After scraping into the top six Manly’s backs are firmly up against the wall heading into Saturday’s qualifying final against minor premiers Sydney University, but they have been boosted by the return of globe-trotting hooker James Hilterbrand.

Hilterbrand returns to the Marlins’ pack for Saturday’s sudden-death final after returning from his two-month stint with the USA’s preliminary World Cup squad, landing back on Australian shores on Sunday night.

He wasn’t actually expecting to be back as soon as he is though.

Following a four-week camp in Colorado Hilterbrand helped his Eagles navigate their way through the opening stages of the Pacific Nations Cup, the USA’s campaign finishes in Saturday’s title-decider against Japan.

“If we beat them we win it too which is pretty cool, but after we beat Canada and Samoa in they brought another hooker into the squad and I wasn’t going to play this weekend, so I sort of thought ‘great, I’ll go back and play for Manly then’,” Hilterbrand explained.

“It was a pre-season, I guess you’d call it, before the PNC. It was really good, the first part we were at the United States Air Force Academy, which is a D1 college so the facilities were absolutely ridiculous,

“There was more fields than you could poke a stick and about 50 squat racks in the gym and it’s at about 8000-foot elevation in the mountains there so we were sucking in seagulls and just trying to find some oxygen.

“You feel pretty fit after that when you come back down closer to sea level.”

Considering University Oval is pretty darn close to sea level that stint with the Eagles puts Hilterbrand, a former Pro14, European Cup and Super Rugby player, in pretty good stead as he slots back into the Marlins’ front-row.

He’s glad to be able to as well, he admitted he did have some concerns his beloved Manly side might miss the 2019 finals. They eventually secured their place despite a remarkable draw against West Harbour in round 17.

“I was watching the games when I was over there and I’ll admit I was a little bit concerned we might miss out, but we got there in the end,” Hilterbrand said.

He pointed to the Marlins’ 27-21 win over the students at University Oval in round 11 as reason or confidence this weekend too, although he said “it’s not rocket science” against a side like the minor premiers.

“The win we had against Uni was good, we felt it for a few days afterwards but it gives us a lot of confidence because we hadn’t actually beaten them at their new ground until then,” he said.

“Look at their forward pack, there’d only be a couple of blokes who haven’t played Super Rugby so it’s pretty simple, it’s not rocket science.

“We’re going in knowing we need to do well in the forwards because the backs will do what they do. The two packs will bash each other and I think whoever comes out on top there, that’ll decide the game.”

Saturday’s qualifying final kicks off at 3pm. In Saturday’s other final Warringah host Northern Suburbs while on Sunday Eastwood welcome Eastern Suburbs to TG Millner.