just turn up and come away with the points against the Pirates. Their backrower Kali Nacina a real weapon for them on Saturday.

Talk about mergers among the western Sydney clubs have been about for awhile now and as you would expect Gudmunson doesn’t shy away from it.

“Our focus has always been about just winning footy games,” Gudmunson told Rugby News.

“I don’t know what Rugby Australia and the SRU have in mind but from our point of view we have the attitude that it’s hard to kick a winning team out of a competition.

“Our catchment area is getting bigger now with Eastwood moving up to the north west so it’s an important part of Sydney for the game.

“That said we’ve still got to do the work and re-engage our juniors and also those schools like Trinity College and St Pat’s at Strathfield who have in the past been a rich vein of talent for the club.”

Fullback Kodie Drury-Hawkins kicked the winning penalty goal for the visitors on Saturday in a game that had a 25-minute injury break 10 minutes into the second half when Marlins scrum half and former Pirate Dion Spice was knocked out.

All the necessary precautions were taken with Spice and he was transported to hospital and released later that night after a thorough check and some observation was done.

He has recovered really well and will go through all the necessary concussion protocols before being allowed to train and play.

The lead changed eight times throughout the afternoon at the Village Green and Manly coach Matt McGoldrick felt that his side had just been a bit “too nice” when they got their nose in front.

“It’s the best way to put it, at the moment we’re just too nice,” McGoldrick said.

“We score and we’re happy to take the foot off the pedal for a bit and then we will try and go try for try.

“It was the same against Uni, we would pressure them and then give them a try. We’re doing really well in patches and really poorly in patches.

“We were never going to blow Wests away in the first half and I must say we were comfortable about where we were at at 15-12, but we kicked one from six and they just hung in there and got us in the end.

“They are a hard team to play when they get into your end of the field because they are big, they’ve got a good scrum and they’re line out functioned well on Saturday.

“We just let them into our territory far too easily.”

Gunmunson added: “The biggest thing for us was that we went for 80 minutes and we adapted well to the delay in the game and were able to just switch off for 15 min in the change room and then switch back to rugby when we got the word of a restart.

“Dion is a close friend of a lot of us, so when we got word that he was well looked after, it also allowed our playing group to focus back on the job at hand.

“Losing our fly half (Patrick Pellegrini) in the opening minutes of the game, then a winger later in the first half needed a big adjustment, but the team just rolled up the sleeves and did not stop what they were out there to do.”

The club announced the arrival of Alofa Alofa on the day after the win over Manly and he will bring much more than just genuine speed on the edge.

Alofa has been playing professional footy for close to a decade and is looking to come back to Australia after a number of years in Europe, his last club being Bayonne.

IMAGE: JB PHOTOGRAPHY