Looking to end an 18-year Shute Shield premiership drought, the Manly Marlins head into Saturday’s clash desperate to dispel their ‘preliminary final curse’ after falling at the same point last season.

In fact, coach Damien Cummins says the curse doesn’t even exist.

Wallabies enforcer Wycliff Palu will play from the bench for the Marlins after being left out of Michael Cheika’s matchday 23 for Saturday night’s Bledisloe Cup adding further grunt to the powerful Manly pack.

Despite that, Cummins thinks his side will still have their work cut out for them tomorrow.

“Finals footy comes down to a couple of key moments, so it’s important that we capitalise on ours and minimise Uni’s chances,” Cummins told Rugby News.

The coach thinks his sides defence can improve heading into the must win clash, but said the Marlins are taking a relaxed approach.

“There’s no more pressure on us now, it’s all gone so now we can only worry about what happens tomorrow.”

Sydney Uni let a 23-3 lead slip to lose to Southern Districts after the full time siren last weekend, with coach Chris Malone looking for an 80 minute performance in what could potentially be his last match in charge at the club.

“In our last two games, we’ve probably had 120 good minutes and 40 not so good minutes, so I’m confident in our ability to play, I’m confident in what we are able to achieve in both attack and defence, it’s just about sticking to that game plan and being strong about how we want to play the game,” Malone said.

Whilst the Students have claimed two of the past three Shute Shield premierships, Malone was happy to claim the underdog tag for Saturday’s clash.

“They’ve got a big tall line out, they can score off unstructured possession. They are good on set piece attack, they scored twice against Randwick on first phase plays, plus they have the ability to counter attack.”

“We need to make sure we control possession tomorrow, we can’t afford to give them too much ball. We’ve got to take a strangle hold on the game through what we do with the ball.”

Catch Manly and Sydney University live on 7TWO from 3pm on Sunday.

Manly v Sydney University – Live on 7TWO

Manly (1-15) 

Mitch Lewis, James Hilterbrand, Jerome Vaai, Ryan Melrose, Caydern Neville, Harry Bergelin, Mitch Daniel, Daniel Alley, Matt Lucas, Sam Lane, Alex Notham, Reece Hodge, Dennis Pili-Gaitau, Richard Hooper, Brenden Hartmann.

Sydney University (1-15)

Silatolu Latu, Thomas Coolican, Tomas Robertson, Jeremy Tilse, David Dennis, Jake Wainwright, David Hickey, Patrick McCutcheon, Richard Draper, Angus Roberts, Mark O’Dare, Tom Carter, Jim Stewart, Matthew Narracott, Tom Kingston.