By Jon Geddes; Image JB Photography

A BIZARRE pre-game injury in the dressing room led last-minute replacement Tui Moana to become an accidental hero as his bottom-placed West Harbour side caused a boil over by beating Shute Shield frontrunners Manly 22-21 last Saturday.

The extraordinary set of circumstances at St Luke’s Oval unfolded when lock Moana made his comeback after six weeks on the sideline with an AC shoulder injury, playing 70 minutes in third grade and then sitting on the bench for second grade.

Meanwhile, in the Wests dressing room, first grade lock Visiano Vaohea was having a rub down before the game and couldn’t get up off the physio table after tweaking his back.

The situation was exacerbated by the fact that the second grade side had a couple of backrowers playing in the second row.     

“I just said to Tui ’look mate you are not standing by for second grade now, unfortunately you are starting first grade’,” coach Joe Barakat revealed.

“He ended up playing about 60 minutes – and he did a fantastic job for us.”

NOT A WEAK END TEAM

MOANA’S effort typified the spirit of the West Harbour players.

The win by the 12th placed team over the competition leaders was a just reward for the effort Wests had been putting in over previous weeks.

Their position on the bottom of the table has not been a fair indication of generally how they have performed this season.

“It’s hard to go a number of weeks in a row where you are just missing out,’’ Barakat said.

“We finally found our identity and who we were.                  

“It’s just been a little while coming, we lost a few we should have won. It was nice to finally get a result and have the boys play the way we wanted them to play.

“They are capable of playing better, really we only played one half of rugby.

 “We scored three tries in five minutes and then defended with really good attitude to break Manly’s spirit a little bit I think when they couldn’t get over the line.

“They eventually got there, but they had to work hard to do it.”

Significantly, Barakat said it was the also most the Wests players have talked to one another on the field and it paid dividends.

“The Polynesian kids don’t say a lot and in this game of rugby you really need to be communicating and connecting,” Barakat said.

MIND GAMES

WESTS’ performance will have Randwick, who beat Warringah 36-19 last start, on the alert when the two sides clash at Coogee Oval on Saturday.   

As part of the build-up to the game the innovative Barakat called in a sports psychologist to address the first and second grade players for an hour on Tuesday night.

“We have been very competitive, but you’ve got to go from competitive to winning,” Barakat said.

“Our results will be a little bit volatile with a new coach, a new way of playing, but we’ve eventually got to stop the volatility and we’ve got to be consistent.

“So you’ve got to try anything and everything to get players at their best as often they can.  

“I organised this a couple of weeks ago not knowing what this result (against Manly) was going to be.”       

But he said the win over the Marlins gave the psychologist a bit more to work with.

Barakat said when the sides met in round nine Randwick won 20-17 with two minutes to go.

“We had 14 men for 50 minutes of the game and our red card got for exonerated on Tuesday night,” he said.

“We should have won that game as well – so we’ve got a little bit we need to pay back there … we’ll see how it goes.

“We don’t want to go from beating the best team in the competition to falling back to where we were.”      

BACK STORY

MOANA will start in first grade at Coogee on Saturday without warming up in the lower grades.

And, thankfully, Visiano Vaohea is now well on the road to recovery, albeit he is currently walking with the aid of a walking stick.